Liverpool Reportedly Eye Stuttgart’s Mislintat for Director of Football Role

With Julian Ward set to depart as Liverpool’s director of football next summer along with head of data Ian Graham after the former was groomed for years to take over for Michael Edwards just last summer, there are major question marks around the club’s back room staff moving forward.

According to Sky Germany’s Florian Plettenberg, though, the role of director of football could be set to be filled by a man with a good working relationship with Jürgen Klopp in Stuttgart’s current director of football Sven Mislintat. However, as yet no formal talks are said to have begun.

In addition to his current role at Stuttgart, Mislintat has previously spent time at Arsenal to largely poor reviews, with the biggest mark against for many the heavy outlay for a past his best Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Before Arsenal, he left Borussia Dortmund after a falling out with Thomas Tuchel.

However, Dortmund under Klopp is where he got his start as first an analyst in 2006 and then the man responsible for Dortmund signings like Robert Lewandowski, Shinju Kagawa, and Aubameyang, and it is this period as well as his strong relationship to Klopp that seems to be driving the story.

If it does come to pass that Mislintat is the man who replaces Ward, it would suggest the current back room upheaval at the club is at least in part being driven by the wishes of the manager—serving as proof, as it were, that whatever exactly it is that is going on, Klopp is being backed.