‘Incredibly proud’: Richard Hughes confirmed as Liverpool sporting director
Liverpool have confirmed the appointment of Richard Hughes as their new sporting director. Hughes, who announced this month he would leave his role as Bournemouth’s technical director at the end of the season, will officially take up his new role on 1 June.
Michael Edwards, recently installed as Fenway Sports Group’s chief executive of football, has had a longstanding desire to work with Hughes and they have a professional and personal relationship spanning more than 20 years having worked together during Hughes’s playing career at Portsmouth.
It is understood when Julian Ward left his role as Liverpool’s sporting director last summer Edwards was surprised Hughes was not one of the candidates to be interviewed by club owners FSG.
“I am incredibly proud to be offered this opportunity. Liverpool FC is a unique club and I’m grateful to be given a chance to serve it in this capacity,” Hughes told the club’s website. “People rightly talk about the rich history this organisation can boast, but it is the present and future which really excites me.
“It will be my job, working with Michael and leading the football operations team already in place, plus the wider staff at the AXA Training Centre, to make good decisions. That’s really what the job entails: you have to make the kind of good decisions which enhance the prospects of having a team that wins and excites the supporters. It is what Liverpool have done well for a very long time and the benefits are there for everyone to see.”
Edwards and Hughes will be key fig
ures as the club transitions from the departure of Jürgen Klopp at the end of the season. Hughes was the driving force behind the appointment of Andoni Iraola as Bournemouth head coach last summer, with Iraola saying they had a “very good connection”.
Iraola shares the same agency as the Bayer Leverkusen manager, Xabi Alonso, the former Liverpool midfielder who is the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Klopp. In his time at Bournemouth, Hughes would have secured the appointment of Roberto De Zerbi, another being linked with Liverpool, had there not been a delay due to a change of the club’s ownership that allowed Brighton to secure the Italian.
Edwards is confident Hughes’s arrival is the first step in building the post-Klopp era. “It is clear to everyone that Jürgen will leave a legacy to build upon and in Richard we have the right person to make the key decisions and offer the leadership to take us forward into a bright future,” Edwards told the club’s website.
“As one very successful chapter will come to a close for Liverpool in the summer, the objective of everyone here is for another one to begin – and with Richard I am confident we have the right person in position for us to achieve this aim.”