Martinez's Man United outburst begs the question: Why do Premier League executives stay silent? - ESPN

Lisandro Martínez's extraordinary post-match outburst to Amazon Prime following Manchester United's 2-0 defeat at Atlético Madrid last week highlighted an arrangement that has served the Premier League's sporting executives rather well: they're influential in picking a club's manager and building the squad, but are nowhere to be seen when the team struggles.

Martínez's comments were an unusually explicit exercise in finger-pointing, and he has since apologized. While players have long criticized their own performances, collective failures or even, occasionally, individual teammates, the manager or head coach has often represented the thinly disguised target.

But Martínez, who has been at the club since 2022, went further: He questioned why United showed a lack of "ambition" in the transfer market and all-but-named director of football Jason Wilcox as the main culprit. "I expect more from our technical director," Martínez said, before asking: "You start changing, changing, changing manager, but what about other areas?"

Manager Michael Carrick was spared criticism; instead, the finger was pointed "upstairs." Wilcox's title at United may now be director of football, and no longer technical director following his promotion last year, but he is still responsible for player recruitment and squad construction. As far as Martínez is concerned, Wilcox's office door is where the buck stops.

But beyond whether Martínez's criticism was justified, whether he should have aired it publicly and whether the outburst was premeditated, there are some interesting questions at play. Why did it take a center back to publicly demand answers from a director of football? Should the executives who build Premier League squads also be required to face the media regularly? And why has their absence been accepted for so long?

Note: The terms "manager" and "head coach" have been used casually throughout the piece, but if you want my definition of either role, click here.

The rise of the sporting executive in Europe

Public scrutiny is customary in football, but historically it was always the manager who was left to answer the media's questions about recruitment, strategy, and the club's general direction. When managers like Man United's Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsenal's Arsene Wenger were in control of everything in the 1990s, it made more sense. But now those in charge of matters on the pitch are often disconnected with the commercial, financial, and even recruitment side of things because of the rise of the sporting executive.

The sporting executive was predominantly a continental concept from its origins. Italo Allodi, an early Italian pioneer, began his executive career at Mantova in the mid-1950s, before he went on to build Helenio Herrera's "Grande Inter" team in Milan in 1959.

English clubs also experimented with former managers moving upstairs long before the Premier League was created in 1992. Matt Busby became general manager at Manchester United in 1969, with Wilf McGuinness taking charge of the first team; two years later, Joe Mercer made the same move at Manchester City, with Malcolm Allison becoming manager. Though both arrangements proved short-lived, with friction and uncertainty over authority complicating the intended sharing of responsibility.

The role resurfaced again in the '90s with Lawrie McMenemy taking a senior role at Southampton in 1994, Kenny Dalglish becoming director of football at Blackburn in 1995, Ron Atkinson at Coventry City in 1996, and David Pleat at Tottenham in 1998. Dalglish and Atkinson both worked above their former assistants, Ray Harford and Gordon Strachan respectively, but neither brief spell did much to strengthen the case for the model. Yet, those appointments helped establish the somewhat ambiguous "director of football" figure -- a title some clubs have retained even though the job has moved well beyond its original remit.

Often a senior former manager, the director of football would be installed as a buffer between an inexperienced manager and the chairman, given the tasks of working on recruitment and (in theory) acting as a sounding board for both the manager and the board. However, the setup often created confusion and impasse rather than clarity. Who was ultimately responsible for signings? Who picked the team? What authority did the director of football hold over the manager?

Neither fans nor the media were ever properly sold on the concept. The likely reason why it didn't work was that former managers, often strong personalities accustomed to having the final say on practically everything, found it difficult to step back and rather undermined the authority of the manager they were supposed to support.

In the 2000s, the profile changed and the "sporting director" became established as a profession in its own right. Many of the current Premier League incumbents have never worked as senior head coaches, coming instead from playing careers, scouting, sports science, data analysis, or finance.

The sporting executive role also gained a firmer foothold as foreign ownership became more influential in the Premier League. To those foreign owners, it made little sense that the manager -- already burdened with more than enough responsibilities -- should also direct the club's recruitment policy. The influx of foreign head coaches, many already accustomed to working under a sporting director, also eased the tensions between the two roles.

Chelsea and Spurs (despite not being foreign owned) were early adopters of the modern model, with Frank Arnesen, previously sporting director at Tottenham, taking the role at Stamford Bridge in 2009 after initially overseeing scouting and youth development. Appointments such as Damien Comolli at Spurs, Txiki Begiristain at Manchester City, and Franco Baldini at Tottenham further separated sporting leadership from coaching, until it eventually became the norm.

