English football’s always had directors, and usually without problems. But those were a different breed of directors; men who’d happily stay behind the scenes or sit quietly in their executive box, not causing any trouble for the manager or team as they stayed out of the way. The differing types of directors have included the respected figureheads like Bob Paisley or Bobby Charlton; technical advisors like Sven-Goran Eriksson supposedly is for Notts County, and then there’s the current type – the sporting director, the man who gets involved and annoys the manager.
Yet a sporting director doesn’t have to be simply an annoyance – abroad they are quite frequently in position and useful for their clubs; Barcelona highly respect their sporting director Txiki Beguiristain and the same can be said for the likes of Bayern Munich (Uli Hoeness), AC Milan (Umberto Gandini), and Benfica (Rui Costa) to name just a few.
England’s examples are less admired though; Damien Comolli is considered a villain at Tottenham, Avram Grant caused trouble for Jose Mourinho at Chelsea, Velimir Zajec did the same for Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth, and Dennis Wise was largely unpopular at Newcastle as he worked with Kevin Keegan and was said to have played a part in Keegan’s departure.
The roles differ slightly; Comolli is vilified more for his transfer policies than anything else as he took over transfer responsibilities, brought in some rubbish and allowed better prospective signings to go elsewhere. His poor transfer dealings and his links with Arsenal led to Spurs fans hating him and no upset was around White Hart Lane when he was sacked. How he got another such role at Saint Etienne remains to be seen.
For the others the usual problem seems to be interfering with the manager to the point where he can’t take it anymore. Harry Redknapp’s departure from Portsmouth came as a shock given how Harry claimed to love the club but he couldn’t stand Zajec interfering in his transfer dealings and left. His return after Zajec had gone showed how he was happy to remain at the club as long as he remained in firm control. Likewise, Mourinho’s departure from Chelsea was influenced by Grant being on the scene as Roman Abrahamovic was happy for Grant to take over if Mourinho dared to suffer a few poor results. And Keegan blasted the director of football role prior to his departure from Newcastle. Wonder why?
Why these directors of football don’t seem to work out in England seems pretty simple – Premiership managers like to be in firm control of the team; they’re the gaffer and they want all respect and all the power that managers have come to be associated with. Directors of football interfere and it’s a clash of egos. These European teams have managers who are happy to work alongside an experienced director, that’s just not the case in England. Traditionally, managers have dealt with signings and shouldn’t be forced to act differently than they’d like to due to others sharing their responsibilities. It’s thought that it’s just players who suffer from over-inflated egos in football but that’s not true; managers are just as much to blame and they will not share their job with anyone – particularly not a sporting director!