As far back as 2009, with his star on the rise after the eight British cycling gold medals at the Beijing Olympics one year earlier, Sir David Brailsford mentioned the impromptu visit to his team’s velodrome of another man knighted for his achievement in sport.
That was Sir Alex Ferguson, said to have inspected the Manchester gold medal factory established by British Cycling. Ferguson was not the only one to seek out Brailsford then, although more circumspect than many of the disciples he accumulated in that era. Brailsford is not mentioned in either of the books Ferguson has published since his retirement in 2013. Even so, the establishment of that connection served a purpose for Brailsford. It was the kind of tacit endorsement that might one day be parlayed into a job in football.
Fourteen years on and that job is not just at any club. It is the club that Ferguson left ten years ago as Premier League champions. Brailsford is to be one of the three-man committee established to run the football operation once the 25 per cent of the club is acquired from the Glazers by his boss, Ineos billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Even at a United who have not been English champions in a decade, it is a prestigious position.
Ratcliffe and Brailsford have a choice as to whether they want to run United’s football operation themselves or entrust it to one of those who have accumulated a career’s worth of experience buying and selling players – and one rather suspects that it will be the former.
Trading footballers is not only great fun, it is also one of the most effective modern public relations vehicles for establishing competency to a global audience. One only needs to look at Abu Dhabi’s mastery of English football, and the acquisition of 12 more clubs alongside Manchester City to see what it has done for the emirate’s reputation. To the extent that some even forget how much investment it has taken.
Likewise at Newcastle United, the smooth ascendance to Champions League qualification has endeared its Saudi Arabia owners to the club’s fanbase at least - Sandro Tonali’s due diligence check aside. On the flipside, the Champions League chaos of Paris Saint-Germain has hardly done wonders for the perceived competence of Qatar state investment in sport. You might argue they had to stage a World Cup finals to prove otherwise.
For Ratcliffe and Brailsford, football offers an opportunity for them to succeed on a stage that resonates much more deeply across the world than plastics or even excellence on two wheels. It will be very tempting to make the big calls themselves. For Brailsford – who remains an Ineos employee – football is much more lucrative than comparable sports.
At its worst, football has a tendency to consider itself unknowable to outsiders. The best, like Ferguson, have always been receptive to new ideas. Even so, many wealthy men have spent fortunes proving that the art of good recruitment in football is not directly related to success in other fields.
The smart thing to do would be to build the structure that allows the experts to flourish, although experience suggests that single-minded football ownerships needed to get burned once to learn that lesson. At Chelsea one can see a similar scenario playing out. The club have certainly appointed a lot of recruitment executives, of which one has already left, but it is co-owner Behdad Eghbali who dominated the business of last summer’s blockbuster transfer window.
At Liverpool under Fenway Sports Group, it took the US ownership time. They sacked sporting director Damien Comolli after winning a trophy in 2012. Then it was the turn of the transfer committee which Brendan Rodgers came to regard as the politburo of player trading. Later it would be the intervention of Mike Gordon, the FSG president, which would ensure the autonomy and the resources to build the great Jurgen Klopp sides of recent years.
There are options for Ratcliffe if he wishes to appoint a sporting director. Admittedly no outstanding candidate seems to be lining up for the job but experience will tell the men from Ineos there is no bigger decision than this in how they shape the club.
Paul Mitchell, most recently at Monaco, is the front runner but the big question is what kind of power will be accorded to the man in question - because without complete control, meaningful change will be impossible. If Mitchell, or any other candidate, is simply to be operated by Ratcliffe and Brailsford in a similar fashion to the way Sooty and Sweep’s television careers were realised, then there really is little point to it. The Ineos pair may as well do it themselves.
In his position as Ineos Team director of sport, Brailsford’s recruitment record at Nice has been mixed to say the least. What responsibility Brailsford had for each or any of them is unclear. The summer window last year included the signings of Kasper Schmeichel, Ross Barkley and Aaron Ramsey – all of whom have since left. In October last year, the club appointed Florent Ghisolfi, 38, as a sporting director from Lens – the club which would go on to win the league that year. Ahead of Saturday’s game against Marseille, Nice were second. What power Ghisolfi is accorded is hard to say.
United are a different club to Nice or any other: the spotlight is intense and it will not relent no matter how much time new ownership believes is needed to turn the ship around. It requires a leading sporting director and unshakeable faith from those above to stay the course. Ratcliffe and Brailsford will recognise that from their own careers. Whether they are prepared to grant it to another when the spotlight awaits, is another thing altogether.
