Daunte Crawford: How do clubs hire Sporting Directors?

Last summer, Football Benchmark mapped all 88 Sporting Directors in post across Europe’s big five leagues. The average tenure was 2.6 years; in the Premier League 1.8 years.

For a role that rests on squad cycles, Academy pathways and trading models, this seemed very short and raised an important question: How are these people actually appointed?

That’s what I intend to tackle in this column. Who gets these jobs? How does a search start? Who writes the specification? How are candidates assessed? What gets negotiated? What is the evidence behind what good practice actually looks like?