Bundesliga
What is a sporting director?
They are often former players putting their inside knowledge of the game to good use, renowned wheeler-dealers whose silver tongues secure the right players for their club, arch-strategists in whom the hopes of the Bundesliga's finest lie: they are the sporting directors.
Men such as Christoph Freund at Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund's Sebastian Kehl and Simon Rolfes at Bayer Leverkusen have combined contacts forged during their careers on and off the pitch with finely tuned business acumen and Meisterschale-level negotiating skills to shape the destiny of their respective clubs.
bundesliga.com lifts the veil on the sporting directors masterminding the future of Germany's top-flight clubs.
A sporting what?
Clubs in continental Europe tend to differ from those in England in terms of their structure. German clubs almost exclusively employ a sporting director and a head coach. English teams, on the other hand, usually (or at least traditionally) have a manager that encompasses both roles. The German Manager is not the same, but more akin to a club's general manager.
In Germany, it means duties are split: the coach is responsible for leading, training and picking the team, while the sporting director oversees the entire footballing side, identifying transfer targets, hiring and firing, and future squad planning.
There have been occasions of one person taking on a classic British managerial role, though, like Armin Veh and Felix Magath at Wolfsburg, who were both coach and sporting director in one.
In terms of hierarchy within a club, though, the sporting director sits between the head coach and the board/chairman/president.
Take Dortmund, for example: first-team coach Niko Kovač reports to sporting director Kehl, who in turn is overseen by the board of the football company Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA. That is currently headed by CEO Jans-Joachim Watzke, with Lars Ricken overseeing the sporting aspect.
Going further up the chain, there is club (Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e. V. Dortmund) president Reinhold Lunow, who will step down from his role in November.
Ultimately, though, it's Kehl who is responsible for the sporting (i.e. on-field) aspects within the team. He and other sporting directors will often be seen on the touchline and in the dugout alongside the coach and the squad. Ricken above him is no less responsible, but is less involved in the day-to-day running of the team itself.
Who are they?
All have a background in football, but the routes they took to reach their current positions are many and varied.
Some are familiar faces; ex-players putting their contacts accumulated through years in the game to good use, working alongside men with whom they shared dressing rooms or lined up against as opponents. Rolfes spent a decade as a player at Leverkusen before returning to the club in 2018 in a role overseeing the academy.
By the end of the year, he'd been promoted to sporting director in a position alongside another legend of the game, Rudi Völler. He later succeeded Völler in the role of managing director for sport - a position at board level. He works together with CEO Fernando Carro.
Bayern's Freund played professionally in his native Austria before working his way up at Red Bull Salzburg. Kehl captained Dortmund to back-to-back Bundesliga crowns in 2011 and 2012.
Mainz's Niko Bungert made 166 Bundesliga appearances during an 11-year spell at the club before succeeding Martin Schmidt in July 2024. At Freiburg, Klemens Hartenbach used to play for the club and spent a decade as head scout before becoming sporting director in 2013.
Ralf Rangnick was the long-time sporting architect at RB Leipzig, also stepping in as coach when needed. The former Stuttgart, Hannover, Schalke and Hoffenheim boss oversaw the club's rise through the divisions over seven years, before he handed over the reins of sporting director to Markus Krösche, who left the club in 2021 to join Eintracht Frankfurt.
At Cologne, Thomas Kessler came through the club’s youth system before featuring a handful of times during his 20-year career at the club. Upon retiring from professional football, he worked for the club’s backroom staff and head of football before taking charge from Christian Keller following his departure in May 2025.
Most sporting directors have had a playing career of some sort, but there are exceptions. Jochen Schneider had a background in banking and business when he began working as assistant to Stuttgart's sporting director Rolf Rüssmann in 1999, before taking over the role himself in 2004.
He was with the club as they won the Bundesliga in 2007, working alongside previous Cologne sporting director Horst Heldt and Fredi Bobic, and later worked at Leipzig and Schalke before joining New York Red Bulls.
