My full name is David Igono. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, shaped by the business minds and general managers of American sports. I briefly played American football professionally. Then the 2010 World Cup in South Africa introduced me to the other football, and it never let go.
In March 2017 I started undervalu on Twitter as a personal portfolio of undervalued profiles in world football. I thought I was cataloguing players. It turned out I was learning something bigger: the most undervalued people in football are not on the pitch. They are the ones deciding who gets on it.
What I am building
This site is a public database of the people who run football clubs and the people who develop footballers.
The director database covers sporting directors, technical directors, chief executives, heads of recruitment, chief scouts and academy leaders, across Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and beyond. Whole club structures, not just the famous names. It runs in two tiers: the people who hold the seat today, and the people I believe will hold one next.
The coach database does the same for the people who build players: how their teams play, who got better under them, and how they lead a dressing room.
Every profile follows the same rules. Every claim is verified against the public record. Every fee is marked as reported. Where something cannot be verified, the gap is written onto the page instead of filled with a guess. And every profile carries a warning section, because honest pages are the ones the people who hire actually trust.
Alongside the database I write The Saturday Sporting Director, one email a week on how the best-run clubs actually work, read by more than 500 people inside the game.
What I have learned so far
A few patterns keep repeating, and they shape everything I write.
The hire is only half the decision. Protecting it is the other half. The clubs that thrive give their people structure, patience and cover. The clubs that churn pay for the same lesson every two years.
Directors are made in four rooms. Head of recruitment, chief scout, academy director, technical director. A third of the seat-holders in my database came up through exactly those roles, which is why I track the people in them before the market does.
The best stories are not in English. The most instructive executives work in Graz, Herning, Alkmaar and Freiburg, and give their interviews in German, Danish and Dutch. Someone has to bring that thinking across. That is most of what I do.
And selling clubs almost never get the credit. The headline fee usually lands at a player’s next club. The director who found him first gets a footnote. This site exists to reverse that.
Get in touch
If you work in football and want your record documented properly, start with the questionnaire. If you want the weekly email, sign up here. And if you just want to talk football structures, email me. I answer.