Nicola is a dedicated Sports Director at SIG Strasbourg and to me the most underrated at his profession. Nicola worked predominantly in Italy before leaving the country and joining Strasbourg in 2020. He is a native of Forli, Italy just as Maurizio Gherardini is and went from picking up valuable lessons from his mentor, to later becoming a General Manager and Sports Director himself.

After taking a detour to the hotel business and becoming a hotel manager for almost a decade, he returned back to the sport and to become a basketball manager most recently worked as a GM at Avellino (2016-2020 & Roma (2012-2016) before joining Strasbourg.

In today's episode we tried to answer the question of what a Sports Director actually does. We also talked about how he came into the business as well as what he tells young scouts on how to break through in this business. Because every path is unique, it’s almost a impossible to have a clear road-map. Nicola also briefly shared his detour to the hotel business before touching on various other topics such as the importance of network, the daily challenges he faces within the team, how he manages the dynamics of a team and much more. A big topic that Nicola also touched on is the firing of a coach. He talked me through the process of it and what goes through his mind as he’s anticipating pulling the trigger.

Lots of touchy subjects where we found some common ground across our professions, expect to find some gems in this one and share with people who would enjoy this.

Topics:

- Scouting Story
- Background
- How to you break through?
- Lessons from Gherardini
- Italian Scouting Culture
- Importance of Network & Information
- Lessons learned from different seasons
- Hard Conversations / Firing a Coach
- Job of a Sports Director / Picking a Coach
- Building a Roster
- Communication with Players
- Daily routine / Family Balance
- Faithful to Victory
- Philosophy - Biggest Fear
- Reading Books
- Home
- Top 3 Tools to organize yourself

Finding Nicola:

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Twitter - https://twitter.com/albero75
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Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/nicola.alberani

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