Andoni Zubizarreta, the legendary Spanish and FC Barcelona keeper was the choice of Sandro Rosell to head Barca's sporting area. The choice looked pretty reasonable at that time and was deemed to be a sure shot winner for Rosell. Andoni was doing a good job at Athletic Bilbao and his stature as a club legend would have only made it easy to pick him. But after 3 years as Sporting Director one needs to seriously question the wisdom of him continuing in such an important position. In order to go in detail to the issue surrounding Zubi, we first have to really understand what exactly a Sporting director's job is. A "Sporting Director”, more technically phrased "Director of Football" acts as a link between the Board and the Manager. The influence exerted by a Sporting Director varies very much depending on the country. For example in England the Sporting director will be in charge of looking the add-on functionalities in the footballing arena - like setting up facilities, running the academies etc. But the manager will have a bigger say in all other activities like transfers, contracts etc. But this does not hold true in La Liga. Here the manager is expected to focus solely on on-field performances and every other activity like transfers, contracts, performance appraisals, etc. are all done by Sporting director. That was the main reason why Mourinho got Valdano fired as he wasn't getting a say in a lot of club's football related activities.
