THE SPORTING DIRECTOR BRIEF · EDITION 02
Specialist Staff, Shared Decisions and Performance Environments
A club can employ excellent specialists and still make poor decisions.
Consider a player returning from injury. The medical team assesses clinical risk. Performance staff evaluate physical readiness. Coaches consider the demands of the next fixture. Analysts provide evidence of those demands. Each brings expertise. But expertise alone does not guarantee an effective decision.
Who has authority? Who can challenge? Who communicates the outcome?
Research published by King and colleagues (2026), involving interviews with eight leaders across elite sport, identified two interconnected leadership challenges: creating environments that support collaboration and exercising judgement when navigating complex performance problems.
My view is that clubs can become preoccupied with recruiting specialist staff without adequately examining how their expertise contributes to decisions.
Before approving another appointment, I would want to understand how the existing multidisciplinary team operates. Are responsibilities clear? Is professional disagreement encouraged? Does information reach the appropriate decision-maker? Are outcomes reviewed, rather than simply reported?
A Sporting Director should not attempt to become the expert in every discipline. Their responsibility is to establish the conditions in which expertise can be applied effectively.
For owners and CEOs, this is also a question of resource allocation. Is the next investment another specialist appointment, or improving the environment in which existing specialists operate?
High performance is not determined by the number of people employed. It depends on what those people contribute and how effectively the organisation makes decisions.
I'd welcome conversations with clubs examining how their football operations and performance environments can be strengthened.
Research note: King and colleagues (2026), From chaos to clarity: how leaders leverage the value and impact of the multidisciplinary team in elite sport, Managing Sport and Leisure. The player return-to-play scenario is illustrative, not an account of a specific club or player.
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