Norwich City recruitment chief Mariela Nisotaki departs following contract termination
Norwich City recruitment chief Mariela Nisotaki has left the club after eight years at Carrow Road.
The highly-rated talent spotter is understood to have formally left City last month ahead of a move to become head of talent acquisition at Sports Republic – who have Southampton, Valenciennes and Goztepe in their stable of clubs.
Nisotaki was promoted to the role of assistant head of recruitment last summer, where she was working in conjunction with department head Lee Dunn. Norwich will look to replace her in the position ahead of the summer transfer window.
Prior to her promotion, Nisotaki spent three years as the club’s head of emerging talent and has also served in a host of recruitment roles, including lead technical and intelligence scout, European and domestic lead scout and lead recruitment analyst.
Nisotaki also played a key role in helping City’s South American scouting operation that led to the arrival of Gabriel Sara and Marcelino Nunez. She made constant trips to the region and helped the club gain a foothold on the continent.
Alongside Dunn and City’s sporting director Ben Knapper, Nisotaki has helped drive the new strategy of signing younger players to lower the average age of the squad under Johannes Hoff Thorup.
The Greek joined City from Atromitos Athens in January 2017, having previously worked as a performance analyst at Swansea.
Nisotaki is one of the few women to have held a senior recruitment positions within the men’s game and regarded as one of European football’s pioneers.
Nisotaki spoke to the Pink Un in 2020 about her role and the reality of being one of the few women working in recruitment facing roles with the men’s game across the world.
“I don’t find it difficult, probably because I was used to working with men because every time I was coaching I was communicating and working with men,” she explained. “There’s a lot of discrimination in general in society, which is more important than women in football, but one thing I always say is that your difference is probably your strength, whether it’s women in football or something else.
“So for me it’s an advantage, I see it like that, and if you are working hard enough and you are confident in yourself, it’s an advantage because people remember me. If I go to a stadium they remember ‘this is Mariela from Norwich’, so that’s good.
“It’s challenging but that’s good. It’s challenging for everyone when you are working in professional football – for women and men.”
Leave a Reply