According to one online source, TFG may be considering Chelsea's San Jewel to head up recruitment as a key part of the "wider sporting leadership team" announced yesterday that will replace Kevin Thelwell, who departs at the end of the season.
Jewell, who joined Chelsea from Brighton & Hove Albion last year, is acclaimed as one of the best talent spotters in the Premier League. But it would seem unlikely that Everton could pry him away after such a short time in the Chelsea job.
Jewell began his career in football directorship and scouting at Newport County, before spending 18 months as Swindon Town’s chief scout. In 2016, he began working for Brighton as recruitment manager for the Under-21s.
Jewell was promoted to the role of emerging talent manager in 2019 and then as head of recruitment in 2022. Jewell arrived at Chelsea in 2024 from Brighton as the club’s director of global recruitment.
Aside from Europe, Jewell is renowned for his knowledge of the South American market and was key to Brighton in landing Moises Caicedo. Jewell played a key role in them landing Willian Estevao, who will arrive this summer.
Reader Comments (14)
Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer ()
2 Posted 08/03/2025 at 10:05:55
3 Posted 08/03/2025 at 10:58:43
It didn't take a genius to "spot" Estevao because he was starring at age 15 as a potential new Neymar in Brazil's u17s 2 years before Chelsea bought him for £30m. Given his price and promise, he was always destined to sign for one of the richest clubs as per Vini Junior, Rodrygo etc.
Similarly, there was nothing remarkable about "spotting" Caiceido – because Caiceido was linked with about 100 clubs across Europe before Brighton secured his signature. Indeed, we were very closely linked to Caceido before he went to Brighton – so we had already spotted him then too (along with thousands and thousands of football nerds because he was all over YouTube in scouting clips).
These days the incredible availability of data means teenagers in Ecuador or South Korea will all be very well known across the market.
Perhaps Jewell's track record has not been "spotting" the talent – but in securing the deals. That presumably is more about relationships with agents and selling clubs – and convincing the player that there is a route to the first team via a development plan (such as strategic loans etc). Wages and fees on offer presumably also help...
There are a few clubs that genuinely engage in talent spotting such as Nordsjaellend in Denmark and the RB empire – since they bring in young teenagers from academies in Sub-Saharan Africa before some of them have been recognised at U15 level for, say, Mali or Burkina Faso.
With everyone else, the players are all hiding in plain sight in major international youth tournaments. There's not much "spotting" to be done.
What Brighton have done well though is use Tony Bloom's betting technology to detect value in the market, which helps them identify value in players which human "spotters" have overlooked. So perhaps Jewell's role also involved overseeing the data analytics output from the technology solution.
4 Posted 08/03/2025 at 12:46:25
5 Posted 08/03/2025 at 13:03:09
That database will be powered by AI with a user interface that will simply allow a club to say we want a 30 year old left back with these attributes at this price and salary with this growth potential over 3 years etc… the players names and agent contact details then get displayed on a dashboard that can be shared, printed, presented to the Board for agreement.
10 minutes work done by the office administrator.
The real skill and value from these guys will be negotiating power, painting the picture to the player, convincing ( paying) the agent and getting the deal over the line.
6 Posted 08/03/2025 at 13:08:27
7 Posted 08/03/2025 at 13:15:19
You can say everyone else knew about player A or B but everyone else didn’t sign them. Brighton did. Where other clubs maybe weren’t convinced Brighton where and their record is inarguably the envy of the premier league.
The great shame is clubs outside the top 6 have to employ this model. Fantastic recruitment to develop players for super league teams. Arguably if Brighton hadn’t sold all these players but instead added to them, they’d be a champions league team themselves.
8 Posted 08/03/2025 at 13:26:27
Pay me to watch games for free and I’ll give you twenty top talents (min) per season.
9 Posted 08/03/2025 at 13:36:54
10 Posted 08/03/2025 at 14:30:32
11 Posted 08/03/2025 at 14:49:08
Everyone knows everyone so why pay some guy thousands to do what we could do
Absolute nonsense. Leave buying and selling up to the manager
He knows what he wants and where he wants
Paying halfwits as Director of Football etc etc etc is bullshit
Leave it to the manager
12 Posted 08/03/2025 at 15:11:07
13 Posted 08/03/2025 at 23:13:36
I would prefer a steady hand on the tiller like Thelwell right now.
14 Posted 09/03/2025 at 01:45:00
This is the kind of person that we should be looking to find.
Add Your Comments
In order to post a comment, you need to be logged in as a registered user of the site.
Or Sign up as a ToffeeWeb Member — it's free, takes just a few minutes and will allow you to post your comments on articles and Talking Points submissions across the site.
How to get rid of these ads and support TW
1 Posted 08/03/2025 at 10:03:34
Looks a lot like him.