Uhm, no. He, as Earnest did at AZ, is a kind of Human Resource Manager. He has to know what the philosophy the club has, strategy the club wants to pursue to get at the long and short term goals the General Manager/board has set and set in motion the staffing of the club team by internal development (AZ Academy), recruitment (buying needed power) and selecting future targets in the long term plans. All in order to fulfill the strategy of the club.
I don't think there's an exact analogy. Basically I see it as a layer between the board (who are generally not on the technical side) and people who have specific technical responsibilities (coaches of specific teams, the scouting staff, etc). Responsibilities should include hiring the coaches, overseeing development, working to promote technical specifications and perhaps guiding the promotion of a US style. Splitting this between a technical director and a general manager seems likely to cause confusion and my guess is more a result of political dysfunction than optimal organization.
Not really. The technical department works like "staff", not as "operators of the line of production". The latter would be coaches who work under GM. The GM could decide with his coaches whether anybody in Techinical department would be used for this or that scouting assignment or if they would use their own, e.g. But the TechDepartment would be there as a resource, anyway. Suppose you want a report on what went wrong with WC 2018 project. You'd want somebody with some autonomy like the Tech Director, not the GM who will be wading around in the politics of it all before and after the report comes out. Separate but equal powers may look dysfunctional compared to the 3rd Reich, on paper. Reality is something else.
LOL! Our USS version of the Deep State is trying to smother our "revolution". We will end up with the same old same old and the chair shuffling we have had since Sampson left, except for JK. Tommy Wrong-again is available. He can't make that much with his BEIN gig, so when will he be re-hired and for what role this time?
Yeah I think they backtracked not long after that statement, right when names were leaking that they would "like" to have someone in place before the WC.
Sounds like Earnie Stewart is the favorite: https://www.metro.us/sports/source-earnie-stewart-frontrunner-ussf-gm-role
I understand waiting on the World Cup to see what coaches with experience become available, but this GM position needs to be filled soon if they are really supposed to help sign the next coach. It's getting ridiculous at this point.