Former Borussia Dortmund chief scout Sven Mislintat has emerged as a candidate to replace Julian Ward as Liverpool’s sporting director.
The 50-year-old shared a healthy working relationship with Jurgen Klopp during the pair’s time at Borussia Dortmund between 2008 and 2015 and is said to be eyeing a reunion with the Liverpool boss.
According to reports in Germany, Mislintat, who left his position as sporting director at Stuttgart on Wednesday, is exploring the possibility of becoming Ward’s successor at Anfield.
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Ward, who replaced the long-serving Michael Edwards during the summer, has made the surprise decision to step down as the Reds’ lead transfer operator at the end of the 2022/23 season.
The Liverpool John Moores University graduate spent 18 months as Edwards’ right-hand man and was influential in the successful pursuit of Luis Diaz during the final days of the January transfer window.
Liverpool's former loans and pathways manager used the contacts he had facilitated during his time as the club’s scouting manager in Portugal to steal a march on Premier League counterparts Tottenham Hotspur, who believed they had made enormous strides for a potential deal for Diaz after agreeing on a fee with FC Porto. Ward, however, swooped in at the eleventh hour.
Then, in his first transfer window since his predecessor's departure, Ward directed a potential club-record deal for forward Darwin Nunez and sanctioned the departure of Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich after six trophy-laden years at Anfield.
But despite Liverpool being left surprised and disappointed by Ward's shock announcement, the club is thought to be pleased with the amount of time they have been presented to find the 41-year-old's successor. And it is a process that Klopp and CEO Billy Hogan are expected to be involved in.
Sky Sport’s Florian Plettenberg has named Mislintat as a potential candidate to replace Ward from the summer of 2023 onwards, with the German native still boasting a “brilliant relationship” with Liverpool manager Klopp.
Having controlled the transfer reins at the Westfalenstadion for over a decade until his departure in November 2017, Mislintat was an instrumental figure in the Black and Yellows securing back-to-back Bundesliga titles in 2012 and reaching the following season’s UEFA Champions League final, where they were cruelly conquered by rivals Bayern Munich due to a late Arjen Robben goal.
Dortmund’s success in the transfer market in the last 15 years has resulted in the German side earning a rank as one of Europe’s most cunning operators. Before the likes of Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland arrived in Germany, there was Mislintat’s class of the 2000s, which included Shinji Kagawa, Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski, Marco Reus and Mats Hummels.
Additionally, names such as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Ousmane Dembele and Jadon Sancho would all later move to the North Rhine-Westphalia under his supervision.
After leaving his post in 2017, Mislintat made the move to the Premier League to join forces with Arsenal during the latter stages of Arsene Wenger’s illustrious reign at the Emirates, before working with his successor Unai Emery.
Wenger's final season in North London saw the Gunners miss out on Champions League football for the first time since the 1997/98 season as they finished fifth in the Premier League. And, much like the end of his 21 years at the helm, that feat signalled a pressing need for an on-the-pitch overhaul.
With players such as Laurent Koscielny, Shkodran Mustafi, Danny Welbeck, Lucas Pérez and Nacho Monreal still on the books, Mislintat was tasked with significantly reducing the age profile of those at Arsenal and simultaneously easing the club's evolution for the incoming Emery.
Prior to the arrival of the former Paris Saint-Germain manager, Mislintat’s biggest transfer operation came just weeks into his new role in the capital. The build-up to the 2018 January transfer window was dominated by the future of then-starman Alexis Sanchez, who was coveted by Manchester City and Manchester United and only had six months remaining on his deal at the Emirates.
And with the Chile international’s desire to leave his residence of three-and-a-half years was evident, the Gunners’ chief scout used United’s interest in the forward to conclude a deal for Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
While both transfers will undoubtedly go down as misses, with both players eventually failing to live up to their respective hype, Mislintat ensured his latest employers didn’t weaken their standpoint during negotiations and executed a respectable deal with the 20-time Premier League winners.
"Henrikh Mkhitaryan? A swap deal with Alexis Sanchez, a player that would hold no residual value for the club a few days later," said Mislintat on reflection of the events of January 2018. “Miki was more than a good deal for the squad and for the accounts.
“On top of it, you gain a player who speaks seven languages and connects with everyone in the dressing room, important in that moment. He’s a top pro and an outstanding person.”
He added: “He leads by example and works really hard. He led players like Matteo [Guendouzi]. People underestimate him, I will never do that."
As Mislintat’s revealed at the time, with the deal coming so late in the January transfer window, Arsenal faced the prospect of losing Sanchez, who had been one of the Premier League’s standout players that campaign, on a free transfer if they had not negotiated a departure by the end of the window due to the Chilean's refusal to pen a new deal in North London.
Using their prized asset, Arsenal secured a member of Jose Mourinho’s Europa League and League Cup winning squad from the previous season in exchange, which, despite the Armenian’s failings, would have been more beneficial than a diminutive transfer fee in the final days of the window that would have been exploited by other selling clubs across the Premier League and Europe.
Indeed, Liverpool discovered that exact reality in the summer of 2014 when parting company with Luis Suarez, who had fired the Reds within a whisker of a first league title since 1990 with one of the most extraordinary individual Premier League seasons of the modern era, when Brendan Rodgers and Ian Ayre tried to reconstruct their frontline with the £75million they had received from Barcelona.
Despite eyeing Sanchez as their number one target to replace Suarez, despite holding one of Europe’s most in-form players with five years left on his Anfield deal, Liverpool failed to acquire the upper hand in negotiations and were later left with the signings of Rickie Lambert, Mario Balotelli and Lazar Markovic for the 2014/15 season as they squandered the finances of the club’s then most expensive export.
In hindsight, a more bullish approach, similar to the one used by Mislintat in January 2018, at that point in time could have seen the Reds drive a harder bargain for Suarez - who went on to win 13 major honours and fire 198 goals in 283 appearances for the La Liga giants - and secure the signature Sanchez, who would subsequently cement himself as one of Arsenal's most celebrated talents of the Premier League era.
While there were also notable misses during Mislintat’s time at Arsenal, including Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Stephan Lichtsteiner and Matteo Guendouzi, it should be noted that during Emery and the German’s first season working together they reached the Europa League final, beating the likes of Napoli and Valencia along the way, before being defeated by Premier League rivals Chelsea in Baku.
Despite leaving in January 2019 after a reported disagreement with fellow Emirates officials over the club’s transfer strategy, Mislintat’s presence was still felt in North London long after his departure as Aubameyang fired a double in the 2020 FA Cup final to claim the first and only piece of major silverware of Mikel Arteta’s reign.
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