Search for “Michael Edwards” on Wikipedia and among others you’ll find Michael Edwards the former Notts County defender, Michael Edwards the Australian film composer, Michael Edwards the pioneering art therapist, two Michael Edwardses who played Major League Baseball and Michael Edwards the British fragrance expert. But you won’t find Michael Edwards the sporting director of Liverpool.
It is a measure of Edwards’ low profile that despite being one of the architects of Liverpool’s transformation into kings of European football and Premier League champions-elect (at least until the coronavirus outbreak put the season on ice), he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. He never speaks to the press and rarely makes public appearances, yet having helped to engineer the signings of players such as Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino, Andy Robertson, Georginio Wijnaldum, Fabinho, Alisson and Virgil van Dijk, he is arguably one of the most influential figures in the English game
Edwards, 40, started out as a performance analyst at Portsmouth and spent two years at Tottenham Hotspur before being brought to Liverpool in November 2011 by the club’s former director of football Damien Comolli. Since arriving at the club, he has variously worked as head of performance and analysis, director of technical performance, technical director and, since November 2016, sporting director, a role in which he enjoys the steadfast trust of head coach Jurgen Klopp.
“It is a very good relationship,” Klopp said last year. “He is a very thoughtful person. We don’t always have to have the same opinion from the first second of a conversation, but we finish pretty much all our talks with the same opinion. Or similar opinions.”
Edwards’ eye for a player has turned him into one of the most-respected members of the Anfield hierarchy. But before he started spotting footballers, his dream was to become one Continue reading