Sven Mislintat appointment shows Arsenal are preparing for life after Arsene Wenger

Few people in football can boast as impressive a C.V. as Sven Mislintat. He’s the guy credited with unearthing Shinji Kagawa, Robert Lewandowski, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembele among others. He’s the guy who has done just as much as anyone else to sustain Borussia Dortmund as a German football force. And now, he’s an Arsenal employee.

Indeed, the Gunners have pulled off quite the coup by luring Mislintat to the Emirates Stadium as their new head of recruitment. Mislintat has been at Dortmund for over a decade, building a legacy for himself at the Bundesliga club, rejecting the advances of Bayern Munich just two months ago. But Arsenal have succeeded where the Bavarians failed.

On the face of it, Mislintat is merely replacing Steve Rowley as Arsenal’s head scout after 25 years of service. However, this appointment is of much greater significance for the Gunners. This is a sign that, finally, they are preparing for life after Arsene Wenger. This is a sign that they are changing the structure of the club.

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“We are delighted that Sven is joining us,” Wenger told the club’s website following the official announcement of Mislintat’s arrival. “Identifying and developing talent is a core part of our philosophy and Sven has an outstanding track record over many years. We look forward to him taking our existing recruitment approach forwards.”

The Gunners are also expected to secure the hiring of Michael Zorc as their new director of football, completing a raid of Borussia Dortmund – a club heralded for their self-sustaining system and structure as a club. Between Mislintat and Zorc, Arsenal’s front office will undergo a fundamental overhaul, completely changing the way things are currently done at the Emirates.

By hiring such high profile figures to backroom positions, Arsenal are effectively diluting Wenger’s power. Have the Gunners really swooped for two of the most revered talent-finders in the European game to ignore them and instead rely on the French manager? It seems unlikely. This is a public recognition that change is required.

Of course, Arsenal have become a club stuck in their ways. Wenger originally modernised the Gunners upon his arrival in the Premier League in the late 1990s, but his ways and methods have grown stagnant in the time since. Arsenal have been in need of a shake up for a long, long time. This is that shake up.

This might ready the ground for Wenger to leave as Gunners boss. Arsenal witnessed the impact of Sir Alex Ferguson’s exit as Manchester United manager, with the Scot’s hold over the Old Trafford club just as tight as Wenger’s is on Arsenal. Where he retired, United were left lacking the structure in place to succeed without him. The Gunners are ensuring they don’t make the same mistake, and that should be commended.

The idea now, surely, is that Mislintat and Zorc will help impose a holistic identity on their new club, one which is moulded by Wenger, but only in part. Arsenal must become about more than just one man and these appointments, one confirmed and one reportedly impending, is a watershed in that strategical development.

Rowley himself has built up quite the C.V. for himself over the years, helping to sign the likes of Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Patrick Vieira, but it has become apparent in recent years that his influence was on the wane. Even if that hadn’t been the case, Arsenal are a club in desperate need of fresh ideas and fresh guidance. Mislintat and Zorc will bring that, along with hopefully a whole host of talented players over the next few years.