Paul Fernie: English Sporting Director making a mark in Germany

Englishman Paul Fernie is the Sporting Director of SV Darmstadt and is developing a stellar reputation in German football.

Fernie grew up in Hull and worked in analysis roles in England before the opportunity came to join Wiesbaden, thanks to a recommendation from Blackburn Rovers manager Paul Lambert. Soon he progressed from Head of Recruitment to Sporting Director and led the club from promotion to Bundesliga 2.

In Episode #66 of the TGG Podcast, Fernie told us how the Sporting Director role works in Germany, what it was like to work under Graham Potter and Paul Mitchell earlier on in his career, and why more English staff should give it a go abroad.

To listen to the full podcast, click the Player below, and to read an edited transcript, scroll down the page.

(Fernie studied sport science at Hull University. He played as a full-back for the University football team, where his coach was a young Englishman studying social science called Graham Potter).

Paul Fernie: Graham Potter was the Head Coach and, at the time, you don't realise who you're exposed to. He was just a different type of coach to what I'd been exposed to in the past.

I guess the major reference point is how he is as a person and I think that shines through, not only in his teams and how they play, but also in how he conducts himself. I learned a lot from him without actually knowing it at the time.

That's elite sport in general - you never quite know where it's going to take you. Graham has paved the way for people like myself to go into international waters and try and be a success. Graham is one of the people who has gone abroad, sustained a new culture and developed himself.

He jumped into something new, head first, and where he is now is testament to everything he is as a person and the skillset he has.

I started my coaching badges and was lucky enough to get a job at Leeds United, at one of their satellite centres, as well as working for the local FA as a skills coach going into schools.

And then another one of those sliding door moments - I met Sean O'Driscoll at 20 and he was good enough to give me my chance to become a Performance Analyst at Doncaster Rovers in League One. I was studying at the time, so I did one year as a volunteer and that propelled me into the football life.

I didn't quite know what a Performance Analyst was. It was pretty new then, we're talking 17 years ago. Coaches had done the analysis for years, with DVDs and videotapes, and actually employing a specific person to do this was in its infancy.

Sean had the foresight to see that as a value-added for the club and I had to learn to use a computer and cut video and try and adjust socially to a professional environment. I had a great support network around me at that time, with Sean as a Head Coach, Richard O’Kelly as his number two and Lee Butler as Goalkeeper Coach. They had been around the block and taught me the street-wise side to football.

At 20-years-old, that opportunity shaped and formed me for everything I am today. That relationship with Sean was quite unique for me and and he was somebody who gave responsibility, let people make decisions, gave people a voice and let the experts take responsibility for their daily workings.

We got promoted in my first year to the Championship and sustained our status for three years in a league which was full of heavy hitters. We had no right to be in that league really and testament to Sean and the work and the structure he built over years.

I was really lucky to be a part of that. It’s not a glamorous club, but it was quite forward-thinking at that time. Sean, I can't wax lyrical enough about him as a coach and as a person. He understands himself 100% and builds people around him to compliment what he can and can't do.

That was the first time I really saw, ‘Okay, maybe having a weakness is not a big failure or a big problem.' Everybody's got things they can and can't do and it's about building that jigsaw puzzle and having people around who can add value, but also finding people who take responsibility. It's ruthless, it’s sink or swim.

It’s such an emotionally-driven environment, but Sean always tried to give onus and responsibility to players and staff and that probably formed - again unbeknown to me at the time - the way I am as a Sporting Director today.

I worked for 10 years in England in different job roles - coaching, performance analysis, scouting - and my last Head Coach was Paul Lambert at Blackburn Rovers.

Paul came in with experience as a player, not only at Celtic, but before that at Borussia Dortmund, winning the Champions League. He did his coaching badges in Germany, which I found quite interesting, and came in with different ideas. It was refreshing to be be a part of that and I learned a lot from him in that short period of time.

