One of many Chelsea fans biggest issues with the club right now is the sporting directors and their inexperience.
They don’t have any top level experience being a director of football, they lack experience building a squad, and they have very little transfer negotiating experience.
Yet here they are, now in full power of building a squad, spending £1.4bn doing so, of one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Nobody can doubt their talent spotting, I think they have both proven this over time, at least mostly. No sporting director is going to get every signing right, and they have certainly made some bad calls too. But I think it is also important to highlight the fact they have signed some decent players. Granted, some have just been average or just not good enough, but others are looking like they might be gems.
Paul Winstanley has never been a Sporting Director. His highest power role was as Head of Scouting at Brighton. Before that he had just two jobs, one at Derby as an analyst, and one at Wigan as a Performance Manager. How has he landed a job as a Sporting Director at Chelsea and put in power of spending so much money and completely rebuilding an entire squad!? Make it make sense.
Laurence Stewart at least does have a little more experience. However, prior to Monaco, he had only had analyst and scouting roles. And at Monaco, he spent just a year as a Sporting Director before dropping into the Technical Director role for two years before joining Chelsea. Now we all know that Monaco are a whole different ball game to Chelsea.
I just find it ludicrous. Chelsea need the very best in all departments. Chelsea should be striving for proven, in all departments.
My main issue with them is the fact that they are building a team of individuals and ignoring the squad building factor. It’s like buying all the pieces of a puzzle but not knowing how to put it together. They have ignored key squad building elements.
This is why when I see Arsenal going for an experienced sporting director with a proven track history of success and longevity at Atletico Madrid, it just highlights more to me on where the Chelsea owners have gone wrong with these hires.
Andrea Berta may not have signed top players all the time during his 12 years at Atletico, but he has certainly made some very good ones and has built a squad there that has been suited to the manager, suited to the club, and has kept within their ethos.
Berta now appears to be the frontrunner for the Arsenal job having departed Atletico in January at the La Liga giants, serving as their Sporting Director since 2017.
Over the past eight years, Berta made 52 signings for Atletico at an estimated expenditure of £684m and was influential in many more deals prior to that.
Perhaps Atletico Madrid’s best two players of the past decade have been Jan Oblak and Antione Griezmann.
Oblak has consistently been regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the world and practically a steal in the transfer market, costing £13m from Benfica in 2014.
Berta actually made a £64m profit on Griezmann after he signed the French World Cup winner, sold him to rivals Barcelona at a huge cost and then brought him back two years later on the cheap. In all, the forward has 197 goals and 91 assists for the club.
Though he only spent one season in Madrid, £24m signing Rodri is also among Berta’s success stories. He of course then went on to be huge at Manchester City.
Luis Suarez was snapped up on the cheap for just £5.5m by Berta after being controversially binned off by Barcelona in 2020. He was 33 at the time, and this was a smart buy to add more influential experience to the front line.
Additionally, Berta signed current Arsenal target Matheus Cunha, who is now of course on Chelsea’s radar as well. You can also say it was a mistake to sell him though.
Berta also signed David Villa, Julian Alvarez, Kieran Trippier, Yannick Carrasco, Marcos Llorente, Diogo Jota, Cesar Azpilicueta, amongst many more fine examples of good and smart signings.
Atletico have won La Liga in 2021, Europa League in 2018, and The Super Cup in 2018.
But what Berta does is have proven experience of building a team, a squad, at a top European club – something our directors do not have.
This is why Chelsea fans were so excited with the links to Luis Campos. Because if you want to succeed, you have to put the very best in the high powered football positions at the top of the club. You need experience there, it is probably THE most important position to have experience.
Chelsea do not have this.
