Few people understand football managers and directors quite like David Igono. His encyclopedic knowledge is the result of thousands of hours spent analyzing matches, press conferences, and interviews.
People like David are the face of a new football media. His insights into football coaches, directors, and players have earned him a dedicated following. Fans turn to his Twitter account @undervalu, his site DirectorOfFootball.com, and his weekly newsletter, The Saturday Sporting Director, for his thoughts.
A former professional American football player, David brings a unique perspective to the game. In this interview, he shares how he ‘found’ football, what motivates his work, how he goes about his research and what good leadership looks like across the game.
The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for grammar and clarity.
[ How did you get into football? ]
I've always been wired for sports. I've said previously I'm ‘wired for violence’ - I’m joking but I like competition. I think sometimes I don’t come off as being super competitive but when I focus on what I’m passionate about, I have a singular focus.
I grew up playing American football because honestly, growing up as a kid in the ‘90s. Unless you were Latino or lived in a place with a large immigrant population, you weren’t playing soccer, that’s just the truth.
The genesis of my soccer story was during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I was watching Italy and Slovakia and Fabio Quagliarella hit this incredible shot, the goalkeeper was fully extended and still missed it by maybe 10cm. I was blown away that somebody could place a shot like that in a real, live, highly competitive international game. And I was like, wait a minute, who the heck is Fabio Quagliarella? I’m generally pretty aware, high level the stars of all sports but I’d never heard of this guy.
Some Googling later, I see he’s at Napoli at the time - not even the top club in his country - but he just scored this incredible goal. This forced me down a rabbit hole and one of my triggers, intellectually, is, ‘why?’ Not ‘why’ for the sake of knowledge but ‘why’ for the sake of repetition. How do I find a player like that before everybody else? Why is that player, who’s capable of such an amazing moment, stuck at a mid-table club?
I started to find more and more examples like this and started to identify and recognize patterns.
[ What inspired or motivated you to start sharing the things you were discovering on social media? ]
Honestly, nobody else was doing it! At least in football they weren’t. There were posts - and I say this with no shade towards anybody else - like ‘up and coming players in Belgium’ or an Alex Ferguson quote. Which, if you want engagement, that’s the way to go. But I realized that’s where it stopped. Nobody was talking about recruitment in terms of the leadership of an entire club.
Going back 5+ years, Monchi was still at Sevilla and at the height of his ‘sharing power’ - now he doesn’t share squat, which is smart on his end. I started to see patterns in his work. He found things that worked and kept on repeating them. Just making this up but if you’re consistently getting good central midfielders from Uruguay, go back to Uruguay! Are they at Defensor or Peñarol or another club? Repeat what works. At the same time, you can’t close your vision to other clubs or markets - but you should look for similar situations in different contexts.
Circling back, so nobody was sharing wisdom in leadership and recruitment. Anyway, I started posting and I still remember, clear as day, one of my first posts was about Ross Wilson at Rangers. And, sidebar, if you want engagement, if you want to rattle a hornet’s nest, just pick Rangers or Celtic and say anything. They’ll come for you for weeks because they cannot let it go!
So I remember it was a Sunday night - pre-COVID, so it was a little bit of a different world - and I said, you know, if I’m going to post online, especially on Twitter, I’m not going to try to be like everybody else. I’m going to be me. So, I posted and sort of forgot about it. In the morning, I woke up and saw a few notifications but didn’t think anything of it. By the time I got to work, my phone wouldn’t stop pinging! Every few hours I was getting, I don’t know, 10 or 20 more comments or likes, it just started feeding itself.
That’s how I started. If you look at how I post now, it’s a lot different but I still only ever post what I care about.
"Nobody was talking about recruitment in terms of the leadership of an entire club"
[ You’ve mentioned looking for patterns and repeating what works - is this in conflict with ‘innovation’ and trying something new? ]
Great question. If you’re observant, it's a question of degree. There’s nothing new whatsoever. What’s new is how things are applied - tried and true principles in new contexts. So it’s all about understanding the principles and applying them in your environment.
