First I’ll thank everyone that contributed positively and civilly to the exciting chat we had on the article titled ‘Chelsea must choose wisely’ your encouragement made me research a bit on the issue of the director of football, so I’ll ask you guys to indulge me if there are some errors of omission or whatever type in this article.
Talking about a Director of Football, the nature of the role of a DOF is variable,
(1) The presence of a DOF in a club is to act as an intermediary to the board and manager by handling aspects of the club apart from the daily coaching of players which is the job of the manager, to focus on the performance of his team on the pitch.
2) To provide advice and technical assistance to the manager.
3) To pressure the team positively during a period of poor performance.
4) To cover transfer dealings, targets.
5) To oversee all levels at the club, youth, First team and the academy.
One of the advantages of employing a well-known and experienced DOF is to enhance a perceived prestige of the particular club. They are not necessarily shareholders. The director of football is answerable to the board but are also there to assist managers, he is experienced in football and there to help board members without experience. The role of a DOF should be filled preferably with former or once successful managers.
In my little research I stumbled on some one time DOFs and some active ones in Giovanni Trappatonni, Denise Wise (Newcastle), Sven Goran Eriksson(Notts County), Damien Commolli (Liverpool), Steve Coppell, Klaus Allofs, Costinha(Sporting SP), Fernando Hierro (Malaga), Uli Hoeness (Bayern), Michael Zorc (Borrussia Dortmund) Rudi Voller (Leverkusen), Leonardo (PSG),Sir Bobby Charlton (Man Utd) etc are examples of DOFs and when you check the list you’ll see that most of them are experienced, intelligent and wizened, there are more examples but I don’t want to bore you, so I’ll move to my next point.
My next point is for Chelsea, we can chose our DOF from ex-players or if we are okay with Emenalo, we can bring in some people who have affinity to the club and would do a good job there without jeopardizing the club or let ego consume and interfere with their job description.
People like Kerry Dixon, Ray Wilkins, Nigel Spackman, Gianluca Vialli, Frank Lebeouf, Tore Andre Flo, Pat Nevin, Ruud Gullit, even Bobby Tambling can act in some capacity as football advisers to Roman.
We have been saying we lack football minds at our club, and when you look at most top clubs in Europe, from Italy to Spain, Germany and to England, to the Netherlands, you’ll notice that top clubs there have ex-players in some capacity as advisers to the club or administrators.
So guys who do you think will do a good job among this lot, or who would you suggest to be part of the personnel to take us forward?
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