Sunderland FC

About

Utilising our ‘scale up’ service we delivered a number of key performance and corporate appointments, in a short space of time.

Challenge

Following the club’s acquisition, in 2021, by Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, it was clear that Sunderland had a number of gaps within their leadership team, particularly on the high-performance side. Crucial to future success would be securing a high calibre Sporting Director, who could set the overall football strategy, but also deliver tactically on a day-to-day basis in the short to medium term whilst further hires were made.

Solution

As the club entered a new era, with a firm emphasis on data, innovation, and a genuine pathway from academy to first team, Executives In Sport Group were retained on the club’s behalf to firstly identify a high calibre Sporting Director. Through a detailed mapping and outreach process, we identified a number of high potential, data savvy, individuals who could evidence development of emerging talent from academy to first team, and in the case of the appointed individual, international honours.

Once the new Sporting Director was in place, Sunderland then went into a period of rapid growth and retained our services to appoint a number of additional roles, including Head of Recruitment, Head of Data & Insights, Lead Data Scientist, Head of Performance and Medicine, Academy Manager and Head of Football Administration.

In addition to creating the competency matrix / assessment frameworks for each role, we sat in on interviews with Sunderland’s Chief Executive and Sporting Director, and made sure we carried out in depth cultural / behavioural assessments of candidates. This was really important given a number of senior individuals would all be arriving at once and a brand new team built.

Result

The club built a new high-performance department in a relatively short space of time, helping accelerate performance on and off the pitch. Sunderland achieved promotion from League One to the EFL Championship in 2022 and now challenge for promotion to the Premier League in the 22/23 season.