anthony savage

You might know me from football, but the truth is I've spent my whole career doing the same thing in different environments: build something, improve it and leave it in a better place than I found it.

I managed Kotoku Royals FC in the Ghana Premier League on a £50,000 annual budget. We finished in the top four and four of my players went on to sign professional contracts in Europe.

Before that, I took over a struggling Stockport County Ladies side and nearly doubled the win rate in two seasons, helping players move into coaching roles and scholarships abroad.

Away from football, I've run my own business, served as a Non-Executive Director for the British Heart Foundation and worked inside government, delivering digital transformation projects for the Home Office and HMRC. Different industries, same principles. Build a culture that performs under pressure, spend money wisely and make decisions you can still defend when someone checks the numbers afterwards.

Football has always been the thing I've come back to. Not because it's easy, because it isn't. It's chaotic, political, emotional and unpredictable. I love all of it. The Sporting Director role puts the strategy, the politics and the challenge of bringing people together behind a common goal all in one place. In many ways, I've been doing that job for years. I just haven't always had the title.

The next step for me is the Master of Sport Directorship at Manchester Metropolitan University. Not because I need someone to tell me what a Sporting Director does, but because I want to sharpen the skills I've built over the last fifteen years and learn from people who've operated at the highest levels of the game.

I'm not trying to reinvent myself. I've spent too long building who I am for that. I'm trying to become the best version of the person I've already spent years becoming.