The year is 2023, and the prayers of many a West Ham fan have been answered – David Sullivan has appointed a Technical Director to oversee the scouting department and player recruitment strategy.
Quite how the dynamics will work between David Moyes, Mark Noble, David Sullivan, and the newly appointed Tim Steidten remains to be seen, but this can only be viewed as a positive step.
Since Sullivan and the late David Gold acquired West Ham in 2010, the club has lacked the comprehensive scouting network and cohesive transfer strategy that has seen the likes of Brighton and Brentford rise up the football pyramid. Instead, there has been a tendency to rely on cut-price deals, free transfers, and agent recommendations – yes, Will Salthouse, we’re looking at you.
This is not to say that we have not had the occasional hit, because we have had plenty – Dimitri Payet, Jarrod Bowen, Saïd Benrahma, Tomáš Souček, Vladimir Coufal, and Craig Dawson have all brought West Ham fans great joy during the GSB era. The problem has been that for every shrewd acquisition, there has been a Jordan Hugill, a Jack Wilshere, or a Carlos Sánchez.
West Ham fans have long yearned to see their club invest in hidden gems from undervalued leagues and exciting youngsters with high ceilings, and though this has happened on occasion, it has rarely paid off, Gonçalo Cardoso and Frederik Alves being two recent examples.
These unsuccessful signings highlight the overarching desire for consistency and cohesion in recruitment, which raises the question of whether Tim Steidten can deliver either, or both.
This article will look at what the highly rated German has achieved to date, what he could bring to West Ham, and the difficulties he might face working under Sullivan, a man who is not known for his willingness to delegate his power.
Tim Steidten will not be a household name to most, thanks in part to his underwhelming 10-year playing career, but the 44-year-old has built a strong reputation since he hung up his boots, so much so that he was linked to similar roles at Liverpool, Chelsea, and Tottenham before signing for the Hammers. Equally impressive is the fact that Steidten has seemingly trumped a number of well-respected figures to the post, with ex-Liverpool man Michael Edwards, former Monaco Director of Football Paul Mitchell, and Roma’s Tiago Pinto all reported to have been in the running.
Steidten began building his stellar reputation in 2008 when he started working as a youth scout for Werder Bremen, where he climbed the ranks during his 11-year stay and served as the club’s Director of Football from 2017 to 2019. In his time at the North German club, he is credited with having identified and developed a number of significant players, including 21-year-old Serge Gnabry (€5m), FC Copenhagen’s Thomas Delaney (€2m), and an out-of-form Davy Klaasen from Everton (€13.5m).
These three signings provide a perfect summation of the types of players that Steidten can bring to a side – promising youngsters for reasonable fees (Gnabry); dominant players in leagues that are often overlooked (Delaney), and undervalued, out-of-form, and/or disgruntled players that still have plenty to prove (Klaasen). It was this remarkable eye for a deal, combined with his general stewardship of Die Grün-Weißen and a willingness to integrate youngsters into the first team that saw Bayer Leverkusen come calling for his signature; it is here that he really made a name for himself.
Arriving as their Head of Scouting in 2019 before being promoted to Sporting Director for the 2022-23 season, Steidten’s transfer record for the West German club has been nothing short of incredible. To cover all the players that have been brought in during Steidten’s tenure would require its own article, but here are a few of the most impressive examples – Moussa Diaby from PSG for €15m; Edmond Tapsoba from Vitória S.C. for €20.2m; Jeremie Frimpong from Celtic for €11m; Florian Wirtz from 1. FC Köln for €200k; Piero Hincapié from Club Atlético Talleres for €6.35m. All of these players are now the subject of transfer rumours that would see the club turn serious profits.
Underwriting all of this success is Steidten’s commitment to a data-driven recruitment methodology that allows his team to identify talented players in leagues that clubs might not traditionally scout; Piero Hincapié is perhaps the perfect example. The 21-year-old Ecuadorian centre-back began his senior career playing alongside Brighton’s Moisés Caicedo at Independiente del Valle, before then transferring to Talleres, from whom Leverkusen signed him for just over five million pounds in 2021.
Hincapié recorded some eye-catching metrics during his limited time at Talleres – he made just 14 league appearances during his one-year stay in Argentina – and once scouts had confirmed that the eye test matched the data, Steidten knew he had to act fast. Leverkusen secured Hincapié’s signature before they had even met him or his entourage in person, not wanting to miss out on him altogether. Such an approach will be music to West Ham fans’ ears, who have often criticised Moyes and the board for their lack of haste in completing transfers.
Beyond his undeniably impressive transfer record, there is another facet of Steidten’s time as Sporting Director that is arguably as relevant in the context of this current West Ham side, but that has been somewhat overlooked in the media coverage thus far – that is, the hiring and firing of managers. Leverkusen came into the 2022-23 season with high hopes, following an impressive 3rd-place finish under the management of Gerardo Seoane. Despite some exciting moves in the transfer window, they had a torrid start to the season, picking up just 5 points from 8 games, sitting one place above the bottom of the table. Despite the fact that he had delivered Champions League football and the club’s highest league finish since 2015-16, Steidten relieved Seoane of his duties.
At the time, this might have seemed a little cutthroat, but the decision to replace him with Xabi Alonso paid off in time. The side’s form improved dramatically under the Spaniard, who led them to a Europa League semi-final and a sixth-place finish, securing European football for another season. Looking at this through a West Ham lens, it will be interesting to see if Steidten has the authority to make similar decisions should the Hammers’ league form fail to improve under Moyes in 2023-24.
This is not to take away from the undeniably impressive achievement of winning the UEFA Europa Conference League back in June, but it is hard to imagine that any West Ham fan would dispute the claim that they were poor in the league last season. Should that form persist, and the side find themselves dragged into another relegation scrap, this time without their captain Declan Rice, then Steidten is unlikely to hesitate in pulling the trigger and appointing a capable successor.
This is entirely dependent on how much power Steidten really has though and what exactly his role entails, all of which is a bit unclear within the current structure that has Mark Noble as Sporting Director and David Sullivan still at the helm. With regards to transfers, we saw Rob Newman arrive from Manchester City and identify a couple of exciting South American talents, only for Moyes and Sullivan to decline such moves. Newman is now reportedly set to leave West Ham just a year after his appointment, and Vitor Roque, one of the players he scouted, is moving to Barcelona. It is difficult to imagine Steidten agreeing to take the job if promises of authority had not been made though, and it seems equally unlikely that Sullivan would cover his salary if he was not here to have a real impact.
The dynamics of West Ham’s internal hierarchy will soon become clear, and with Declan Rice’s transfer to Arsenal now all but confirmed, it will be interesting to see which players the club are linked to now that they have some money to play with – as the kids say, “let Steidten cook”.
