Who is Andrea Berta, Arsenal’s incoming sporting director?

Arsenal’s incoming sporting director, Andrea Berta, spent 12 years at Atletico Madrid, a period in which they had tremendous success on the pitch and regularly conducted startling business in the transfer market.

Berta joined the Spanish club in 2013, first working in their international scouting department, but the Italian quickly climbed the ranks to become sporting director four years later.

During his time there, Atletico reached the 2014 and 2016 Champions League finals and won La Liga twice (in 2014 and 2021) under Diego Simeone, while also winning the 2013 Copa del Rey, 2014 Spanish Supercopa, 2017-18 Europa League and 2018 UEFA Super Cup.

There were also some tremendous coups in the transfer market. The signings of Antoine Griezmann from Real Sociedad for €30million in 2014, who won the World Cup with France in 2018, goalkeeper Jan Oblak for €16m from Benfica, and England defender Kieran Trippier for €20m in 2019 from Tottenham Hotspur were all undoubted successes.

The club have also regularly taken in big fees for departing players, including selling Griezmann to Barcelona for €120m, home-produced defender Lucas Hernandez to Bayern for €80m, midfielder Rodri to Manchester City for €70m and midfielder Thomas Partey to Arsenal for €50m.

Yet few around the Estadio Metropolitano have credited Berta among the key figures in those achievements on and off the pitch and he left the club in January six months before his contract was up. His relationship with Simeone and the club’s chief executive Miguel Angel Gil Marin had run its course. 

Now the 53-year-old has reached an agreement to join Arsenal following Edu Gaspar’s resignation in November. The deal was driven by Arsenal’s managing director Richard Garlick and executive vice-chair Tim Lewis, with Josh Kroenke involved throughout on behalf of the ownership as well as input from manager Mikel Arteta.

The Athletic looks at Berta’s career so far and what Arsenal are getting…

Berta’s exact role in the biggest decisions at Atletico was always difficult to determine. On paper, he was in charge of the club’s sporting operations, but in practice, he was not the most important voice in transfers.

Long-serving CEO Gil Marin is Atletico’s primary decision maker, keeping tight control of the purse strings and often conducting the biggest deals personally with agents and club executives he knows well, such as Portuguese agent Jorge Mendes or Barcelona president Joan Laporta.

Manager Simeone also has very clear ideas about what players he wants and was a driving force behind the arrivals in recent summers of Luis Suarez, Rodrigo De Paul and Julian Alvarez.

Berta had a say in overall squad planning, managed the club’s scouting network, and worked with agents negotiating contracts. It was also his responsibility to make sure Atletico kept within La Liga’s strict financial control rules.

A banker by trade, Berta was in his mid-twenties before he entered football to run the football operations of semi-pro team Carpenedolo in his home province of Brescia in northern Italy. With Berta’s financial nous and scouting skills backed by wealthy local businessman Tommaso Ghirardi, Carpenedolo achieved four consecutive promotions to reach Italy’s fourth tier.

When Ghirardi took over then-bankrupt Serie A team Parma in 2007, Berta went with him. A rollercoaster two seasons saw players including Bernardo Corradi, McDonald Mariga and Cristiano Lucarelli sign, but they were relegated in the first year before being promoted back to the top flight the next season. Berta left the club following the arrival of Pietro Leonardi as managing director. 

During a hectic three-year spell at Genoa between 2009 and 2012, Berta made more than 50 signings in less than three years, including free transfer deals for then-veteran striker Luca Toni and signing Kevin-Prince Boateng from Portsmouth. The future Arsenal defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos was sold to Milan for €4.5m, bought back 12 months later for €4m, then immediately loaned to Werder Bremen for a season, after which the Greece international joined the German club on a permanent deal for €3.5m. 

Genoa survived relegation on the final day of 2011-12 having gone through three coaches that season and experienced protests from the fans. Berta left at the conclusion of that campaign and spent a year out before heading to Atletico. 

The ability to conduct complex deals, and the relationships he built with agents during that time, were very useful for Berta at Atletico. He was generally very busy in every transfer window — and plenty of players (including current Premier League players Matheus Cunha, Diogo Jota and Matt Doherty) passed through the club without making much (if any) impact on Simeone’s team.