One of Schneider's successors at Stuttgart, Sven Mislintat, had a brief career in amateur football but made his name as a scout at Dortmund, forging a reputation as one of football's most talented talent-spotters when building Jürgen Klopp's double-winning team between 2010 and 2012. Stuttgart are now headed by former player Christian Gentner, who reports to Fabian Wohlgemuth (board member for sport).
What do they do?
Who better to describe the role than Michael Zorc? A Dortmund legend as a player, having won the Champions League in 1997 and still being BVB's record appearance holder, he was arguably even more influential for the club off the pitch, working for over two decades alongside scouts such as Mislintat to orchestrate the arrival of the likes of Robert Lewandowski, Ousmane Dembélé and Jadon Sancho at Signal Iduna Park.
But as he explained, the sporting director's responsibility runs far deeper than simply convincing players to sign on the dotted line – he must also play strategist, sounding board, and even lunch date to Dortmund's local heroes.
"I'm responsible for the philosophy at the club, from the youth to the first team," outlined the man who brought Klopp to BVB, for what many consider the most successful chapter in Dortmund's history (2008-2015). "I discuss the style of play with the coach, and the youth teams will follow that. But for our fans it has to be daring and attacking."
"The CEO handles the budget you have, but as well as buying, selling and extending players' contracts, I'm also someone they can talk to besides the coach," he added. "I'm always with the team during matches. I attend all training sessions and will often even eat with the players, so they know someone from the club is looking out for them."
Are all Bundesliga clubs the same?
Clubs may give different names to the position, for example Sportdirektor, Direktion Sport, Sportlicher Leiter, Sportvorstand or Director Profifußball, but they generally translate into the role of 'sporting director'. Some hold positions on the club board, some report directly to a board member in charge of sport.
Some confusion can arise when a club uses both a Sportdirektor and a Sportvorstand. One notable example there now is Bayern. They appointed Freund as sporting director in September 2023, before making Max Eberl - the long-time sporting director at Borussia Mönchengladbach and architect of one of their best eras since the 1970s - the new Sportvorstand from March 2024.
In Munich they refer to Eberl's position as 'board member for sport', or managing director for sport or sporting CEO. He is the member of the three-man executive board that oversees the sporting aspects of the club, as opposed to finances or other matters.
Eberl's role involves working alongside sporting director Freund in planning the squad, making transfers, contract extensions or appointing the coach. It's a change from the previous setup involving Hasan Salihamidžić, who was at first sporting director and then promoted to board member for sport, without someone then filling the vacated sporting director role.
The dual format of having a sporting director and board member for sport has become much more common in German football.
The Bundesliga's sporting directors
Augsburg: Benni Weber (sporting director)
Bayer Leverkusen: Kim Falkenberg (director of football)/ Simon Rolfes (managing director)
Bayern Munich: Christoph Freund (sporting director)/ Max Eberl (board member)
Borussia Dortmund: Sebastian Kehl (sporting director)/ Lars Ricken (board member)
Borussia Mönchengladbach: Rouven Schröder (sporting director)
Cologne: Thomas Kessler (sporting director)
Eintracht Frankfurt: Timmo Hardung (sporting director)/ Markus Krösche (board member)
Freiburg: Klemens Hartenbach (sporting director)/ Jochen Saier (board member)
Hamburg: Claus Costa (sporting director)/ Stefan Kuntz (board member)
Heidenheim: Not used
Hoffenheim: Andreas Schicker (managing director)
Mainz: Niko Bungert (sporting director)/ Christian Heidel (board member)
RB Leipzig: Sebastian Schuppan (sporting director)/ Marcel Schäfer (board member)
St. Pauli: Andreas Bornemann (managing director)
Union Berlin: Horst Heldt (managing director)
VfB Stuttgart: Christian Gentner (sporting director)/ Fabian Wohlgemuth (board member)
Werder Bremen: Clemens Fritz (managing director)
Wolfsburg: Sebastian Schindzielorz (sporting director