When he left, in the summer of 2016, he called me and said, ‘Listen, do you have the aspiration or ambition to one day work abroad?' He’d got some contacts in Germany.

At the time a lot of people did not understand why I was leaving Blackburn, such an established club with great facilities, to go to a third division club in Germany (Wiesbaden), which I couldn't pronounce the name of. I didn't know the league, didn't know the language, didn't know the culture, but there was rhyme and reason to what I did.

I wanted to be exposed to a different structure, hopefully learn a new language and test myself socially and culturally. In my mind, I couldn't lose. If it doesn't go well, at least I've learned a new skillset. That was pretty much my mentality and mindset and lucky for me it paid off.

So, sliding door moments again. That decision has shaped and formed the last seven, eight years of my life, to where we are now. We had a successful time there (at Wiesbaden). We got promoted to the second Bundesliga in my third season using young German players.

The President of the club (Markus Hankammer) is the boss of BRITA, the water filter company, which is obviously a worldwide company. His company is international, his mindset was international, so the level of risk for him in bringing in an English guy wasn't as high as it might have been for another German club.

But right up until the end I was very thankful for the opportunity, because it's not normal to give somebody a chance who can't speak the language, who doesn't know the league.

It was November 2016 when I moved over, it was -4°, training ground on top of a mountain. Compared to Blackburn it was night and day, so I more or less went back to my beginnings at Doncaster really.

You look at what you don't have and learn to be resourceful and creative. There was a difficult adjustment phase, even the small things. I remember going to watch my first game, in Cologne, and you’re picking your ticket up from a petrol station. I've got to speak German and hope they speak English! So it's day-to-day things which are a struggle at the beginning.

But football's football, you try and find a way. I tried to prepare myself as best I could. I tried to speak the language as early as I could, almost like an actor writing down lines and trying to memorise things - and making so many silly mistakes, as I even do today - but just jumping in head first.

I took the job because I firmly believed I could add value to the club and what they were trying to build. I'm a big believer in taking projects because you can add value. I don't think it's about chasing the lights or chasing the money all the time, it's about making sound decisions based on people in a project.

I'm sure there was a start where one or two maybe rolled their eyes but I felt like I was welcomed with open arms. I think people saw that I was trying to embed in the culture and adjust as quickly as I possibly could. I didn't want to be the English guy who talks English; I didn't want to make people feel uncomfortable in their country.

The three things we're known to the German people for are sunburn, drinking beer and fighting. I always say, ‘Look, I really love boxing, but I'm not much of a fighter. I don't drink that often, but I've got to put my hands up and say, yeah, I'm a good candidate for sunburn.’

I guess it's about challenging those stereotypes. Coming from England, I was very conscious of not saying everything we do in England is better than here. Bring your ideas but also be open.

I think the biggest thing I took away was about clarity - of philosophy, principles, expectations. It was very much laid out to me at the beginning. For example, in New York, I will be judged on building a squad that is capable of challenging for the MLS Cup at the same time as building a pipeline of talent from North America, South America.

Through to Leipzig, where our ultimate goal is to win the Bundesliga. So, already, you've got real clarity in what it should look like. Then it's about the day-to-day workings, how we're going to achieve that.

Every department knows the Red Bull way of playing, so you don't have to be inside to know what it looks like. The level of clarity they have in what they expect makes everybody's job easier.

My job as a Chief Scout was much easier, because I knew exactly what a Red Bull player profile looked like, the skillset, the age perspective and the core principles. If I use the example of looking for young players, it could be players on the verge of making their debut who have a huge resale value if they come and develop.

From a squad building perspective it makes sense if you've got young valuable individuals who are still forming their brain patterns and are very coachable.

From an athletic perspective, young players can recover quicker between repeated sprints, between training sessions. So, just taking the example of working with young players, this shows how it meets every single department. When every department can work together towards a common goal then you're going to be really strong and that's something Red Bull do phenomenally well.