Atletico head coach Diego Simeone (Flor Tan Jun/Getty Images)

Some of the bigger deals from Berta’s time at Atletico did not work out, most obviously the €126m (£113m) club-record signing of Portuguese playmaker Joao Felix from Benfica in 2019. Joao Felix never convinced Simeone and five difficult years passed before the club finally got him off their books, selling him to Chelsea last summer for £44.5m. The €72m paid to Monaco for French winger Thomas Lemar in the summer of 2018 has also not worked out well — though both Lemar and Joao Felix are clients of Jorge Mendes, who has a very close relationship with Gil Marin, the Atletico CEO, so Berta may not have had much involvement in those two deals.  

A regular complaint heard around Atletico during Berta’s time as sporting director centred on the arrival of players who were not obvious fits with Simeone’s tactical and physical requirements.

A lack of enough aggressive defenders in the Atletico squad, and the inability to secure a combative holding midfielder, was also pretty clear to many observers. Lucas Torreira’s loan from Arsenal in 2020-21 was one of many failed attempts to fill the latter role.

Simeone at times hinted publicly about his unhappiness with his squad’s balance and make-up, especially when results were not going their way.

Berta’s role within Atletico’s institutional framework was diminished in January 2024 when Carlos Bucero (previously at Real Madrid in 2006-2009 during Ramon Calderon’s presidency, then worked for Gestifute for over a decade) was appointed in a newly created role as football managing director.

That came as Gil Marin was focusing more and more on institutional affairs, such as his role as a vice-president at La Liga, UEFA and ECA (European Club Association), and the construction of a new training ground and leisure area beside the Estadio Metropolitano.

Bucero led Atletico’s transfer policy in the summer of 2024 as the club invested over €200m in a squad overhaul, while also successfully offloading other unwanted high earners including Alvaro Morata, Memphis Depay and Stefan Savic. Simeone was heavily involved in the signing of his fellow countryman Alvarez from Manchester City for €75m, while Gil Marin’s long relationship with Mendes was key to Joao Felix joining Chelsea and unlocking the €42m signing of Conor Gallagher.

Berta’s reduced role over the past 12 months was not so noticeable given he had always kept a very low profile. Some sporting directors at La Liga clubs are regulars on Spanish TV, before games or at UEFA competition draws, representing the team and taking questions about transfer targets or decisions. Berta rarely, if ever, spoke in public — other Atletico figures had that club spokesperson role.

Berta was contacted by The Athletic for this article but declined to comment.

Alvarez joined from Manchester City last summer (Denis Doyle/Getty Images)

Departing Real Sociedad sporting director Roberto Olabe is a figure in the above mould. At La Real, he oversees the entire football department, making hiring and firing decisions and defending them in public. Olabe was among the candidates considered by Arsenal, but the club went another way.

Berta certainly has a wealth of deal-making experience and lots of useful relationships with agents and clubs across Europe and South America. During later years at Atletico, his name was regularly linked with the sporting director vacancies at clubs including Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United and Milan.

Arsenal’s choice to fill the vacancy left by Edu’s departure suggests they were not looking for someone to bring their own grand vision about the type of football the team should be playing, or identify all the individual players who would put those ideas into action on the pitch.

Ahead of a critically important summer of recruitment, Berta is the man Arsenal will hope can close deals for their major targets. He’ll be supported by the club’s director of football operations, James King, in that pursuit.

There is more to the job than that: Arsenal are also entering a series of crucial contract negotiations. The likes of Bukayo Saka, William Saliba and Gabriel all have contracts that are set to expire in 2027. Berta’s task will be as much about keeping the group together as augmenting it with external talent.

The full scope of his role is as yet unknown. Will he, like his predecessor Edu, be granted authority over Arsenal’s women’s team and charged with the integration of the academy and men’s first team?

Given the experience from Atletico, Berta’s appointment suggests others at Arsenal will continue to have the ultimate say on the biggest deals done and decisions made.

(Top photo: David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)