Sport Republic Can Be A Big Success For Southampton Says Spors Friday, 21st Mar 2025 08:47 Johannes Spors has said more in the last fortnight on behalf of the club, than has come out of St Mary's in the last year, his latest interview claims that Sport Republic's multi club model will work well for Saints. Johannes Spors has again been talking to The Daily Echo and he has been speaking about the benefit of the Sport Republic multi club model that so far has seen Turkish club Goztepe & French club Valencienes join Southampton on the roster. The problem during Sport Republic's tenure at Southampton has been a lack of leadership off the pitch and zero communication, this has lead to supporters blaming all and everything on Sport Republic and claiming that the club is rotten from top to bottom.
Of course fans base their view of the club on results and not what happens behind the scenes off the pitch, but the truth is, that in the modern game, it is just as important to built the club off the field, you cannot build a successful club without generating income aside from Premier League & TV income and money from ticket sales. Part of that at clubs like Chelsea & Manchester City is having a multi club network and in this case Saints are ahead of the game. Johannes Spors had this to say to The Daily Echo. “I think this model can be a huge benefit for football clubs. I think people maybe don’t really see the benefits of it yet. "This has a lot of upsides, including player pathways. Nothing else really helps develop a player like the right level of competition at the right moment. "If the competition is easy, the player doesn’t develop. If the competition is hard, he doesn’t develop. Minutes at the right level are absolutely crucial. "The model here, with the under-21s not really being under-21s - it’s more like an under-19 competition - it creates a huge gap in competition.
"Some players, like Tyler Dibling, can jump over that, but not everybody can. You need to have something for them and that’s where multi-club can help." "I want to sit here in a couple of years and see that people recognise how helpful this model has been for the club, for Southampton. "I’ve done this with seven clubs in the last years and already experienced what great energy can develop when you put expertise together. "If you create an environment of different perspectives and experts in a friendly setting, this is something you can never recreate in a conference."
The article also goes on to explain how the model works at St Mary's "Off the pitch, knowledge of tech investments is shared, including health and wellness solutions and data trackers to support director Mark Bitcon. "Bitcon was named director of footballer operations at Saints in March 2024 but has been Sport Republic's performance director since September 2023. "While Spors is handling all of the football decisions - play style, recruitment, staff and so on - Bitcon remains in charge of performance and conditioning." Although he is focussed on Southampton, Spors role at Sport Republic does have other jobs to do with Sport Republic. "I worked for Genoa when the ownership started to buy these other football clubs, but I was really into Genoa, that was my focus," Spors explained. "But then I did work on top of all the other clubs as well and then one day I had to decide that I go out of Genoa and take care of everything. "This is a multi-club structure where I have the same responsibility in the other clubs but with a very, very, very clear focus on Southampton. "But still, it is some extra workload and I think it makes sense that everybody is working in their expertise. That's why I think this is the right thing to do."
So what are Southampton supporters to make of this ? I would say that firstly it is positive that perhaps for the first time in 3 years, we are getting communication from the club, explaining what Sport Republic are trying to acheive. Southampton supporters have not embraced the multi club model so far, many go on social media claiming that Sport Republic are using Saints to fund Goztepe, that is probably not the case, Mateus Lis arrived at Southampton on a free transfer, spent a year at Goztepe on loan and then was sold to the Turkish side last summer, it could be said that Southampton turned a profit on that deal. The only two other players to join Goztepe from Saints have been Juan and Kuryu Matsuki, who you may ask ? Exactly we are hardly buying expensive players and selling them to Goztepe cheaply. In the other direction Joachim Kayi-Sanda became the first permanent signing at Saints from Valenciennes in January, an 18 year old central defender who is already in the France U19 squad and is highly rated. I would suggest that the money that has been spent on these players would not even match the wages spent on Jack Stephens in the past 3 years, it is hardly a big outlay that if invested in Southampton would have changed anything that has happened in that time.
It is easy to rant at Sport Republic and claim that they are bad owners, of course no Southampton supporter can be happy with what has happened so far, they have made mistakes and some of them big ones. Although perhaps some excuse can be made for the fact that they have made good appointments in Joe Shields and Jason Wilcox, who were poached within months of joining the club, however they did leave some legacy. That was not Sport Republic's fault, the problem lay in their hesitation in replacing them, Wilcox especially, some will say that Wilcox did little, but the real loss was a lack of leadership from the boardroom, if Wilcox had stayed, would he have counselled Russell Martin about his style of play ? would he have done something about it sooner ? and would he have appointed Ivan Juric ? The answer to those questions is that we will never know, but what we do know is whatever he would have done, would have been better than what we actually did do. The good news is that now Southampton FC & Johannes Spors are communicating, we know little about Spors, but from what we can google, he does at least have the experience needed to do the job he has been employed to do, from that perspective he has achieved more than has happened in the last 12 months. Their are murmurings of "Sport Republic Out" but this is not 1995, they are not local business men and can't just resign and walk away, if they did, then we would potentially have another Portsmouth situation on our hands, where the owner just sold players to recoup his outlay and refused to reinvest the proceeds into running the club, therefore forcing administration and almost sending Pompey into oblivion. So we have no choice but to accept that Sport Republic have made mistakes and that at least they seem to have recognised that and are now putting things right. Next season there is no reason why we should not again challenge for promotion from the Championship, it can again be a winning season and then with proper foundations in place we can perhaps make a better fist of staying up in the Premier League. So perhaps an infrastructure is being built by Sport Republic that will work, certainly Johannes Spors seems to think it will.
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