Sam Jewell: The ex-golfer who is the latest senior figure Chelsea have hired from Brighton

Editor’s note: This article was first published on December 27. It has been updated to reflect the news that Sam Jewell has accepted a senior role at Chelsea and will become the latest figure to leave Brighton & Hove Albion for Stamford Bridge. 

Brighton & Hove Albion’s head of recruitment, Sam Jewell, is 10 years younger than their head coach Roberto De Zerbi — but the Italian trusts his judgment.

“He’s a top guy, my friend,” the 44-year-old De Zerbi says of Jewell. “He worked very well in the last transfer market (the summer 2023 window). He’s very young, but he has a big talent, big passion. He knows all players in the world… like me!”

Brighton’s business during that summer window included the coup of capturing Ansu Fati on loan from Barcelona, the latest in a list of eye-catching signings involving Jewell. He previously had a big hand in landing midfielders Alexis Mac Allister and Moises Caicedo, who were sold on for huge profits.

In October, Jewell turned down interest from Rangers in becoming their technical director to continue his work at Brighton but where the Scottish club failed, Chelsea have succeeded.

The Athletic reveals how Jewell has worked his way up to become a transfer mastermind, a journey that includes the influence of his football-manager dad, starting out as an agency scout, and plotting deals in his former golf coach’s living room.

Jewell grew up in the world of professional football through his father. Paul Jewell was a centre-forward for Wigan Athletic and Bradford City before taking charge of both clubs during a 20-year career in management that included spells at Sheffield Wednesday, Derby County and Ipswich Town. There is a family connection to Brighton — Jewell Sr was briefly on trial at the club during the latter stages of his playing days.

Jewell Jr experienced the highs and lows with his dad from a young age. Paul, speaking before steering Bradford City to the Premier League for the first time in the club’s history in 1998-99 with a win away against Wolverhampton Wanderers on the final day of the season, said: “There is pressure and even my kids are feeling it.

“My son Sam is a nervous wreck. He loves football but hates the games because, even at nine, he knows what is at stake and just how much it means to his dad. That is difficult but that is football.”

Jewell celebrates Bradford’s promotion to the Premier League in 1999 (Ross Kinnaird /Allsport via Getty Images)

Paul led Wigan from the third tier to the Premier League. Former Brighton defender Chris Hutchings, who followed Paul as his assistant from Bradford City to Wigan and Derby, says: “Sam was always floating about and very keen on football, he wanted to get into football.

“He used to come to the matches with all the family. Paul had a fantastic record as a manager with the amount of promotions we had and some of the way Paul thought, I would imagine Sam would have followed suit.

“He was always with us before games and after games. He was brought up with football in mind, that’s for sure, and golf, very sports-minded. When your dad has been a professional footballer, you tend to be quite sporty yourself. You’ve got it in your genes.”

Jewell was in the academies at Leeds United and Bradford City. He says he “inherited my old man’s pace — which wasn’t a lot!”. He suffered from knee injuries and stopped playing at the age of 13.

Although Jewell was not good enough to follow in his father’s footsteps as a professional footballer, he could have made the grade as a professional golfer.

He was the Yorkshire under-16 champion in 2005, playing off a handicap of three. Paul was his caddy when he reached the last 16 of the Yorkshire Amateur Championships in 2007, the year Sam made it through to the last 32 of the British Boys’ Amateur Championship at Royal Porthcawl in Wales.

He was playing off scratch (a handicap of 0 or better) by then, competing in a field that included GB and European Ryder Cup regular and six-time European tour event winner Tommy Fleetwood.

Jewell was coached by the former European tour player Doug McClelland, who tied for 14th place in the 1973 British Open. He stayed with McClelland at Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, honing his game at the Silvermere club, where his tutor was managing director and director of golf for 30 years.

Paul and Sam on the course (Photo courtesy of Paul Jewell)

McClelland says: “He got to a very high standard by the age of 17 and 18. He’s a powerful lad and he had a big game. He shot a lot of low scores and I wanted him to turn pro. He had a better chance of making it than not making it.”

McClelland had a contact at the renowned David Leadbetter academy in the U.S. He encouraged Jewell Sr to send his son to Florida so that he could practise more regularly in a warmer climate.

