Research-Led Sporting Director Search Helps Sunderland AFC Build Foundations for Premier League Return

Overview

When the search began, Sunderland were competing in League One, a club with an established academy, a huge supporter base and clear ambitions for sustainable progress, looking to build a more integrated, long-term football structure.

At the centre of that plan was a Sporting Director whose responsibility would stretch far beyond player recruitment. The successful candidate would oversee the club’s football programme from academy to first team and help create the structures needed for sustainable progress.

Challenge

Sunderland needed a senior football leader who could bring long-term clarity and alignment across an operation with many interconnected parts, shaping the club’s football philosophy, strengthening player identification and development, creating clearer pathways from the academy into the first team, and reviewing the infrastructure behind recruitment, performance, data and innovation.

This wasn’t a search for a recruitment specialist. Sunderland needed someone who could oversee the complete football programme, influence across departments, and combine football judgement with modern, data-informed decision-making, while building structures for both immediate progress and longer-term ambitions.

Solution

Executives in Sport Group delivered a structured, research-led Sporting Director search across the UK and European football markets. The search focused on leaders whose experience spanned player development, academy structures, recruitment and wider football operations, people who create alignment between departments, rather than working within a single specialist function.

But one name was already on our radar. More than a year before Sunderland’s search began, The FA had flagged Kristjaan Speakman to us as one of the highest-potential future technical leaders in the game, identified through its talent identification and technical director development pathway. At almost the same time, the Chief Executive of another club called us after completing a loan deal with Birmingham City. The person he’d dealt with was the academy manager, but was clearly far more than an academy manager, and one of the most professional operators he’d ever worked with. His advice: get him on your radar.

So we did. We reached out to Kristjaan and spent the following eighteen months building a relationship. While he sat under the wider market’s radar, few appreciated the breadth and quality of the work he was doing at Birmingham, our network and years in the market meant we already did.

Every candidate, Kristjaan included, was assessed against the requirements of Sunderland’s developing football model: leadership philosophy, player-development experience, cultural fit, data-informed decision-making and the ability to establish a clear pathway from youth football into the first team. Structured assessment and benchmarking allowed Sunderland to compare leadership capability alongside technical experience, and to determine who was best equipped to shape the football operation over the long term.

Measured against that framework, and against the best of the UK and European market, Kristjaan stood out, academy leadership, player development and experience across wider football operations.

Result

Kristjaan was appointed Sporting Director in December 2020.

His remit covered Sunderland’s overall football programme: player identification, development and acquisitions across the academy and first team, developing the club’s football infrastructure, increasing the use of data and innovation, and strengthening the pathway between youth and senior football.

The appointment gave Sunderland a central football leadership position around which the wider structure could develop. Further investment followed across recruitment, performance, data, academy and football administration, creating greater alignment across the football operation and a more integrated approach from academy to first team.

Impact

The long-term impact is the best measure of the appointment.

Kristjaan joined with Sunderland in League One. The club won promotion to the Championship in 2022, then returned to the Premier League through the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley in 2025.

Across that period, Sunderland built a model centred on young talent, player development and stronger integration between recruitment, data, performance and the academy. The promotion-winning Championship squad told that story, emerging talent recruited from elsewhere alongside players developed through the Academy of Light.

When his five-year tenure concluded in February 2026, Sunderland reflected on a period in which the club had rebuilt its football operation, strengthened its underlying infrastructure and returned to the Premier League.

Kristjaan has made an important contribution to Sunderland AFC during a period of significant transition and growth, helping to rebuild the Club and restore its place in the Premier League. Strong foundations have been established throughout our football operations over the past five years.

Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Chairman, Sunderland AFC

From League One to the Premier League, the progression shows how a senior sporting leadership appointment can influence far more than a single function. The Sporting Director search helped establish the leadership and football infrastructure from which Sunderland’s wider transformation grew.