Borussia Dortmund will have a new management structure from May 1: Lars Ricken will become the new Managing Director of Sport, returnee Sven Mislintat will become Technical Director and Sebastian Kehl will remain Sports Director. How will the trio be organized in the future?
The new structure, which will come into effect on May 1, 2024, is new territory for BVB: until now, the management team consisted of three members, Thomas Treß, Carsten Cramer and Hans-Joachim Watzke. In future – until Watzke retires from operational business in 2025 – a fourth member will join them: Lars Ricken will become Managing Director Sport and will be responsible for the entire sporting area. While he has mostly kept a low profile as director of Dortmund’s youth academy in recent years, he is now stepping into the front row
Kehl’s contract is to be extended
However, Sebastian Kehl will remain in his current position. Dortmund’s sporting director had hoped to be promoted to the new management position. The fact that Ricken, rather than Kehl, was given the job can certainly be seen as a personal defeat for the ex-professional, who has learned to fight in his career. His time at the club will not end with the decision in favor of Ricken. On the contrary: the new sporting director is to hold talks with Kehl in the summer about extending his contract, which runs until 2025. The likelihood that these talks will end in an extension of the collaboration is – as things stand today – high.
In future, Kehl will be able to concentrate fully on the team’s content-related work and report to Ricken, who will represent the club externally. As of May 1, Mislintat will report to Kehl, who, as technical director, will focus on planning the BVB squad and thus also relieve Kehl. A collaboration between the two seemed difficult to imagine for a long time. However, these concerns have now been dispelled
First practice test in the summer
The idea behind the new organizational chart is to focus even more on the respective strengths of the different players, to relieve them in other areas in order to achieve a better overall result. Of course, only the practical test will show whether the plan will succeed. In any case, plenty of work awaits the new management team in the summer: the squad is to be restructured again based on the experiences of the current season