For example, for me, one of the best sporting directors is Pantaleo Corvino at Lecce. If you look at what they’ve done in the league, you’d say they’re not good at all! And sure, if you scoreboard watch or watch the table, they aren’t champions, nor do they get to Europe. But if you zoom in and understand the principles - what is leadership? How do you recruit? How do you not get relegated or be a yo-yo club?
I won’t get into the details now of how they do it but Corvino is ideal. He did it at Fiorentina and he’s done it at Lecce twice. When you look at their infrastructure, their setup, who else is doing that? Who else is in the same, I call it ‘tax bracket’ as them? What I keep finding is that in every country, maybe not necessarily in every tier, but in every country, there’s a club doing something innovative that is based on fundamentals and they’re winning. A lot of clubs fly under the radar because they’re not Liverpool, not Madrid but there’s always a club doing something unique - but it’s not ‘new’.
[ I know you don’t want to use the word ‘best’ but do you think it’s possible, or likely even, that the ‘best’ sporting director could be in a smaller (or lower) league? Or does the ‘cream always rise to the top’? ]
Yeah, I wish directors were more like players in that way. I’ve said this before but probably not for a while, the best directors have the best owners. It’s never about the director - never. As good as Monchi is, or as good as Ian Graham and Michael Edwards are, or when Edu was at Arsenal - they benefit from a good set up. It’s about ownership because what Owner A allows you to do in their set up could be vastly different, even though you're just as talented in Club B with Owner B.
At the end of the day, the sporting director’s or the technical director’s first port of call is to realize or operationalize the owner’s wishes. Period. Everything else after that is window dressing to a degree.
If you don’t have a strong owner, even though you might have a great recruitment eye and you might be a great leader, there’s going to be friction. The best example I can use to that end is Paolo Maldini at AC Milan. A club legend - and one of the most elegant players I’ve ever watched - hired by the ownership group, they won the Scudetto for the first time in years and then it kind of hit the fan.
Why was there friction? You can point fingers at whatever side you want, but ultimately the one who pays for everything is the one accountable. So it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is - Maldini was out.
There are managers and directors in Germany in the 3rd and 4th tier, who are just absolutely awesome. I don’t know if they could do it in the Bundesliga, not because it's harder, but I don't know if they'll have the same conditions for success.
"the technical director’s first port of call is to realize or operationalize the owner’s wishes. Period."
[ Leadership seems like a more abstract metric than some player stats for example, how do you make these judgements/analysis? ]
You want the secret sauce is what you're saying?
Honestly, I can tell you how and what I do and it wouldn’t matter because most people aren’t going to do it. I’ve been saying it for 3 or 4 years!
I'll split my answer into two parts because there’s manager leadership and director leadership and they’re slightly different as far as the urgency of what you measure.
For me, big picture, once a manager or director has been in the chair for more than, I don’t know, maybe 9 or 10 months, you’re ready (to make a judgement). Now if they’ve been at a club for 3+ seasons, now you’re doing pattern recognition - what is allowing them to be a good manager or director?
Zooming into managers, I start looking at them early. When I say early, I mean maybe 20 matches into their first team manager career - or spell at that specific club - and I'm watching. I'm not watching for them to be in the European places or if they get promoted, I'm watching specific metrics that I track to see if they stay the same. The metrics are nothing special, I wouldn't call it algorithm or whatever, but I'm looking for offensive and defensive competence. Depending on the club or the level of the league - is that team gonna get promoted? Are they going to beat other teams that are similarly skilled? Or probably more importantly do they score goals? - not xG or any of these extracurricular Statsbomb stuff. I’m not saying those are bad and they can be great indicators or predictors but, if the ball doesn’t go in the net in the 3rd tier in Norway, you don't get promoted. Hate it or love it, that’s the truth.
