It can be frustrating but your role as the sporting director is to protect the best interests of the football club. Sometimes that might come at your own detriment but you have to do what’s best for the organisation.”
It’s one of the most important and high-profile roles a football club can offer but perhaps also one of the least understood. Kevin Thelwell was Wolves’ sporting director for three and a half years, having previously been the club’s head of football development and recruitment.
He was effectively the chief executive of the football side of the club, overseeing transfers, contracts, scouting players and managing a large team of staff from the groundsman to the head of recruitment.
In total, he spent 11 years at Molineux before leaving for a new challenge with New York Red Bulls in February. Highly valued within the club, particularly by executive chairman Jeff Shi, who gave him a position on the board, Thelwell’s standing with the Wolves fanbase wasn’t quite as lofty, which could probably be traced back to a mediocre 2015-16 season when several new signings didn’t make an impact at Molineux, with Wolves having been put up for sale by Steve Morgan.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t aware of it (fan criticism) and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me,” Thelwell tells The Athletic’s Wolves podcast, The Molineux View.
“I was at a sporting director conference and somebody was saying, ‘I’m in the sporting director role and people don’t realise what I do. I don’t get any credit for the good things I do’.”
“There was a very experienced sporting director sat at the back of the room just giggling to himself. He said, ‘You’ve just got to get over yourself. You’re never going to get this or that — football is a very emotive sport’.
“If you’re expecting to get a pat on the back every two minutes, it’s not going to happen. As long as you can look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I did all I could to make that a success and be proud of the work I did’. That’s as much as you can take from it.
“Hopefully, in due course, people might look back at my time and say there were a few Grant Holts and few (Yannick) Sagbos (that didn’t work out) but there were also some good players as well (that did).
“In football, everyone wants somebody to blame. Unfortunately, at that time, it felt like it was going to be me but that doesn’t take away from the time I had at Wolves. I had 11 and a half brilliant years. I was very lucky to be involved in some amazing times, some amazing games and some amazing successes.
“Some of the defeats and negative situations gave me unbelievable experience that I perhaps wouldn’t have got at another football club.
“My time will always be a positive emotion both for me and my family.”
Thelwell, who spent five weeks in New Jersey getting to grips with his new role as head of sport at New York Red Bulls before returning to England to be with his family during the current pandemic, worked closely with Shi and Nuno, identifying new signings and keeping the club as harmoniously run as possible. They were perhaps, given their respective backgrounds in the game, an unlikely trio and, while there were certainly disagreements and different opinions, they made it work.
Much of Wolves’ success has come from the professional and positive atmosphere the club tries to generate via the staff and players it hires.
Thelwell explains: “People might value different things in recruitment. Some might say, ‘Let’s go for the most talented players and it’ll all sort itself out’.
“Certainly, in all the time I’ve been at Wolves — and I’m not saying this is just me, this would be Fosun, Steve Morgan, me and the recruitment team and the head coaches — we’ve always wanted people with clear values that are in line with what Wolves stand for because if you get everybody believing in the same thing and behaving the same way, then you’ve got a chance, in my opinion, to achieve anything.
“That was something we focused down on, especially when we moved from the Premier League to the Championship and then Championship to League One.
“It almost became a ‘no dickheads’ mentality. Let’s focus on getting people who are desperate to be at Wolves, who are connected to and understand the fanbase, and then have the quality to produce on the field.
“We’d been very lucky, in all the time I worked at Wolves, (that) we were able to factor that into the players we tried to sign.”
Of those players, he counts Leander Dendoncker of the current squad as the signing he’s most proud of instigating and overseeing.
“Every club needs players like him, who perform at a very high level, are very low maintenance but can play in lots of different positions,” Thelwell adds.
“He’s comfortable in the Conor Coady role, and on the right side of a (defensive) three, as the holding defensive midfielder or as the No 8 running on.
“Wolves are very lucky to have Dendoncker. He’s a very sensible young man, very professional. He didn’t get in the team straight away but he never let that take away his commitment to the cause. He was an ultimate professional — then when he got his opportunity he took it.”
Of course, no discussion about recruitment at Wolves is complete without mentioning one of the most powerful men in football: Jorge Mendes, the agent to Nuno Espirito Santo and a host of players, whom Shi has publicly stated he leans on for advice.
Thelwell is glowingly positive about the doors Mendes and Gestifute have helped open during the past four years.
“Without question, they’ve helped Wolves achieve the success they’re having today,” he says.
“In modern-day football, if you think you’re not going to work with agents — who are ultimately controlling the players — you’re probably not going to be in the job for very long.
“I’ve got a lot of time and respect for Jorge and Valdir Cardoso, who work for Gestifute. Without question, they’re one of the biggest and best agencies in the world and their network really helps the people at Wolves. It gives them access to any football club in the world.
“It gives them access to not just heads of recruitment, or chief scouts, or sporting directors, but to ownerships. That’s what I think they do better than anyone else — the ability to connect right at that top level.”
Nuno, the first client of Mendes’ career, marked three years in charge at Wolves on Sunday. It’s been an astronomical rise under the Portuguese head coach, who has gained admirers across Europe.
Thelwell says it’s only natural that Wolves supporters may fear Nuno’s departure given the success he’s had but that as long as Wolves’ ambitions remain as high as they are, Nuno and his star players will be less inclined to look elsewhere.
“The best thing I can say about Nuno is, from a coaching perspective, coaches, managers, etc, they tend to say, ‘I need more time to build a philosophy. I need more time to build my team and the way it looks’,” Thelwell adds.
“Sometimes, that can be nine or 12 months. Nuno was able to build that in five weeks in pre-season. It was incredible.
“We were very lucky. We had a group of players who bought into the new philosophy but in five weeks of him being at the club, it looked like we’d been playing 3-4-3 for about 10 years.
“From a recruitment perspective, that makes things much simpler when you’ve got a head coach who’s very clear about the profiles and the attributes for each position/space. You’re able to direct the data and recruitment search in very specific areas. We’d be offered players and we were able to go, ‘Yeah, he’s a good player but he’s not a good player for us’. We were being very specific about the types of players and profiles we were looking for.
“We’d present one or two profiles for Nuno and he’d make a choice. I can’t think of a time when we signed a player any head coach wouldn’t have wanted. In my opinion, the minute you start doing those things, you’re heading into difficult waters.
“He’s a top coach and is going to work at the highest level, in my opinion. Should Wolves fans be nervous about losing Nuno? Yeah, of course they should. He’s a top head coach. Why wouldn’t you be nervous about losing him?
“On the flip side, the really positive thing to think about is the only way you keep players and the head coach happy is if you can match their ambition. I would say, for the time Nuno’s been at Wolves — and we recruited some brilliant players — we’d been able to keep them satisfied because we’re matching their ambition.
“From that perspective, the story will continue if Wolves can continue to match that ambition, in my opinion. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of that slowing down from a Fosun perspective, which can only point to good times if that continues to happen. And let’s hope it does.”
For the full interview with Kevin Thelwell listen to The Molineux View podcast, which is out now. Thelwell tells Jacqui Oatley and Tim Spiers…
