Arsenal badge outside Emirates stadium
Arsenal badge outside Emirates stadium
Board seats in a new league are how short tenures get a second act. A contract terminated on Monday can be a five-person panel by the next one.
Global jobs that cover three clubs sound grand until the holder stops going to games. February at the City Ground was the last sighting. Spring was the real ending.
Arsenal supporters will read the name and remember the recruitment years, not Sofia. The CV still starts in north London.
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Edu has joined Bulgarian champions Levski Sofia after his contract as Nottingham Forest’s global head of football was terminated last week. The Athletic report that the 48-year-old is one of five new directors on the Levski board. The club have not named his exact title. The board will elect a chairman and executive director at its next meeting.
Levski said: “His experience in sports strategy, selection, talent development and organizational building will be an important asset for the club on its path to a sustainable and competitive football structure.”
He left Arsenal in 2025 after five years, two of them as sporting director following a spell as the club’s first technical director. Forest hired him in July 2025 to work across recruitment, performance and squad strategy for Evangelos Marinakis’s group, which also includes Olympiacos and Rio Ave.
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It did not last. The Athletic first reported in March that he was on his way out. He had not been to a Forest home game since Liverpool visited in February and was not involved in Oliver Glasner’s appointment as head coach in July. Forest do not plan to replace the role that was built around him.
Levski won the Bulgarian title last season and ended Ludogorets’ world-record run of 14 straight championships. That is the project Edu is joining: a champion trying to turn a first title in years into a structure that lasts.
For Arsenal the link is historical. He was part of the early Arteta rebuild, the technical director who helped shape recruitment before Andrea Berta’s later era. There is no suggestion he is returning to the Emirates. This is a Bulgarian board after an English experiment that never settled.
Seven days between a terminated Forest contract and a Levski announcement is abrupt even by modern football standards. The quote is about strategy and talent. The story is a former Arsenal sporting director starting again in Sofia, with the job title still to be voted on.
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta - FIFA VAR
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta - FIFA VAR