It has been 19 months since Robbie Fowler’s successful, if short-lived, stint in charge of Saudi Arabia side Al-Qadsiah ended, but he has kept himself ticking over, waiting for a fresh opportunity to materialise.
Fowler, 50, has managed around the world, in Thailand, Australia, India, and in the Gulf, and is keen to return to coaching. In the meantime, he is busying himself with learning about sports directorship by undertaking a two-year course delivered by the PFA’s Business School.
Co-ordinated by former FA technical director and Southampton vice-chair Les Reed and Porto’s director of football Andoni Zubizarreta, the course sets out the various intricacies of being a sporting director.
A position and model once viewed with suspicion in English football is now practically ubiquitous at clubs throughout the professional pyramid.
On the day that The i Paper attends one of the in-person seminars at the PFA’s London HQ in the shadow of The Shard, several bases are covered.
The role entails: recruitment and analytics, football finance and governance, loan strategy management, establishing and running an academy, leadership and communication, and, as with everything in 2025, the potential benefits and drawbacks of AI, especially within scouting. And that’s far from an exhaustive list.
“I’ve been a player, I am a manager, and I think it’s just seeing the game through different eyes,” Fowler tells The i Paper.
“I do want to get back into the game as soon as possible. As a coach or a manager, I feel as though I’ve got a lot to give on that front. But the sporting directorship and technical side of the game is just an avenue that I could lean towards in the future.
“I want to look into the eyes of a sporting director and find out what they want from the game as well.”
The remit for sporting directors, or directors of football, is exhaustive. They need to be political conduits between owners and managers, as well as experts in a variety of specialisms.
But the role is associated more with player recruitment than anything else; successes and failures in the transfer market are how they tend to be judged.
“It’s unbelievably difficult. We’ve seen clubs try and do it and not everyone gets it right,” Fowler says.
“I think it’s about trusting in what you know, trusting the environment. Playing for certain teams is not all about being a great player, it’s about having the right mentality, attitude and temperament to play for a shirt or a badge.
“There’s a lot of thinking and thought process that goes into being a sporting director. It’s not ‘let’s just sign him, he’s a good player’, because we’ve seen it many times in the past that not every player is the right fit for a club, even if they are brilliant.
“The likes of Brentford and Brighton have got it nailed to a tee.”
So have Fowler’s beloved Liverpool.
The Reds have won six major honours over the past six years, with Arne Slot carrying on from where Jurgen Klopp left off by delivering the Premier League title in his first season.
Michael Edwards played a key role in laying the foundations for Liverpool’s era of success under Klopp – and latterly Slot – during his spell as sporting director between 2016 and 2022, including signing Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, who are all still key players years after joining.
Edwards was rehired by Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, as the company’s chief executive of football in March last year.
“He’s been nothing short of exceptional. Obviously, he went and now he is back and not just at the football club but under the FSG banner, which tells you what they think about him,” Fowler says.
“I think you’re probably surmising that in the future, FSG are going to have a stable of football teams under the FSG banner.”
While Fowler is prioritising a return to football in a coaching capacity, he hasn’t ruled out taking on a directorship position either. He believes “there is a need” for the role at clubs everywhere, given football’s evolution and the turnover of managers in the modern game.
But in a hypothetical world where he steps into Edwards’ shoes for the summer, what business would he look to do in the upcoming transfer window?
“It’s a difficult one because as a supporter, you want them to sign every player under the sun!” he says. “If you’re not signing players, you risk potentially going backwards.
“Maybe [Darwin] Nunez will be a name on a few teams’ lists because he hasn’t played the amount of games he’d want to, so you assume Liverpool will try to bring a number nine.
“The problem is clubs know that they are potentially on the lookout for a number nine, so the prices will become silly. If you look at [Alexander] Isak, he’s going to be £100m plus easily. He’s a wonderful player, but Liverpool may not want to pay that, and they’ll look around.
“You could look at Ollie Watkins. He doesn’t really fit the model in terms of what Liverpool want, given his age [29 years old], but I’d go and get him for a couple of years because he’s a tremendous player and established and experienced in the Premier League.”
For now, Fowler is determined to return to the dugout. Just don’t be surprised to see him seated in the director’s box at some point down the line.
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