On 27 April 2026, Fenerbahçe confirmed the simultaneous departures of head coach Domenico Tedesco, sporting director Devin Özek, and football coordinator Berke Çelebi in a single board announcement. The trigger was a 3-0 derby defeat to Galatasaray — a result that opened a seven-point gap at the top of the Trendyol Süper Lig with three matches remaining. The response followed a pattern SSG has documented across multiple transitions.
The Sequence Problem
When senior departures cascade, the instinct is to fill the most visible vacancy first. The head coach commands the spotlight. Media pressure intensifies. Supporters demand a name. This instinct, while understandable, often compounds the problem it seeks to solve.
In moments of organisational turbulence, the priority is not speed. It is clarity. Someone must steady the ship, remove the noise, and create the conditions for deliberate decision-making. Without this anchor, clubs risk reactive appointments that misalign with longer-term direction — with consequences that surface not immediately, but six to eighteen months later, when misalignment has compounded into dysfunction.
SSG’s position on leadership sequencing is direct:
| Step | Role | Function |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Chief Executive | Establishes organisational stability. Interfaces with ownership, manages stakeholder communication, and creates the operational framework within which sporting appointments can be made deliberately. A capable CEO holds the organisation steady while the right sporting leader is identified. The reverse is rarely true. |
| 02 | Sporting Director | Defines the technical project: playing philosophy, squad architecture, recruitment parameters, academy integration. Whether permanent or interim, this role sets the framework the head coach will inherit and execute within. Appointing a coach before this clarity exists risks misalignment that surfaces six to eighteen months later. |
| 03 | Head Coach | Appointed last, as a function of the sporting strategy — not the other way around. Identifying the right coaching profile requires prior clarity on squad age profile, competitive timeline, and playing style. Clubs that reverse this sequence often find themselves back at the beginning within two seasons. |
At Fenerbahçe, the three roles did not arrive in the wrong order. The problem is that they were never properly integrated once in place — and when the exit came, it came for all three simultaneously. What that leaves behind is not a transition. It is a void.
What Was Built — and What Was Missing
Devin Özek was appointed sporting director in June 2025 at 30: the youngest in any of Europe’s major leagues. He arrived from Bayer Leverkusen, where he had worked under Simon Rolfes as the club won their first Bundesliga title in an unbeaten 2023/24 campaign. His appointment alongside football coordinator Okan Özkan was framed as a distributed leadership model — authority spread across defined roles rather than concentrated in a single sporting director.
The backstory behind Özek’s rise is instructive. As a teenager in Munich, he spent his spare time building player databases, analytical charts, and squad profiling documents unprompted. His idol was not a player but Uli Hoeness, Bayern’s former general manager and president. When he saw Simon Rolfes speaking publicly about data-driven recruitment, he sent a cold email — guessing the address. The tone, according to The Athletic‘s account of those close to him at the time, was direct to the point of audacity: he was capable, Leverkusen had no scouting presence in Munich, and they should call him.
Rolfes’ assistant responded. Özek was asked to identify the three most talented players at the under-17 European Championships in Azerbaijan. He returned the same three names in the same order as Rolfes. He was given the job. That instinct — converted into process, converted into outcomes — carried him from youth scouting to second-in-command at one of Germany’s biggest clubs, and drove the analytical groundwork behind the Xabi Alonso appointment at Leverkusen.
At Fenerbahçe, that same capability appears to have operated in conditions that were never designed to support it.
The coordinator structure fractured within weeks of Özek taking office. Okan Özkan departed, reportedly due to friction between the two roles. No resolution mechanism appears to have been applied. The designed integration layer between sporting director and football operations was removed before it had been made functional.
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The Coaching Appointment in Context
Tedesco arrived in September 2025 to replace José Mourinho. Özek managed that transition directly. Despite having idolised Mourinho as a teenager, the 33-year age gap between them did not prevent Özek from delivering the decision in person — a conversation The Athletic‘s sources describe as handled with professionalism by both parties.
The Tedesco appointment followed similar analytical logic to the Alonso process at Leverkusen. But the structural conditions were materially different. At Leverkusen, Rolfes had accumulated years of institutional credibility. The governance architecture was established. The board had been walked through an evidence base before Alonso was named. When the hire looked wrong early, that credibility held.
At Fenerbahçe, Özek had been in post for three months when Tedesco arrived. The coordinator structure had already fractured. The presidential election in the same period removed Ali Koc — the president who had appointed Özek, and whose support represented his primary source of institutional authority. The incoming president, Sadettin Saran, inherited a head coach he had not selected and a sporting director appointed by his predecessor.