So how is that manager communicating to get results? That is, dare I say, the scientific part. When I’m doing this 20 matches in, you have to appreciate this might take years. For each league I’m monitoring managers, I’m reading newspapers, commentary, social media and press conferences - if it’s been said by the manager, I’m reading it.
I’m trying to assess, is that coach a great communicator? I would also argue that a great coach is a legendary communicator. I normally use Carlo Ancelotti in these examples - how do you get Vinicius, Jude Bellingham, Rodrygo, all these - and I say this lovingly - 23 year old clowns to do what you want? And the club is paying billions of Euros to keep them at the club as long as possible. You have to get on their level communication wise! This is something everybody wants to gloss over in sport because they think if they know tactics or how to pick the players, they can be a manager or a director.
I remember at Inter, after Claudio Ranieri, they hired a coach from their youth setup Andrea Stramaccioni - I don’t think he’s managed a first team in a while. I’m not judging or saying he sucked and no shade thrown at him, what I'm saying is that if you can't communicate at the highest echelons of a sport, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how good you are tactically, because what worked with the under 17’s, the first team players don’t care!
"if you can't communicate at the highest echelons of a sport, it doesn't matter how good you are tactically"
[ How do you track a coach’s communication? What does this look like? ]
If you have access to press conferences, for example, you can understand some things. You can see that this dude is an iron fist, he does not deviate from the mission and you can see that week on week on week.
There are going to be outliers because again, going back to pattern recognition when you know what good looks like, you know what good looks like. I'm not trying to be corny, but Martí Cifuentes, who's at QPR right now, he was the same charismatic, energetic and just empathetic leader when he was with Sandefjord in Norway and when he was with Aalborg in Denmark, he was the same way. If they’re successful, it’s hard for them to change because it works and they get rewarded with better jobs, and their players love them.
Transitioning to directors, can a director be really, really good and go to another club and have the same success? It’s really club by club. There are good directors in say, Scandinavia or Germany who can basically bounce around. I think of Thomas Berntsen, he's at AIK in Sweden right now, but he was at Sarpsborg in Norway before and did a bang up job there getting talent for basically nothing and selling it at a premium. That's why he's at AIK, and he's kind of doing the same thing there.
Again though, let me be clear, in world football, as a director it’s about having a good owner. Then you have a fighting chance, if they let you make the decisions, then you have to get results. So with directors, it’s more of a black box, I hate to say it that way, but it's harder to tell - unless there’s a crash.
[ How much football do you watch? ]
I'm a binge watcher! Probably Monday through Friday, I’ll watch 2-3 matches a day. Now and then I’ll switch it up and watch other sports - I like hockey as a change up because I think the small sided play sharpens my football eye.
There are stretches, especially on the weekends where I’ll watch like 5 games - I want proof and I don’t stop until I see it!
In terms of clips and things like that, there’s no point even saying, it’s so much.
[ How do you keep track of all your notes and insights? ]
Finding the best way to do this has become one of my core subjects! That’s one of the reasons for DirectorOfFootball.com. If you saw my notes app, I probably have at least 500 notes with articles, insights, quotes and interviews that I haven’t posted yet.
The best way of saying it is, there are a lot of managers and directors that I’m still gathering evidence on before I’m ready to stand behind them. Right now, you should see how much I post about Miron Muslić - I first saw him 2 years ago. Same thing with Martí Cifuentes. I have lists and lists of people I’m tracking.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before too. Jesper Fredberg was a director doing really well at Viborg - then he went to Anderlecht and it didn’t work out like it did in Denmark.
So, I try to only post about specific people when I’m confident.
[ What kind of opportunities has your presence on social media unlocked or created for you? ]
There’s always a new wave or trend that, if I’m being honest, will bear fruit for you but you might not like yourself anymore, and you’ll stop. Relatively speaking, there are a lot of people that follow me but my advice is just to add value. If you add value, they will find you.