The staff who were employed at the time also mirrored our playing style - it was very much clearly conveyed that we're not a sleeping tablet, we're an energy drink, so we need to be high-energy, enthusiastic.

We had young innovative people with bright ideas involved across all the three different clubs. We don't just say, 'This is what we want to do,' we're going to live it, we're going to breathe it, we're going to be held accountable to it as well. That made my job role fascinating.

I walked into a team in April who had not won since October. It was a disappointing season for the club, who had been promoted to the Bundesliga. I came in with five games to go, not with a realistic realistic chance of keeping them in the league, but aiming to make some evaluations and assumptions that would help me and the club in the summer time and beyond.

So it was a bit of a whirlwind at the beginning. It was about building relationships, getting to know people, understanding people's strengths and weaknesses, understanding what had happened and why it happened, both from an individual perspective and collectively.

It was about gaining as much knowledge as I possibly could, as much understanding as I could and at the same time making my own judgements about what we needed to do to move to the next level in the next phase of of our history.

I talked to a lot of people internally, because I think it's important to give people a voice. You've got your perception externally, but it's not until you truly get inside that you can find the reasons as to why things are happening.

We can't forget that we've done really well in the last years too, we've got to the Bundesliga, which is a fantastic achievement for a club of this size. We did a bit of analysis with individuals too to see what their perspective was.

We did a SWAT analysis. I said, 'I know it's your job to present back to me about what you are thinking. I'm going to facilitate you, but I need your words, I need your input, I need your enthusiasm, because it's going to help us move forwards into the future.

That helps me then formulate a plan to what's maybe missing, what we need to do more of, a bit less of and build a bit of a new structure, to say, ‘We're going to go in this direction and we need everybody on board.’ It's not about putting blame on things, it's about realistically looking at where we are.

Everybody who does this job knows there are no summer holidays really, so it gave me a good chance while everybody was away to start to formulate my plan and make some structural changes to the infrastructure of the staff, to move certain people out of departments and give them new responsibilities and roles and just get a bit more clarity on what was expected and what I expect.

It’s also important for me to not only bring in new ideas for the good of the club, but also to try and change the perception and the environment and the feeling of the club. We had 17 player contracts that ran out, which is quite a lot, so you've got a chance to do something different.

You can make changes with the staff. It doesn't always mean changing the staff and letting people go, it can mean changing the job roles and trying to work with people. Then some small things around the building. Can can you put some new pictures up and paint the walls and change the structure of the day, so the guys are maybe meeting at different times and leaving at different times as opposed to what was before?

We’re probably mid-table in Bundesliga 2 with regards to our budget, even though we've come down from the Bundesliga. The second league is crazy. Look at the teams that are in it this season alone - Cologne, Hamburg, Hertha Berlin, Schalke, Hannover - there's some really big traditional clubs.

The competition's really high and I think a couple of times last season the attendances in the second Bundesliga were higher than in the Bundesliga. That'll be even more so this season.

With that comes a lot of sporting competition, a lot of financial competition, and that's where we've got to be a team that’s creative, we've got to be a team that’s innovative, and we've got to try to find that competitive edge in other areas of the club over our competitors.

I made the move over here (to Germany) to see a different structure of a football club and a different way of working. In 10 years in England I'd seen the manager with all of the pressure on their shoulders, having to decide everything, take control of everything, which can sometimes distract from the main job they are judged on, which is winning games and developing players.

I think the turnover of managers in England at that time was on average 12 to 13 months. Every team talks about finding continuity and I felt that maybe with the German model there could be something to learn. That was definitely the case.

The Sporting Director role has been here for many years, so it's nothing new. The Sporting Director is responsible for everything which encompasses sport and it's your job to employ the right people and get the right strategy in place.

What I find in Germany is it's pretty much set in stone with regards to a job description and what's expected. In England, at the moment, you've got quite a few different job titles, quite a few different job profiles, and that maybe creates a bit of a grey area as to who's responsible for what.

