Can anyone explain the different roles / responsibilities for Berrada, Wilcox, Ashworth and Vivell?
Losing track a bit here.
Berrada - CEO. Makes the major decisions, supervises all the other executives, drives the overall direction and strategic vision of the club. And a million other things. The CEO has to knit together the two halves of the organisation, the Sporting and the Commercial. They are responsible for shaping the long term growth and sustainability of the organisation, and have to shape the football operations to not only operate efficiently inside the commercial constraints, realities and necessities of the club, but to also drive the economic growth of the organisation as a whole. They are a key piece, or the key piece, in defining the culture within the club, its core mission statement, and corporate values. They are to a large extent responsible for the major decisions in how the club interacts with external stakeholders.
Ashworth - Director of Football. Ostensibly runs the football operations of the club from a sporting perspective (not commercial). Differs from club to club but best defined as being the spearhead of shaping the short, medium, and long term strategic intent of the football team, including playing style. Will oversee how recruitment, infrastructure, hiring, medical, sports science, data, and youth development all feed into the goals and objectives of the club on both a short and long term basis, and how all those facets align with the strategic vision and interact with one another. Is responsible for providing a stable and evolving structure that exists independent of the incumbent head coach. Plays a significant role in determining the roles performed by each of the key football executives, as well as being responsible for analysing the performance of the head coach. A DoF has to think both exploitatively - how to extract the best performance from the coaching and playing staff immediately - and exploratively - how to improve football performance through evolution and change initiatives. The DoF is responsible for thinking about where the club will be in 3, 5, and 10 years time and having that vision run through every facet of the football side of the club in a coordinated, harmonious and complimentary way. A key edict of the modern DoF is to indentify and define a football DNA for the organisation so that recruitment, player, executive and coach development can all move along the same tracks, towards the same goals.
Wilcox - Technical Director. The technical director role has a lot of overlap with the Director of Football, and at some clubs is almost interchangeable. That said, there are plenty of general areas where the two can be clearly differentiated. The technical director’s role will be more focused on the operational side of the football club, and at a less strategic level than the DoF, although still contain much collaboration and vision at a strategic and holistic level. This means a lot of work done in the areas of recruitment, performance and data analysis, performance development of players and coaches (including training, licensing and accreditations), sport science, youth development, and all the linkages between them all.
Vivell - Recruitment Director. Exactly what it says on the tin. Primarily focused on talent identification, competency gap identification, squad planning, recruitment pathways for the various channels (youth, reserve, potential, first team, etc). A lot of data analysis to identify areas where we have competency deficiencies and then to identify the right targets to fills those gaps. Will involve building up a portfolio of players for each role that can be analysed over a sustained period of time. May also involve helping to create the methodologies behind talent identification and key performance indicators. Both of which have to be aligned to the strategic visions laid out by the Football and technical directors.
All the jobs come with a mix of short term, immediate, operational demands, but also incorporate defining the long term strategic visions, plans, goals, objectives and methodologies of the club.
Please bear in mind that this is a very simplistic overview.