United’s new chief scout (er, director of football) might find right man... Harry Kane
LET’S get one thing clear – smooth blokes in smart suits do not bring trophies to football clubs.
They might play a small part but the people who are almost wholly responsible for bringing trophies to clubs are the ones with boots on, and the ones who take to the training ground in their tracksuits.
Oh, and the ones with the fat wallet.
Players, managers, owners.
If this sounds like some sort of mantra from a dinosaur age, guilty as charged.
But the cult of the sporting director, the director of football, the head of football operations, call it what you want, has gotten steadily out of control.
A lot of it, of course, is simply semantics.
A head of recruitment? Isn’t that just a chief scout in old money, in the same way that transition was once just getting the ball from defence to attack?
Or in the same way a pivot was once a holding midfielder?
But, to be fair, even this dinosaur recognises the game off the pitch has moved on and keeps evolving.
Which is why, it seems, we are in a world of transfer markets for pen-pushers, wheeler-dealers and laptop gurus.
Chelsea are making another move for Brighton’s chief scout – sorry, head of recruitment – Sam Jewell, and Newcastle United might target Michael Edwards if, as expected,
Dan Ashworth leaves to become sporting director at Old Trafford.
If and when Ashworth moves to Manchester United, it will be seen as a coup for Sir Jim Ratcliffe, although Newcastle fans should not be too worried as Brighton sailed on serenely after the former FA man left them.
But it will not be so much a coup as another very strong statement of intent from Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford.
Whether or not – like me – you believe the role is over-hyped, Ashworth is widely seen as one of the best in class, just as the incoming chief executive officer Omar Berrada is widely seen (in the circles that know this sort of thing) as one of the best club administrators.
The need to address the state of the stadium and, indeed, the suitability of the club’s training complex has already been accepted, it seems, by Ratcliffe, whose arrival will be ratified in the coming days.
After the inertia of the last decade, a wind of decisiveness is about to blow through Old Trafford.
And one ramification will be that the Manchester United in the summer transfer window of 2024 will be a very different Manchester United from the one in the summer transfer window of 2023.
It will help if Erik ten Hag, in the last 14 Premier League games of the season, pulls a Champions League place out of the bag but, even now, potential marquee signings can see there is going to be a revolutionary feel about the place.
Successful? Who knows? But they mean business… as in football business, not just business. And that impresses big-time players.
Let’s just imagine, for example, the first bumps in Harry Kane’s Munich road become something more serious.
Let’s imagine Bayern win nothing and Kane (left) is made one of the scapegoats.
If he was looking to get back to the Premier League, would the Manchester United of the summer of 2024 be more attractive to Kane than the Manchester United of the summer of 2023? Too right it would be.
Sure, it is putting two and two together and coming up with a lot.
But even if you think the influence wielded by the likes of Berrada and Ashworth (a mega-fan of Kane, by the way) is exaggerated, their recruitment shows Ratcliffe wants the best in class off the pitch.
That will resonate with the best in class on the pitch.
And as fanciful as it seems, might even resonate with Kane.