It's about working together for the good of the club and there's no ego battle, no discrepancies about who's responsible for what, which gives people clarity and helps everybody to be successful.

So 99% of the time you've got a Sporting Director in place and that job title has been in this country for over 20 years. I've not quite got to the bottom of it why it originated here and stayed so long - longer than any other country - but we certainly look at other models and what I see from my research is every country has got a different meaning to this job role.

In Holland you've got the Technical Directors. In England there are many different job titles. In America MLS General Managers. In Germany it's Sporting Directors and they've got it down to, 'Okay, this is what the role involves and what the expectations are of it.’

When I first became a Sporting Director here, in 2021, it's one of the first things I questioned? And I got a pretty interesting response. My President at the time said, ‘You are the face of sport, you need to be seen to be active and involved. You're judging everything that goes on and matchday is a huge part of it, so you need to be present, you need to be active.'

That entails the players on the pitch, on the bench - everyone has got their job roles on a match day. I see it a little bit like Formula 1 really - you know when the car comes into the pit lane, everyone's got their job to do, everyone's got their role and responsibility.

We look at who sits where on the bench, who talks to who in the game, what's the line of communication and make sure everything runs smoothly. That's where I see my job on the match day, because with the experience I've had in my career, with different job roles, I can then support the Head Coach as and when needed.

I'm there when needed, when called upon, when asked for my opinion, but besides that I'm looking at what's going on and whether we are fulfilling our potential on matchday.

I sit a little bit further down (the bench from the Head Coach). I think it's important that the Head Coach can speak to his team in the heat of the moment and it's important that they've got the line of communication between themselves, so I just next to the coaching team at the moment.

What we've seen in in the last few years is a plethora of German coaches who have been successful. You've got some pretty good examples in England of German coaches who have come in and had success.

The young English coaches, are they getting the exposure, are they getting the chances? Or do we typically go for an international coach because they have more experience?

Well, why have they got more experience? Because they've had the platform to be able to get the opportunity, so it's a double-edged sword really. I think we have still got room to grow in England with regards to young English coaches getting that chance. I guess it’s down to chance and opportunity - the same with young players.

You know, people will surprise you. How often do you see a young player make a debut and people are really surprised? Well, don't be surprised, they just needed a chance. If you don't give people the chance, you're never going to find out.

I was reading something around a year ago about when the average International coach comes into England they have a hundred more games under their belt as a Head Coach than a young English coach, which I found really quite fascinating. That's probably a reason they're getting the jobs - because they're more experienced.

In German football, I guess you've got the second team format, so Under-23 teams play in the professional league. So in the third league in Germany last year, you had Freiburg, Dortmund, Hannover second teams playing real football against men in a tough league that's televised, that's got exposure to so many different things.

And the young coaches in that league are getting exposure at a high level. Is that a reason why they excel a little bit quicker or accelerate a little bit quicker than young coaches in England? Possibly, because the chance is there.

If you've got a pretty established up-and-coming coach in a Premier League Under-19 team, for example, at what point do you then think about loaning that staff member out to a different country to gain experience, or to a different league to gain experience?

We’ve seen player loans happen for years. Can you start loaning out staff members? I think it's an interesting thing we've got to solve, that problem of how do we expose the coaches to more minutes, to more more environments where they're going to be at the senior level and ready to perform, as opposed to it's the unknown.

I'm a big believer in problem solving and I think that's one we've got to try and solve as a nation.

I’m not giving up my English passport just yet! I'm someone who just enjoys the project. It's the same as talent. I've said many times that talent is everywhere in the world, you've just got to look for it.

That's the same with opportunity. Opportunity is everywhere in the world, you've just got to be open enough for it. But I feel really at home here in Germany. I really enjoy the football and I enjoy the structure of the football club. I'm not against staying in Germany for the next few years and hopefully I'll have success here at this club.

That, for me, is the most important thing right now, to try and sustain myself in this club and bring them back to where we were last season, in the Bundesliga.