It’s fitting that an organization that used to be called the MetroStars, which now has a badge that says Red Bull New York, but operates a team called the New York Red Bulls, would extend their flair for semantic adjustment to their executive roles.
When Kevin Thelwell was hired by the club just over two years ago, he was not given the same sporting director title he had at English club Wolverhampton Wanderers. He was not even given the American-style general manager designation still used by some MLS teams. Instead Thelwell was named Head of Sport for the New York Red Bulls, a previously non-existent title (at the club or…the entire global game) that symbolized both the makeshift nature of the role he was hired for as well as the distance his tasks had from the conventional purview of a sporting executive.