Today all 20 Premier League clubs employ a senior sporting executive, though with varying degrees of authority. While roles continue to evolve, Premier League clubs still place much of the external communication in the manager's hands.

But to understand why sporting executives generally remain in the shadows, we need to dig a little deeper. There are four possible explanations, and they are all connected.

Moreno: Lisandro Martinez is the wrong person to criticise Manchester United hierarchy

Why aren't Premier League sporting executives more visible?

- A historical precedent

The structure was first introduced at English clubs in a league that had already carried the tradition of the manager as the primary public face of their operation. This was an almost mythical position (think Wenger and Ferguson), very much with the expectation that one person would encompass the full range of sporting responsibilities. While the division of work changed, the allocation of public duties largely remained intact.

- Language issues and familiarity with English football's media culture

For some incoming executives, leaving external communication to an established manager, particularly a British one, may have been the most comfortable arrangement.

- Greater exposure means a higher level of external pressure

This is more speculative, yet more than plausible, as sporting executives would have noted that keeping their heads out of the public eye offered a better chance of longevity in a position that would otherwise attract considerable scrutiny. Maintaining the status quo worked in their favor.

- No reason to change

All of this leads to another question: why was the imbalance not addressed from the outset? The most likely explanation is that the majority of the owners saw little reason to change an arrangement that seemed unproblematic, at least when it was working well.

Is it different in Europe?

Across Europe, variations in how clubs' sporting departments are organized are plentiful -- with varying different terms for job titles and responsibilities -- but there are certainly more executives made available to the media than in the Premier League.

Sporting executives in the German Bundesliga, for example, have long tended to occupy a place on the bench during matches and give interviews before and after games. It raises some awkward questions, such as: do they interfere with a head coach's team selection? Can their relationships with players undermine those of the coach? And even their facial expressions and emotional outbursts on the bench are often subjected to thorough analysis. But it makes them a visible presence to the fans.

In recent years, some German clubs have added another executive layer -- effectively a sporting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) -- which moves much of the strategic authority upwards, and to a certain extent reduces the sporting director to a glorified assistant coach. This organizational tweak may add some confusion in terms of accountability, but the sporting CEO is expected to face the cameras too, especially during a crisis, to discuss transfer policy, the coach's position or to outline the broader project.

In Italy, where the sporting director became a prominent figure and was firmly established by the 1950s, the organizational structures also evolved with the arrival of foreign owners and, though a few examples remain such as Fabio Paratici (Fiorentina) and Giovanni Sartori (Bologna), the all-powerful "Direttore Sportivo" is becoming a rarer breed.

At clubs that divide the responsibilities, a hands-on sporting director oversees recruitment and squad construction while remaining close to daily first-team activities. In turn, a more senior sporting CEO may be further removed from the training ground and work more closely with the owner, with the expectation that they also front up to the media when required.

Will things ever change?

One further explanation often touted for keeping Premier League sporting executives shielded is that an awkward media appearance can damage the perception of someone whose work concerns the club's long-term direction.

There is some logic to that from the club's perspective, but the argument works equally well for the head coach. Many would happily dispense with their media duties, yet those duties are a fundamental part of the job. Being an excellent coach and a mediocre public communicator are entirely compatible; so, by the same token, competent media skills should be a reasonable expectation of a senior football executive, as they would be in any other business.

Added attention brings accountability, but expecting the executives in charge of the club's strategic direction to share a modest part of the scrutiny directed at the team and coaching staff every week is not unreasonable ... even at the risk of the executive becoming the face of a failed project.

This does not require a club's hierarchy to actively indulge in the limelight. On the contrary, it merely requires them to share responsibility and relieve some of the pressure when results deteriorate. While there's no need to ask them to appear at pre- or post-match news conferences -- this properly belongs within the coach's remit -- a quarterly media briefing would be a good start towards rebuilding some relationships, while it could earn them the respect of their employees too.

Facing questions publicly over the club's direction, recruitment priorities and general sporting situation is no more than should be expected of a senior executive. Putting them in the spotlight more often would mark a progressive step forward in comparison with the carefully rehearsed sit-downs with official club channels that seem so standard today. And it would help ease the frustration that clearly caused the outburst from Man United defender Martínez.