The View from Row Z: Clubs taking a strange direction

IN THE good old days, ‘director of football’ was a fancy name for a player’s boot.

Now, it is a job title given to a Premier League club’s managerial overlord, who you imagine spends most of his time in a big armchair watching grainy DVDs of under-15s matches from Eastern Europe.

When it comes to buying and selling players, he is the bloke who decides who is out and who is in, whether the coach likes it or not.

Former Newcastle boss Kevin Keegan didn’t enjoy the new-fangled, European-style structure much – and no wonder.

Just as throwing a bit of cheap garden furniture around the pavement outside a spit-and-sawdust town centre boozer rarely brings about a relaxed and refined Parisien café culture, suddenly putting London-based Dennis Wise in ultimate charge at the Toon was a move that had a few missing links in its logic chain.

Juande Ramos may be more familiar with this sort of a set-up than our Kev, but it doesn’t seem to be helping the former Seville manager much at Tottenham.

Rocket scientists need not furrow their brows on this one. The equation — sell all your best strikers and you are likely to struggle for goals — is fairly simple to get to grips with.

Spurs’ own director of football Damien Comolli has a good track record in France and helped Arsenal bring in a number of their hugely-promising youngsters, which makes the embarrassing mismanagement at White Hart Lane all the more peculiar. Or sinister, depending on your appetite for conspiracy theories.

Either way, it seems tough on the coach who will no doubt end up carrying the can, mainly as a result of transfer matters beyond his control.



HAVING spent the past week or so in North America, it has been tricky following sporting goings on back home on a live basis.

The failure to track down a New York bar showing the England-Belarus clash, plus the lack of teletext on the hotel TV on which to follow the Football League scores on a Saturday, at least freed up a bit more time to take in the sights.

There was also the nightly televised baseball, which helped plug the gap.

Americans go crazy for it, yet back here gridiron and basketball enjoy higher profiles. I’m not sure why, when you’re talking about a game which can serve up such wild entertainment.

Losing 3-1 to Tampa Bay Rays in a first-to-four series to earn the right to face Philadelphia in the World Series, reigning champions Boston Red Sox found themselves 7-0 down in game five before producing a scarcely believable last-gasp comeback to win 8-7 and keep their chances alive (though they still ultimately lost out).

No more deriding baseball as rounders for boys here.

Overseas matches are all well and good, but maybe all America needs to convert it wholeheartedly to ‘soccer’ is convenient kick-off times to cater for the sports bar market.
Imagine it: Chelsea against Manchester United from Stamford Bridge on a Monday night at 2am. Over to you, Richard Scudamore.