According to the Daily Mail, Newcastle United are considering Lutz Pfannenstiel as their new director of football – if their Saudi-based takeover goes through.
It’s claimed that the Saudi-led consortium attempting to purchase Newcastle in a £300million deal want to prioritise the appointment of a director of football.
However, they have something specific in mind. They want somebody with a ‘reputation of working within a budget’, suggesting a ‘measured approach’ to recruitment.
That’s despite massive money being anticipated should the takeover materialise, and a fascinating name has emerged in Pfannenstiel.
He currently works as Fortuna Dusseldorf’s sporting director, where he has relied on loans, free transfers and bargains to win promotion last season and push towards safety this season.
Pfannenstiel has impressed with Dusseldorf, but that only tells part of his story. He holds a FIFA record; he is the only player to have featured in all six FIFA confederations having played for 27 clubs in a frankly bizarre career.
He was even goalkeeping coach for Ramblers, assistant manager for Namibia, manager of ‘Antarctica XI’ and stopped breathing three times during a collision with Clayton Donaldson in non-league action.
Pfannenstiel’s life has been so bizarre that he wrote a book entitled ‘The Unstoppable Keeper’, in which he discusses spending more than 100 days in prison in Singapore for alleged match-fixing. He was later cleared, but it’s just another strange twist in his story.
He has since been a respected scout for Hoffenheim and now director at Dusseldorf. The German would be a left-field choice for Newcastle, for more reasons than one, but he seems to be challenging ex-Porto and PSG man Antero Henrique.
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