“He didn’t quite hit it off,” McClelland says. “We started working on his game again, got it in really good shape. I was really hopeful he would start to make progress, then out of the blue he suddenly said, ‘I don’t think this is for me’.

“I would have kept him at it and encouraged him to turn pro. He had everything needed to be a success. It’s tough to be a golf pro — the competition and standard is high — but Sam was that good. But he decided to get into football.”

Jewell could have been a professional, according to good judges (Photo courtesy of Paul Jewell)

Jewell is an occasional golfer nowadays, sometimes returning to Bradford Golf Club where he grew up playing the game and where his father has been a member for more than 20 years. McClelland says: “He’s still a very good golfer, but his job is so time-consuming that he doesn’t get to play much now.”

The Jewell family still have a second home in Florida, a legacy of Sam’s golfing promise.

Jewell initially gained experience of working inside the football industry in a scouting role for over three years with the HN Sports agency in Leeds, owned by players’ representative Hayden Evans.

“It came about after a phone call from his dad,” Evans says. “I knew Paul and he got in touch to ask if we’d give him a go or find a role for him. Paul wasn’t pushy or anything — he just said, ‘He’s a hard-working lad who might have an eye for this sort of work, but you judge it yourself’.

“Paul’s point was that even if it didn’t work out with us or in agency work, it might do him good to see how things worked on our side of the fence.”

The client list of the experienced Evans included former Leeds greats such as David Batty and the late Gary Speed. He represents some of the cream of the young crop at Elland Road: Jamie Shackleton, Charlie Cresswell and Archie Gray.

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Jewell’s acumen and diligence enabled him to thrive before moving into the club environment, in the first instance in a part-time role for two months as Newport County’s opposition scout in League Two.

Evans says: “I’ve nothing but good things to say about Sam. We’re still in touch. For a while now, we’ve looked at taking on players at the younger end of things and Sam had a very good eye for a player. When he went into the club side of things, he went with our blessing.

“You need some natural talent to be a scout, but you need the right work ethic — and his was second to none. You get some scouts who go to a game, go inside 10 minutes before half-time for a cup of tea, watch a bit of the second half and then fill out an expenses sheet. He was the opposite of that.”

Jewell was prepared to graft without earning a regular wage in the early stages of his career in scouting and recruitment. He was paid expenses only while working as chief scout at League One side Swindon Town for 10 months under manager Luke Williams between 2015 and 2016.

“We got off on the right foot because he showed me he was committed,” Williams says. “I suggested spending a few weeks with me and my staff, watching training and games, to get a really good understanding of what I wanted to do with the team, then he could try to put together the targets for next season.

“He was such a great guy, hilarious but passionate about football, which is a great mixture because you spend a lot of time together. It’s all quite intense, but he has such a great personality. He can laugh and joke with you one minute and then be serious. He’s football smart in that he shows you total respect, but then he has an opinion. I’m sure he picked stuff up from his father, but he managed himself and I was really impressed by that.”

Williams, who is now manager of League Two high-fliers Notts County, was taken aback when Jewell produced his list of targets. He says: “The level of work he did on the list was top drawer. He knew how much a player’s salary was, how much it would cost to get them out of the club, how long was left on the contract, where the player was based — he knew everything about every player on the list. And when I looked through the list, one at a time, I thought, ‘100 per cent I would like this player, this one’s perfect, I hadn’t even thought of this bloke’. It was superb.”

Williams, now Notts County manager, worked with Jewell at Swindon (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)

The fruits of Jewell’s labour were never seen at Swindon due to a reluctance to invest. “I’m not surprised he’s done so well,” says Williams, a former coach of Brighton’s under-21s. “He’s an outstanding guy, really smart and intelligent. He has an edge to him as well. You can feel it in his company. That’s why he has gone on to be top. You don’t get to where he’s got to by being wishy-washy.

“He was so switched on and sharp. He’s still a young guy but he has the appearance of somebody much more senior because of his confidence and his intelligence. I’m happy I got to work with him, even for a short time.”

Jewell joined Brighton as under-21s recruitment manager in 2016 when they were a Championship club. He worked closely with head of recruitment Paul Winstanley, academy manager John Morling, and under-21s coach Simon Rusk, who have all since left the club.

That was before the introduction of Brexit restrictions following the UK’s departure from the European Union, which made it more complicated to trade in young talent in Europe.

