Edu was a charismatic connector at Arsenal and will be a tough act to follow - The Athletic

Edu is a talker. A smiler. A sounding board. A charmer. Soft skills might not seem like the priority characteristic for a role as cutting edge as being a sporting director in football. But for Edu, they have consistently underpinned his approach as he has navigated how teams are run, and constructed, since the end of his playing days.

Naturally, any sporting director gets judged on results — the impact of signings on the team, appreciation of the balance sheet, capacity to renew contracts of value and offload wastage — but Edu has always prized the impressions he makes as a people person as well. That was a key asset when he returned to Arsenal in 2019, 14 years on from the last of his five seasons with them as a player. He was described by the club back then as “the final and very important part” of the jigsaw at a sensitive time when they were restructuring in the aftermath of long-time manager Arsene Wenger’s departure.

It was a messy time on and off the pitch and Edu swept in with his killer smile and made it his business to be a more welcoming, football-orientated face of the club to anyone who needed a point of contact. Being a former player from the Invincibles era carries an automatic status.

Edu was a connector, bringing together so many facets of the club. He could use his charisma to manage in all directions. He was equally personable and credible whether talking upwards to the owners and directors, straight across to the coaching staff and operational leads, internally to players, externally to other clubs and agents, and publicly to fans. He could effectively speak a lot of football languages.

Naturally, someone in his position has to be competent and ambitious as a baseline, but it should not be underestimated how useful it is to have someone with that likability factor at the higher echelons of a football club. Being someone in a suit who handles big meetings and internal politics, but also can talk on a level to players and represent the club values, is a mix that not everybody can pull off.

Edu has a knack for putting people at ease, and that was one of the contributors to the camaraderie that has grown in the Arsenal dressing room in the past couple of years. Mikel Arteta, the manager, might make you want to burst through a wall. Edu could greet you on the other side of it with a high five or a hug and help you dust yourself down.

He has always insisted that a vital part of his job is communication with those he works closest with. He summed it up a few months ago, at the end of last season: “I love what I do every single day when I sit in here, trying to improve and looking after the staff, talking to people. It’s energising, it gives me fuel. The team is challenging, the club is healthy, and the sense of family is back.”

Well, now he is cutting ties. It appears to have come out of the blue but like all relationships that reach an end, one party is usually either pushed or pulled out. There seems to have been some persuasive pulling in this case, with Nottingham Forest’s owner Evangelos Marikanis an admirer and a position in a multi-club concept on the table.

Edu will bring a few of his customary characteristics to his next challenge. There will be plenty of warmth and diplomacy, but it is clear that underneath he has an inner steeliness when it comes to business. Edu is ambitious and has strong opinions, whether that is about players, deals or people. Not every transfer at Arsenal was sweetness and light and powered by happy unity. Life doesn’t work like that, but they invariably thrashed things out.

It will be interesting to see what Arsenal prioritise in their search for a successor. Will it be another football person, another Arsenal person? Will it be someone to connect with Arteta, or perhaps to try to challenge him? Will those soft skills and human touches be considered important to replicate? The club face a lot of questions that need swift consideration. Even choosing the personnel who will examine the selection process is food for thought — who has the football expertise to oversee replacing the director of football?

There are only four members of the board: Arsenal’s father-and-son American owners Stan and Josh Kroenke, Tim Lewis, who is the executive vice-chair, and Lord Harris of Peckham, a businessman and philanthropist who is the only survivor from the club’s old days at Highbury. Richard Garlick is managing director, and Jason Ayto is Edu’s assistant, and both of them are well-equipped in football business circles.

When it comes to it, the person with the expert football take is arguably Arteta. But managers appointing or recommending directors of football feels like a thin-ice move.

Like most clubs, Arsenal have already been working on ideas for the January transfer window and plans for next summer. The timing of Edu’s departure is unwelcome but, in the short term, they have people in-house who can manage the situation.

Edu was never the absolute overlord of recruitment, he was always part of the collective. The work of the group helped to launch Arsenal towards title challenges and back into the Champions League. He was heavily involved in some outstanding recruitment, from bargains including Gabriel Magalhaes and Gabriel Martinelli, via super-smart imports such as Martin Odegaard, to heavyweight fees for Declan Rice and Kai Havertz. Of course, there were forgettable transfers as well. Not every deal works. Sales have been less successful. But overall Arsenal have fared well in recent years, and one area in which they excelled was the number of contract renewals and retentions of vital players, such as Bukayo Saka, William Saliba, young Ethan Nwaneri et al.

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Arsenal had a five-year plan when Edu returned. “I remember my first day back here, first week, first months, all the ideas for squad-building with a five-year plan,” he said. “There were many different conversations, many minds that needed to change, and hard decisions to make.”

It was not all plain sailing, particularly at the beginning when Raul Sanllehi was around, and the relationship with the superagent Kia Joorabchian was under scrutiny as several players he was connected with joined the club. Edu emerged from that difficult period and put his stamp on things.

Now he takes his sweet-talking and he’s out of there.

(Top photo: Kristian Skeie – UEFA via Getty Images)

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Since football fandom kicked in in the 1970s, the path to football writing started as a teenager scribbling for a fanzine. After many years with the Guardian and the Observer, covering the game from grassroots to World Cup finals, Amy Lawrence joined The Athletic in 2019.