FM21: What Makes a Good Technical Director?

A new role was introduced on Football Manager 2020, the Technical Director. Now when a staff member has within their job title the word 'Director' then the job role sounds important, right? My simple advice regarding the role of a Technical Director is if you want to run a fully functioning club where advice is given by staff you can trust, you'll need to recruit a good and reliable Technical Director.

What does a Technical Director do?

The Technical Director will be the person (should you give them the responsibilities) that will be in charge of the various departments (coaching, scouting and medical) at your club. In basic terms, your Technical Director tells you how well the staff at your club are doing.

In the real world, the Technical Director role is designed to facilitate long-term strategy and continuity independent of a manager’s remit with the team. It is the person in control of a club's infrastructure.

In the lower leagues, it is unlikely that you'll be able to recruit a Technical Director. When managing a big club, things can get busy for yourself as a manager meaning you may not have the time to pay attention to staffing at the club. When this is the case, it is a good idea to recruit a Technical Director and delegate the management of club staff to the person recruited.

What are the key attributes of a Technical Director?

As mentioned above the Technical Director can, if given the responsibility be managing the critical area of your club - managing staff. The main attributes to look for are Judging Staff Ability and Negotiating the definitions from Football Manager can be seen below.

These two attributes work as a partnership for a Technical Director. It is all well and good being able to judge a good staff member, if the Technical Director is not very good at negotiating then the role would be redundant. If given the responsibilities of arranging staff recruitment and staff contract then the skill of negotiating come into play.

It should be noted that the Technical Director's role is very similar to that of a Director of Football. The different between the two, which I hope had been made clear in this article is that the Technical Director is responsible for staff and the Director of Football is responsible for players. It has also been mentioned that recruiting a Technical Director may not be possible in the lower leagues. Recruiting a Technical Director is not essential, but when recruited can be a vital part of a big club that are challenging for success. If you decide to recruit a Technical Director without understanding the role then the Technical Director come just a commodity. The role should only be recruited if it is the club has the finances and the role is used in the way that it is supposed to be used.

Below is a table of recommended staff that could be recruited as a Technical Director. Staff members in the table are at least rated 15 in both Judging Staff Ability and Negotiating.

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