Tottenham Hotspur have held discussions with Sebastian Kehl about their vacant co-sporting director role, with the German currently the leading contender for the job.
Kehl has been out of work since leaving a similar role at Borussia Dortmund in March. Spurs are searching for a replacement for Fabio Paratici, who left the club in February to take up a position at Serie A side Fiorentina.
According to sources familiar with the situation, who were not authorised to speak publicly, Spurs aim to appoint someone alongside current sporting director Johan Lange, who has been part of this recruitment process.
Lange and Paratici briefly had a job share, from the Italian’s return to Spurs in an official capacity in October until his departure to Fiorentina.
No formal offer has been made to Kehl yet and, for now, he remains undecided on his career’s next steps. The former Dortmund midfielder and long-time captain, worked for the club in several non-playing roles following his retirement in 2015, before succeeding Michael Zorc as sporting director in 2022.
Kehl has other options and has consistently been linked with a move to Bundesliga side Hamburg, where there is another sporting director vacancy. However, sources close to Kehl, granted anonymity to protect relationships, have told The Athletic that he remains unsure about an immediate return to football.
It’s also uncertain what impact Spurs’ potential relegation would have on the situation, with Roberto De Zerbi’s side two points from safety with five league games to play.
Kehl’s Dortmund legacy a mixed bag
Analysis by Germany correspondent Seb Stafford-Bloor
Kehl’s four years at Dortmund were difficult. The period marked a significant shift away from their traditional recruitment strategy, with the focus moving towards mid-career players and away from the elite, younger prospects with which the club was more often associated. They wanted to become more emotionally stable and less dependent on volatile young careers.
The results were mixed. Dortmund came extremely close to winning the Bundesliga in 2023, losing out to Bayern Munich on the season’s final day. They also reached the Champions League final in 2024, losing 2-0 to Real Madrid at Wembley. However, there has been a lack of coaching stability, with Dortmund employing four head coaches (Marco Rose, Edin Terzic, Nuri Sahin and Niko Kovac) across Kehl’s four years, and supporters have frequently bemoaned the club’s transfer policy and a perceived loss of technical identity.
Are those criticisms fair?
Yes and no. There have been some significant recruiting misses. Dortmund came close to signing Rayan Cherki in January 2025, only to fail in a late bid. In addition, moves this season for Jobe Bellingham and Yan Couto are yet to pay off. At the same time, Kehl has moved quite well through the market: the signing of wing-back Daniel Svensson, initially on loan last season, has proven extremely smart and big money purchases of Serhou Guirassy, Felix Nmecha and Nico Schlotterbeck have all been relative successes.
The wider context matters, too. Kehl was sporting director at Dortmund during a period of significant political upheaval. In 2024, Lars Ricken, formerly the club’s head of academy, was promoted into a newly created sporting CEO role, in preparation for the departure of Hans-Joachim Watzke, who had been CEO since 2006.
It was a role that Kehl wanted, but which he was overlooked for. The resulting dynamic between him and Ricken was tricky. Externally, it was never quite clear who held ultimate authority for recruitment, and while the club always denied that there was any friction between the two, stories about the relationship were regularly published in the German media.
Kehl’s departure from Dortmund, while abrupt, had long felt politically inevitable, even if no fair assessment of his role can ever be truly binary.