I’ve had managers that I’ve talked about reach out. Sometimes, I get weird random message requests on Twitter. I've also learned that a big coach like Jürgen Klopp is never going to message me from his account and be like, ‘Hey David, this is Jürgen, really appreciate what you wrote about me back in 2018’ - he's never going to do it. But they all have burner accounts, as they should in my opinion.
Then there’s the player side too. I’ve talked about Akor Adams for two and a half years since he was at Lillestrøm, I’ve been talking about him like nobody else! I remember a guy from one of FC Copenhagen’s supporter groups messaged me and asked if I thought he was good enough for FC Copenhagen.
Well, I can come off snarky, so I just said, he’s good enough for any team in Europe. Less than 18 months later, he went to Montpellier - Ligue 1. Then he goes to Sevilla in January. So, he’s way better than FC Copenhagen’s level!
In the past - and I’m not exactly proud of it - I’ve commented on Fabrizio Romano’s posts like ‘I told you guys this in 2021!’ That won't necessarily make you popular. But if you add value and are patient, doors will start to open for you.
[ Was there something in your approach that was ‘wrong’ or that you’ve changed and think differently about now? ]
I think the hardest part about my ‘journey’ is the wait to have the success validated. I could rattle off 10 managers that I’ve shared 2+ years ago that are killing it on the European stage right now but you have to wait a long time sometimes and that can be painful.
I've had to give myself more time to evaluate. There’s no ‘news cycle’, that’s not how it works in football. I have specific benchmark times in the calendar to look at managers because if I look at a manager on the 10th match day and find something, that might all be a wash by the time the winter break comes around!
I’ve been wrong about the metrics that I look at - especially the defensive metrics. I'm not heavily a data guy, I would never say that. And really, in team sports with a ball, the managers that have a chance to be really, really good are the ones whose teams can score points and limit how much the other team scores. It's elementary. It's so basic that we forget it, but that’s the end game - if you’re shipping 3 goals a game in the 3rd tier, it's not going to get better.
The second thing is related to communication. I’ve read and seen so many interviews and I’ll only ever post direct quotes from someone. Now, I always make sure to get as many different views on a person as possible.
I’ll give you an example in Germany, Ole Werner at Werder Bremen. I've mentioned him a handful of times over the past 3 or 4 years. I’m reading Kicker and Facebook posts and press conferences to see what he says and how he says it. But the hardest part is what the players say about him.
Players are smart, they know they have to be protected, they’re never going to say anything negative about Werner - because they can’t! But look at Marvin Ducksch, he didn’t resign his contract, anything he says about Werner now is gold, he’s not tied to anything and can say whatever he wants. Still, he probably won’t for another 6 months at the earliest.
It’s like Max Kruse actually, he was asked on a podcast what he thinks about Dortmund hiring Niko Kovac. And he said, ‘Oh, they’ll know what a crisis is now!’ Boom! This is priceless because Kruse can’t be hurt by telling the truth.
[ What do your future goals look like? Do you want to be a sporting director? ]
The further along I get, I honestly can’t see myself ever being a sporting director or director of football. Frankly, I’m too smart to do that to myself! I’m also not young enough really - by that I mean, I have a wife and 3 kids - so I’m good. I’m more intrigued by the consultant side, helping clubs find a manager for example.
I know I can help clubs with this because I’ve been following all these managers for 3, 4 years and I know that clubs aren’t doing that. Football is such a fast paced and performance specific industry that most clubs or people, or even consultants, aren't gonna do it right. When I say, ‘do it right’ I just mean due diligence, that's all.
So for me, that's more intriguing because I know it's a need. If you’re a club, you want to pray to God you’ve done your homework before you need to hire a manager. You definitely don't want to have to wake up one day, fire your first team manager at 11 o'clock, and then have to put in your interim for the next match day and not have 5 candidates you’re going to talk to in the next few days. And I know that’s not done, even in the top leagues. So, how can I build a bulletproof way of finding the next manager?