Sport Republic is building Southampton in its image.
The club is fundamentally changing, ranging from the nuts and bolts of how it functions daily to driving through the long-term vision.
Compared to how Southampton operated under previous ghost owner Gao Jisheng, where chief executive Martin Semmens and managing director Toby Steele were left to run the business and did so capably, Sport Republic’s co-founders Rasmus Ankersen and Henrik Kraft are discernibly more hands-on.
The presence of two central figures in Kraft and Ankersen spelt inevitable changes to Southampton’s board dynamics and the key figures within the infrastructure.
Particularly when someone such as Ankersen is involved, given his extensive footballing background and idiosyncratic ways of working. As demonstrated in the appointment of Nathan Jones as manager, he has the overarching say on all critical footballing decisions.
Director of football Matt Crocker’s scheduled departure at the end of the season has brought Southampton’s hierarchy into acute focus over the last month, despite there being several other lower-key exits that predate Crocker’s. Including the director of football role, Southampton have three senior positions unfilled.
Southampton have approached Manchester City’s academy director Jason Wilcox to succeed Crocker.
Crocker is leaving Southampton at the end of the season (Photo: Matt Watson/Southampton FC via Getty Images)
Chief commercial officer David Thomas is also leaving, and Southampton are yet to appoint a replacement for head of recruitment Joe Shields, who is set to join Chelsea once he is taken off gardening leave in February.
Sport Republic is in the process of centralising Southampton’s scouting system, The Athletic can reveal. Effectively, players will be scouted for Sport Republic’s multi-club model, as opposed to being recruited specifically for Southampton or its only other club at present, Turkish second-division side Goztepe.
Tom Stockwell, Southampton’s head of player insights and an influence in the recruitment department, has been tasked with moving scouts from Southampton to Sport Republic.
Ankersen has been a decisive voice in the transition, taking club employees from Southampton to work a broader role within the multi-club setup. This will mean casualties to existing staff, who may not have been prepared or wanted to see their remit at Southampton change and, in some cases, marginalised.
Over the past year, since Sport Republic’s arrival, several scouts have decided to depart. Dave Carstairs, who had been a senior scout at Southampton since 2010, has left and is working for The Scouting Company in the Netherlands.
Other scouts were understood to have been unhappy with the direction Southampton’s recruitment process was taking. In short, the way the department wants to function starkly contrasts with the days of former director of football Ross Wilson, when recruitment worked in a more traditional manner. Wilson oversaw a network of scouts that would have an input in prospective targets. There was a decision-making process that made the hierarchy clear — scouts knew who they answered to and who rubber-stamped signings.
Southampton’s multi-club model is distinctive, largely because of the uniformity between how each one operates. Sport Republic is pursuing “alignment” by interconnecting every club. This means taking a one-size-fits-all standpoint. Sport Republic still intends to acquire more clubs within Europe and retains an interest in French side Valenciennes. Irish club Shelbourne could also be on its radar.
Ankersen views recruiting and moving players between the multi-club umbrella as a benefit, giving the side acquiring the better talent — which is likely to be Southampton, considering they are the flagship club — a better hit rate, due to the knowledge Sport Republic’s scouts and coaches have on them.
Critical insight into a player’s ability to improve, mentality and specific attributes helps to increase the likelihood of a signing working out. At Brentford, Ankersen worked alongside Phil Giles in a co-director role, encouraging a more collaborative dynamic in player recruitment.
In turn, the more successful a player is under Sport Republic’s model, the more expensive they will be when eventually sold to a team outside of its multi-club sphere. It is stressed that Sport Republic does not just bring in young players for the sake of it — it buys to sell them for a profit, hence why Southampton have been reluctant to purchase players older than 26.
This was shown in Southampton’s first two January recruits. Mislav Orsic, 30, signed in a low-cost, low-risk deal worth €6million (£5.3m, $6.5m) but Carlos Alcaraz, who was the club’s priority target in midfield, will undergo a medical on Tuesday afternoon for a €14m transfer from Racing Club. At 20, Alcaraz is more in line with the club’s youth-oriented policy and Sport Rebulic is, therefore, willing to justify a bigger outlay.
Alcaraz, 20, is set to bolster the Southampton midfield (Photo: Rodrigo Valle/Getty Images)
Bournemouth, also under new owners, are plotting a multi-club structure, led by American businessman Bill Foley. Speaking to The Athletic, Foley revealed Bournemouth’s recruitment process would be in contrast to their south coast neighbours, treating each of his teams case-by-case.
Bournemouth are in exclusive talks to purchase a minority stake in French club Lorient and have explored an investment in Brazilian side Botafogo.
“It depends on their strength in terms of their football operation,” said Foley. “In the case of the Ligue 1 club (Lorient) I’m buying, they’re very strong. They have a great programme. But they’re willing to consult with us and we’re going to be involved with them. It may be that a club in another country is not as strong on the football side, so they would have to be more engaged. It’s always better to have someone on the ground and in the country where you’re owning the club, as opposed to trying to send someone in to find out what’s going on.”
The personnel involved in Southampton’s recruitment and player pathways has changed. Loans manager Danny Butterfield recently left to take up the assistant coach post at Lincoln City, while goalkeeping scout and pathways officer Vince Bartram departed after 12 and a half years of service.
Edd Vahid, who was Southampton’s assistant academy director and liaised with academy director Matt Hale, joined the Premier League at the start of the season. Southampton only recently found his replacement, with Natasha Patel returning after leaving for New York Red Bulls in 2019. Vicente Portal, the regional lead scout in Spain and Portugal, left for Sporting Lisbon in May, having worked at Southampton for nearly 18 months.
It is understandable if there is scepticism regarding Sport Republic’s centralising process from outside observers and supporters. Results on the pitch are yet to vindicate the transformations off it, even after the attempts at renewal.
Having spent the first six months of its tenure carrying out internal assessments, renovation of this scale while Southampton’s league position remains so precarious is a complex challenge.
But Kraft and Ankersen’s expertise in football and commercial investment may mean they are better equipped to enforce the necessary changes than other owners. The individual strengths of both are considered to dovetail well.
Several sources have told The Athletic that Southampton’s survival this season is essential for the short-term success of Sport Republic’s business model and its staff, and is likely to determine how quickly it can put its multi-club plans into action.
Relegation would cause an inevitable overhaul to a squad that underwent major surgery last summer. The threat of relegation is being factored into contract negotiations for some key players, who would prefer to assess the lay of the land at the end of the season.
(Photo: Ankersen, left, co-founder and chairman of Sport Republic Henrik Kraft, right, and former president of Goztepe Mehmet Sepil. Photo: Mahmut Serdar Alakus/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
