Sporting Directors & The GBE Rules

Why Johannes Spors was denied a work permit & whether this is a maintainable position for The FA/Home Office

When Boris Johnson’s signature was finally inked onto the Brexit papers, little did football fans in this country know that their future players, managers, and, even, backroom staff would be denied entry to work in their clubs.

Many Southampton fans have been left unhappy by the fact that their chosen replacement for Jason Wilcox, now at Manchester United, as Sporting Director has been told that he will not be granted a work permit to begin work on the South Coast.

Johannes Spors, who has most recently been heading up 777 Partners’ clubs as Global Sporting Director for the last few years, did not pass the criteria drawn up by The FA and the Home Office.

Whilst most media reports have stated this, and much reaction has been seen from the back of it, there has been a lack of depth and understanding around this case.

Sid Panayi, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Sport Policy, and myself, Andy Watson, will turn our gaze to this episode now, and this article will provide that depth and expertise.

We will also look into potential options who would fit the criteria as they stand.

However, we will also assess whether the current regulations are fit for purpose in the modern age.

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The GBE Regulations for Sporting Directors

First of all, it is important to establish that there are published and publicly available criteria on what the post-Brexit GBE regulations are.

For those people new to the site, GBE stands for Governing Body Endorsement, and this is what is needed for someone who wants to work in the sports industry to gain a work permit from the Home Office. The criteria has been set out by The FA (football’s governing body) for players, managers/head coaches, and a few other roles in the backroom staff, including sporting directors/directors of football.

Whilst the FA has provided a set of criteria for sporting directors to obtain a GBE there is a lack of ambiguity in some sections, and there is not the same clear guidance when compared to the regulations for elite coaches and managers.

There is a requirement to have previously been employed as a Director of Football or manager in a top league i.e. a league within Bands 1-5, within the reference period. That reference period is two years continuous, or three out of the last five years within a well-known league. If this sounds familiar to you, that is probably because the manager criteria follows the same reference period.

But regarding qualifications or licenses, there is less clarity to obtain a work permit when compared to other staffing criteria, this is in part due to the type of job it is of course, but it seems that Southampton have fallen foul of this.

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Johannes Spors - Who is he?

Johannes Spors started his career in Germany as an analyst at Hoffenheim, before moving onto stints at RB Leipzig and Hamburg as part of their scouting and recruitment department. But his first leadership role came in April 2020 as a Sporting Director for Dutch side Vitesse Arnhem, helping the club finish 4^th in the 2020/21 Eredivisie season with notable loan signings such as Lois Openda (RB Leipzig) and Armando Broja (Chelsea) under his regime.

After taking a role as the General Manager of Genoa in 2021, he was appointed the Global Sporting Director of investment firm 777 Sporting Group in 2024. This includes overseeing operations for clubs such as Standard Liege, Red Star FC, and Genoa as part of the multi-club ownership model becoming more prevalent in football.

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Other failed appointments

The nature of football is such that it is often difficult to know what goes on behind closed doors and in the corridors of power.

However, we do know of some appointments and on-pitch signings that have fallen foul of the documentation and the FA/Home Office's approach to sticking to the written documentation.

Indeed, very recently, Bristol Rovers failed to appoint Austrian coach Michael Wimmer to be their new head coach, in the end, Inigo Calderon was appointed. Also in League One, the story of Barnsley’s failure to land Dominik Thalhammer as their head coach in April 2024 made it into the press.

Most appointments, and attempted signings, are scuppered before an official approach is made. The majority of clubs have an awareness of what the regulations are, and plan for them in the recruitment phase, but, as appears to be the case with the examples above, and Southampton’s pursuit of Spors, there are some grey areas which allow clubs to believe that they have a chance of landing their target.

For example, many managers/head coaches have been appointed in England without actually fulfilling the criteria, though none as low as League One.

The most similar situation to Johannes Spors’ situation that comes to mind is Ralf Rangnick’s appointment at Manchester United. Rangnick had been Global Sporting Director for the Red Bull group for a number of years either side of managing RB Leipzig for two spells. Indeed, Rangnick had not managed a team directly for almost two years when Manchester United managed to successfully appoint the Austrian as their caretaker manager, with the idea that Rangnick would remain as consultant after his managerial spell.

