I think this is down to organizational structure. Previously, in SAF’s era, the “Director of Football” was actually the Director of Scouting. He reported to SAF. His job was managing a team of scouts who were 95% focused on scouting and acquiring players for the first team. SAF made the final decision on who to sign and made the recommendation to the CEO. In this structure, credit/blame is easy to assign because one person is responsible for football operations. Moyes, LvG and Jose failed not only in on field tactics, but also in the transfer market.
In the Director of Football structure, the emphasis is on scouting and acquiring players for the club, not just the first team. Frequently, a club ethos or philosophy is used as a platform to develop players for the club. The DoF reports to the CEO. Many times, the club manager and the DoF both report to the CEO and therefore are equals. Sometimes, the manager reports to the DoF (Bayern). Responsibility for first team success is shared between the DoF and manager.
Both systems can work. It depends on who is in the key positions of CEO, DoF and manager. Many times, a DoFsystem can cause a lot of problem (PSG!) when a power struggle develops because the first team manager needs results now, and the DoF is also tasked with building talent for the future.
Personally, I think a DoF system is better at building youth talent. There are simply too many responsibilities that require a manager’s time to evaluate a 15 year old from Bosnia that won’t see first team football for 5 years. You look at clubs like Atletico Madrid, Dortmund, Monaco, Ajax.... they just churn out youth talent. Also, for an unproven manager, the DoF system is a way to mitigate potential weaknesses of the new manager.
For our situation, I prefer a hybrid system where both the manager (Ole) and a DoF report to the CEO. Ole would have full control over first team transfers (scouted by the DoF), but final say on whether to go after a player would be Ole’s decision. On the other hand, a DoF that knows the club culture but is multilingual with both European and South American ties would be ideal. With our vast network of former players, we should be able to find a suitable candidate (van der Sar?).
Look, clubs who have great success with the DoF system are selling clubs. We are one of 5 or 10 clubs worldwide who can drop 150m on a single player... we are a buying club. Secondly, top managers want control of their own destiny and many will not consider jobs where they have to report to a DoF. Hell, Real Madrid has the most chaotic structure — everyone reports to Perez who makes the final decision, both on footballing and non-footballing matters, and they’ve won 4 of the last 5 CLs.