Sport directors and Squad planning

I always read about the "bad planning" etc in English clubs, and it really seams that sometimes there are rather wild buys en vogue. E.g. someone addressed that Arsenal's problem atm is not buying a proper DM etc.

From what I have gather, many English teams don't have a designated director sports, and I wonder if it might be the lack thereof and the bigger power of the manager that could lead to this problem.

In Germany you usually have a coach (who is responsible for training, tactical stuff and man management), a sporting director (who deals with the acquisition of new players) and the board (which allocates the money and gives the okay to spend it for new signings). So to get a new player, these different "departments" have to get together and thus IMO it is more likely that clubs do "vanity signings" (that is, cool players that don't fit the system) or totally useless players (although it is still possible to have useless players after a coach gets fired and the new coach has completely different ideas).

So I wonder if the squad problems in English (and possibly other areas where much power is concentrated in the hands of one guy) clubs at least partly stem from the lack of supervision?

Oh, and I read somewhere that people would love to sign Jürgen Klopp as they think then everything would be better at their club. But I'm 100% sure that Kloppo would hate to be involved in the stuff that in Dortmund the sport director does, and a lot of the success of the BVB comes from the great synergy that's between Klopp, Zorc and Watzke.  

On the other hand, at Bayern Pep was probably surprised that he doesn't have the full control about who is signed and who not - but then, when he says "I need Player XY", then he doesn't have to do anything but concentrate on his coaching, tactics etc, while in the background the board, DoS etc just make it happen.

Just food for thought. ^^

Despite what many people think, Chelsea have a sporting director, Michael Emanelo.

He is in charge of transfers and youth signings (e.g Courtois, KDB,).

Mourinho does of course have a say, as does Roman and the board but Emanelo was running this show this summer

In my opinion the ideal situation would be one where there is no sporting director, because the manager must be the person who knows the best what the squad needs. Trying to mix & match two (or more) people's vision on how to build and develop the team is not ideal.

However, since managers at clubs change a lot, a sporting director can bring some continuity to the club's transfer policy, which can be a good thing, but if you've got a good manager who knows what he's doing, you should leave player transfers to him.

Bayern does it the right way. They have a committee that is comprised of the manager (Pep), club president (Rummenigge), sporting director (Sammer) and the club chairman (Hainer now but Hoeness before) who must 100% agree on a buy or a sell. If one of them doesn't agree, the transaction doesn't happen.

I think it depends on what is in the job description. I have the impression there is a fundamental difference about this in Germany and England at least, which is actually showing already in the terms we use.

In England you have a manager which actually implies the managerial aspect as well, while in Germany we have a coach (BTW, the correct term for the guy who coaches a German football team is "Fußballlehrer", that is, "football teacher").

So it looks as if in Germany the education for a football coach focuses on the training, tactics and man-management of the players and not so much on the business aspect of acquiring or selling players. That's why I wonder whether a German coach would actually feel comfortable in the English environment. (Felix Magath is a special case as he actually demanded to be given the full authority in Germany, too - with the result that he usually nearly bankrupted the clubs he coached as he had no one to reign him in.)

Art Morte wrote:In my opinion the ideal situation would be one where there is no sporting director, because the manager must be the person who knows the best what the squad needs. Trying to mix & match two (or more) people's vision on how to build and develop the team is not ideal.

The second David Dean left Arsenal Wenger was exposed pretty badly though

I agree that the Managers needs to have an input since he watches the player every week and know what the team is lacking. Also you need to include the head scout so see if the player can coupe with the style of the team and/or league.

sporting director is need to negotiate over the price and what not.

@Zealous why you stealing my sig?