Jewell had extensive exposure to the European market for the first time. He was involved in sourcing and signing Norwegian central defender Leo Ostigard (now at Napoli) and Swedish striker Viktor Gyokeres, who is at Sporting Lisbon via Coventry City.

Part of Brighton’s model is to reward staff performing well with internal promotions. In 2018, during the club’s second season in the Premier League, Jewell was appointed to the newly created role of ‘emerging talent scouting manager’.

In the post-Brexit world, Brighton began to look at markets further afield, particularly South America. Jewell had been in the job for six months when owner-chairman Tony Bloom’s desire to reduce the age of the squad by investing in young players and creating a pathway to the first team was accentuated by the appointment of Graham Potter as head coach in place of Chris Hughton.

Jewell showed initiative by learning a new language when normal life and football came to a standstill during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, which assisted in the signings from South America of Mac Allister, Caicedo, Facundo Buonanotte and Julio Enciso.

“I learnt Spanish during lockdown and it has helped me communicate with players when I’ve been out there and in selling the project to the players’ families,” says Jewell. “Remember, no English is spoken out there, so I’d like to think that speaking Spanish has played a small part in helping the guys join us.

“The only way you’re going to attract the top young talent is if they can see a route into the first team, given you’re competing against some of the biggest clubs in the world. That’s what happened with Alexis, Moises, Facundo and Julio — we could sell them a pathway to the first team relatively quickly.”

The sales in the summer of Argentina midfielder Mac Allister to Liverpool and Ecudaor midfielder Caicedo to Chelsea could end up fetching Brighton a total of £170million, while Mac Allister’s 18-year-old compatriot Buonanotte and injured fellow forward Enciso, 19, from Paraguay are big prospects for the future.

Mac Allister’s success at Brighton led to a move to Liverpool (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Jewell’s former golf coach McClelland was one of the few people who had an inkling about Brighton’s transfer dealings as a consequence of their enduring friendship.

Jewell would stay with McClelland at his home in Surrey, waking up at 7am for the 60-mile drive to Brighton’s training complex in Lancing, before eventually relocating.

“He did half of the team from my front room,” says McClelland. “I knew what was going on. He did well, made himself speak Spanish. He was on the phone to (people in) Colombia and all over the place. He was sometimes sat down to dinner and then off to the front room, not wanting me to hear the conversation.

“He’s done a great job and Brighton are great to watch. He’s a great friend and a top lad. He’s got his head screwed on and he knows his football. Brighton have got a find.”

Jewell was promoted again to become Brighton’s head of recruitment, initially on an interim basis in November last year and then permanently since February, after Winstanley left to join Chelsea as co-sporting director.

He continues to shine, which attracted the attention of Rangers. Jewell has a strong relationship with Brighton’s technical director, David Weir.

He spoke with the former Rangers defender before turning down their interest, but it is an indication of Jewell’s growing reputation within the game.

Players’ agent Ian Ryder, head of operations at Unique Sports Group, says: “He’s a very talented, likeable guy. He’s hard-working, open-minded in the sense that Brighton go (to markets) where other clubs don’t. One week he could be in South America, the next week in Turkey.

“That is what gets stuff done. Where Brighton have their success is convincing players that Brighton is the right place for them. They do that well by getting out there, putting the miles in. They convinced Ansu Fati to come to Brighton — he probably had 50 clubs he could have gone to.”

Jewell continues to work in new markets. Adrian Mazilu, regarded as a hot prospect in Romania, will join Brighton in the January transfer window. The 18-year-old winger signed in the summer before he was loaned back to Farul Constanta.

Mark Beard, formerly Brighton’s under-18s coach, says of Jewell: “A lovely, personable guy. His dad has been in football, so Sam is not one of those office-type people. He’s on the ground, looking at games all the time and knows everyone.

“You find that people like that who have been around changing rooms with their dad at the top level know the game without realising that he was learning all the time.

“All players like him as well. A lot of scouts or heads of recruitment don’t really get to know them, but with him, he knows the players personally.

“He’s built relationships with a lot of clubs through his dad and through himself, which is the most important thing in recruitment. It’s about the characters and how they do things — that’s what he is good at.”

(Top photos: Paul Hazlewood/BHAFC and Getty Images)