The Spors work permit failure is the first high-profile sporting director hire to have fallen through due to the GBE rules that we are aware of. At current count, nine of the Premier League sporting directors are non-domestic, and the vast majority of sporting directors, 14 of them, have been appointed post-Brexit regulations. However, almost all of them came directly from other football clubs rather than what has clearly been seen by the authorities as a third-party company.

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If not Spors, then whom?

The regulations clearly need to be followed, the result of this case tells us that. So, if the person that Southampton, or any other Premier League or EFL club, have to appoint someone who falls within the boundaries discussed above.

Which leads directly to the question, who could be good candidates for an appointment such as this?

In a way, there is something of a lack of clear evidence as to who are the leading talents in this space. Just how much credit should a sporting director take for a team’s results on the pitch? Should transfer dealings be taken into account? How about overall business records? Relationship building?

The truth is that sporting directors are the guardians of the philosophies of the club. They should have the overseeing eye over the overall performance of the organisation, which means that work should be assessed in the round. The issue with this is that evidence is fairly difficult to come by in some cases. Whilst points records, league position, trophies, financial accounts, and transfer records are largely in the public domain, everything is interlinked and, often, contextual.

Also, there are many individuals out there who may become excellent sporting directors, but aren’t currently in that position. Therefore there is a lack of objective evidence, and this is often where ‘word-of-mouth’ or reputation in the game comes into play. Indeed, personal reputation can go a long way in these circles, and often these appointments are made based upon pre-existing relationships.

However, there are some individuals that have come to the attention of The GBE Expert Hub who might be worth having a look at for these roles in the Premier League and the EFL, and comply with the FA rules.

Jordy Zuidam has been the FC Utrecht sporting director since 2017, but is still only 44. Utrecht currently sit 3rd in the Eredivisie and look set for a European place, even if a title challenge would seem unlikely. To finish in and amongst the likes of PSV, Feyenoord, Ajax, and AZ, is still a really good achievement for Utrecht. Also, under Zuidam, Utrecht have posted transfer fee profits of 64m Euro, the fifth highest revenue via transfers behind the Dutch clubs listed in the previous sentence.

Daniel Andersson has been sporting director at Malmo FF since 2022, so he fits within the time period required. In that time he has seen Malmo win back-to-back Allsvenskan titles as well as profit in just over 20m Euro in transfer fees.

Staying in Sweden, potentially one to look at for Championship clubs in the future could be Matias Svensson at Elfsborg. A very well-known figure in English football, Charlton Athletic were his most represented club as a player, he has helped to establish the small club in the top echelon of the Allsvenskan, as well as making transfer profit along the way.

For superb service and great in-depth research in this area there are some organisations that deal with appointments of sporting directors. Indeed, there is the Association of Sporting Directors out there, and MRKT Insights, with Tim Keech being a respected and key contact here, who work with the ASD on a regular basis, have a great database of backroom staff and are constantly looking at how best to improve performance in this area. Analytics FC are another potential option with respect and caché in this area.

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Are the regulations fit for the modern game?

As discussed above, Johannes Spors has had a role within football for most of his life. Working his way up through the ranks in Germany, to get to a point where he is a Global Sporting Director for multiple clubs.

The sticking point for the Home Office appears to be that his role was not directly being employed by a club within the timeframe in the documentation, or perhaps it was a lack of qualifications that was the issue. One can make their own mind up about whether being employed by a global strategic football ownership group makes you more or less qualified to take up a role as sporting director in a single club or not, but it strikes us that this is a situation that is likely to crop up more regularly in the future.

There are lots of specialists and organisations that work as third-parties, or consultants, in world football. Indeed, the majority of Premier League clubs probably work with many of them in some form or other, and the way of the modern, digital world is to structure organisations a bit differently. Do the regulations match that?

There is a lot of consistency in the wording of the sporting director GBE documents when compared to the head coach and assistant coach wording as well. The reference periods are consistent, along with a lot of the other criteria. Are the roles similar enough to allow this consistency? Should there be a specifically different set of rules for the sporting director role?

It was clearly a surprise to Southampton that this appointment would be unsuccessful. Indeed, many of my contacts in the industry are also surprised, but the regulations are as they are at the moment, and because of this, they should be upheld. The question is, should there be any adaptations made for the future?