Mikel Arteta handed shock blow as Edu quits Arsenal sporting director role

Edu has sensationally resigned from his position as Arsenal’s sporting director and is likely to join the network of clubs spearheaded by Evangelos Marinakis, the Nottingham Forest owner.

The Brazilian’s shock departure will conclude five years in the club’s senior management and means manager Mikel Arteta will lose one of his major allies. The pair’s strong relationship is no secret but Arsenal will now be required to recalibrate. There is no successor currently lined up for a role that had not existed at the club before Edu assumed the position in November 2022.

It is understood that Arteta, as one of Arsenal’s leadership team alongside the executive vice-chair Tim Lewis and the managing director Richard Garlick, will play a significant role in deciding their next steps.

“This was an incredibly hard decision to make,” Edu said. “Now it is time to pursue a different challenge. Arsenal will always remain in my heart. I wish the club and its supporters only good things and all the very best.”

Arsenal have become title challengers since their former player Edu rejoined, initially as technical director, in July 2019. He was heavily involved in Arteta’s arrival five months later and grew in influence after Raul Sanllehi, their head of football, departed in August 2020. Despite hits and misses early in his tenure, he has become regarded as integral to an aggressive, effective transfer policy that saw the likes of Martin Ødegaard, Declan Rice, Ben White, Gabriel Magalhães and Gabriel Jesus arrive to transform the profile of Arsenal’s squad. The club’s recruitment structure was overhauled and they moved on from the baggage carried by expensive, experienced names such as Mesut Özil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

There have been frustrations in more recent windows, with the lack of genuine backups to Ødegaard or Bukayo Saka and an ongoing uncertainty over their centre-forward position the primary issues. Arsenal are fifth in this season’s Premier League after a patchy, injury-struck start in which they have rarely recaptured their free-flowing best form of Arteta’s era. None of this, however, is believed to be a factor behind Edu’s departure.

Edu’s bonds with key members of Arsenal’s hierarchy extend beyond the close friendship with Arteta and his resignation is understood to have been handled on good terms, rather than being the result of any internal dispute. While it is the consequence of long-running interest from Marinakis’ end, his imminent exit had not been widely signposted. The precise timing of his release may depend on compensation being agreed with his next employer, as well as other contractual formalities.

Now he is being lined up to take a senior post in Marinakis’s group, potentially in a chief executive position involving oversight of the entire network. Forest, Olympiakos and the Portuguese side Rio Ave are the three clubs currently under his control but an expansion is considered likely in the near future. Edu, who has been offered a package worth considerably more than his current terms in north London, is believed to view the role as the next step in his career progression.

The 46-year-old was director of football at Corinthians after ending his playing career and, before returning to Arsenal, had been team coordinator for Brazil’s national team. His lack of experience at the sharp end of European football administration had appeared a concern at the outset but he is now poised for a new challenge working for the ambitious and controversial Marinakis, whose Forest team have been the season’s surprise package and sit third in the top flight.

A timely reminder of the circus that tends to surround Marinakis arrived on Monday morning when the Football Association confirmed his appeal of a five-match stadium ban for spitting had been dismissed. The Greek shipping magnate had been given the suspension after being found guilty of committing the offence in the direction of match officials after full-time of Forest’s game against Fulham on 28 September. An independent regulatory commission had described it as “an egregious display of disrespectful behaviour”.