That is not a sequencing problem correctable through results. It required deliberate governance intervention: a reset of mandates, documented alignment on football philosophy, and an explicit statement of authority from the new president downward. There is no public evidence that intervention occurred. The absence of it meant that when results deteriorated, there was no institutional architecture to absorb the pressure. Everything came down at once.
The Case for Sporting Director Visibility
Sporting directors who can articulate vision publicly become a source of institutional stability when results create pressure — and why this is a structural requirement in high-scrutiny environments.
Comparable Transitions
The Fenerbahçe exit does not sit in isolation. The sequencing pattern SSG has identified across recent transitions holds consistently.
| Club | Sequence Used | Outcome | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| NY Red Bulls | SD mentored for two years prior. In post before coaching search opened. | Michael Bradley appointed in structured process led by de Guzman. | Correct sequence |
| Manchester City | Hugo Viana collaborated with Begiristain for months before full handover. | Institutional knowledge transferred deliberately. Coaching question followed. | Correct sequence |
| Anderlecht | SD and two head coaches exited within 10 days. Club stated: coach first, SD second. | Prospective coaching candidates declined, citing absence of sporting director. | Reversed sequence |
| Marseille | SD resigned after De Zerbi departure. Coaching search and SD vacancy simultaneous. | Neither role able to inform the appointment of the other. | Reversed sequence |
| Fenerbahçe | Head coach, sporting director and coordinator exited in one announcement. | No anchor. No framework. Summer rebuild begins from zero. | Complete reset |
The research evidence on managerial change reinforces this picture. Studies across multiple sports and league competitions show that teams changing their coach after performance decline do rebound — but on average fare no better than teams that have not changed their coach in a comparable situation. Post-dismissal performance recovers and stabilises close to its pre-period level. The new manager bounce typically dissipates within three months. What looks like improvement is, in most cases, regression to the mean. The structural conditions that produced the decline are rarely addressed by the appointment alone.
The Structures Behind Winning Teams
The six structural dimensions that determine whether a football club functions coherently under sustained pressure: decision rights, cross-functional integration, role impact relevance, leadership cohesion, principled adaptation, and culture as an output of structure.
What Fenerbahçe Leave the Summer With
Fenerbahçe enter the summer with no sporting director, no head coach, no football coordinator, and an assistant manager holding the position for fixtures that carry no competitive significance. They have not won the Süper Lig since 2014. Galatasaray are on course to take another title.
| Stage | What Happened | Structural Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Presidential transition | Ali Koc replaced by Sadettin Saran mid-cycle. Mandate reset never formalised. | Özek loses primary institutional authority within three months of Tedesco’s appointment. |
| Coordinator departure | Okan Özkan departs within weeks. No resolution mechanism applied. | Integration layer removed before it had been made functional. |
| Simultaneous triple exit | All three leadership layers removed in one announcement following a 3-0 derby defeat. | No anchor. No framework. Rebuild begins from zero. |
If the board establishes clear executive authority first, then appoints a sporting director with a documented mandate and sufficient time before a coaching appointment is made, the lesson has been absorbed. If the club moves first to a high-profile head coach and retrofits the sporting operation around that appointment, the conditions for the next cycle of instability are being set now.
Özek’s summer window was, by multiple accounts, a functional success: 18 players recruited across two windows, several on reduced salaries driven by personal conviction; six players sold for fees; a shift in age profile toward peak-years players; structural changes within the training ground credited with lifting staff morale. The capability was present. The governance architecture to sustain and protect that capability was not.
The coaching question is relevant. The sequencing question is prior to it — and it is the one that will determine whether the next cycle ends differently.
Every club operates within its own context, constraints, and internal logic that external observers cannot fully appreciate. Ownership structures differ. Financial realities vary. Candidate availability fluctuates. SSG offers these observations with appropriate humility about the limits of outside perspective.
For clubs navigating leadership transitions or seeking to establish clearer governance frameworks, Sentinel Sports Group provides strategic advisory on executive and sporting director mandates, succession planning, and organisational design. Further reading on these themes is available at sentinelsportsgroup.co.uk/insights.
Research & References
Daunté Crawford, From the Unicorn Sporting Director to Leadership Teams — Training Ground Guru, 2026.
Daunté Crawford, The Case for Sporting Director Visibility — Training Ground Guru, 2026.
Daunté Crawford, The Structures Behind Winning Teams — Training Ground Guru, 2026.
Jacob Tanswell, Why Fenerbahce turned to Europe’s youngest sporting director to break their title drought — The Athletic, April 2026.
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