Interview with Robert Lewandowski, about longevity.
His physical preparation is one thing, but we also talked about his mental longevity, his adaptability to excel under so many different coaches, & the influence of his wife, Anna.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/708...
The sooner you click onto the fact a lot of people in positions of power, prestige and influence are either pretty much clueless about what they're doing, excessively self-interested or, more likely, a potent mix of the two, the easier you'll find it to understand much of the world
09.03.2026 11:06 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
Wages remain big drain but operating costs ⬆️⬆️, making running clubs even more expensive
Change in opex as % of revenue:
• Arsenal +5% (24% of 23-24 rev, 29% in 24-25)
• Brighton +4.2%
• West Ham +3.3%
• Man Utd +3%
• Man City +1.9%
• Liverpool -0.7%
• Brentford -1.2%
Real Madrid made revenues of nearly €600million in sixth months yet ended 2025 with just €3.5million in the bank - how?
A Sunday evening share for this:
Liverpool and Manchester United want offensive posts on X by the AI chatbot Grok that reference Hillsborough, the Munich air disaster and Diogo Jota's death to be removed.
Full story from @dansheldon.bsky.social ⬇️
🔗www.nytimes.com/athletic/709...
It will always remain an affront to football that they've binned FA Cup replays so we can instead watch an extra 300 Champions League games that don't mean anything
07.03.2026 19:50 — 👍 21 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 1
New footage analysed by Bellingcat shows two of the world’s most wanted crime figures, Christy and Daniel Kinahan, appearing openly at a mixed martial arts event in Dubai, despite US sanctions and multimillion-dollar rewards for information leading to their arrest.
www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...
Real Madrid's interim financials detail falling revenues, rising wages and growing debt.
And a club still (just about) profitable, but with big liabilities and tight cash flow.
Expensive business, this football lark.
My analysis:
@theathleticfc.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/athletic/709...
It is deemed sacrilege - and of course players should get the lion's share - but wage growth (and transfer and agent fees, yes) drives the sport's enormous loss-making.
Exhibit A: Lionel Messi's contract nearly bankrupting Barca and nobody daring to acknowledge it
Real Madrid's interim financials detail falling revenues, rising wages and growing debt.
And a club still (just about) profitable, but with big liabilities and tight cash flow.
Expensive business, this football lark.
My analysis:
@theathleticfc.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/athletic/709...
Your season ticket costs more because footballers are paid too much. Hardly a TED talk but it's true
06.03.2026 13:50 — 👍 11 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 1Amid the Spurs horror and hand-wringing it is again worth saying THIS IS WHAT A SPORT SHOULD BE. Bad teams should be punished for being bad. Though it is a sign of quite how bad Spurs are that they're managing to do *this* with the odds so heavily weighted their way
06.03.2026 08:48 — 👍 16 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Have we been so consumed with the politics at Spurs this season that we have let the players off the hook? Has that lack of responsibilty contributed to Spurs' struggles?
My mea culpa column:
www.nytimes.com/athletic/708...
Publication day! My new book, "The Mbappé Project", is officially out today. It is not a biography, but an attempt to understand and explain how a football prodigy was built into a global star by his entourage and by himself, retaining control every step of the way.
uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
#LFC accounts for 2024-25 confirm club booked £104.7million profit on player sales last summer (£5m higher than projected in below piece)
Club's 2025 net spend, inc. fees on new deals for Van Dijk and Salah, was £273.4m
#LFC accounts for 2024-25 confirm club booked £104.7million profit on player sales last summer (£5m higher than projected in below piece)
Club's 2025 net spend, inc. fees on new deals for Van Dijk and Salah, was £273.4m
Two league wins in four months!
04.03.2026 21:51 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Just very difficult to overstate how much trouble Spurs are in now
04.03.2026 21:39 — 👍 9 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 1
Went to see the Xmas one. Good God.
Oddly I don't mind the movie as much. The TV show is so bad I see the former in an okay light. The worst thing is he doesn't even get that much TV but when he does it is this he demands, every time, without fail
Wolves! Has a team ever stayed up by mistake?
03.03.2026 21:51 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0AND YET newly promoted Sunderland have 40 points in the Premier League, something they didn't manage in any of their five previous Premier League seasons. With nine games left. Some going
03.03.2026 21:45 — 👍 12 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0My son is maddeningly obsessed with Paw Patrol. I, therefore, as is the equilibrium of the universe, despise Paw Patrol. And yet Leeds v Sunderland was so astonishingly awful to watch that I found myself half-hoping he'd wake, scale the stair gate, come downstairs and demand I put Paw Patrol on
03.03.2026 21:45 — 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0Ooh thank you, will see what I can do
03.03.2026 13:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0👊 hope she's doing okay with them - our son is great with his albeit seems to be slowly realising he can yank them out when he doesn't want to listen to us 😃
03.03.2026 12:59 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Highly leveraged!
bsky.app/profile/cwea...
Can't tell you how important normalising this stuff is
03.03.2026 11:48 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
Burnley under current ownership
Sunderland under previous group
There'll be others but very few and far between
They can use losses to offset tax charges elsewhere but it's still money they're spending
Re: graphs, do you mean owner funding ones? Answer is no, but can do
Stoke City made a profit in 2024-25! But only after £90m owner loan write-off. Strip that and £4m cost linked to ground returning to club hands and #SCFC lost further £25m last season
Coates family put in £46m cash, taking total funding since May 2006 takeover to nearly £400m
Stoke City made a profit in 2024-25! But only after £90m owner loan write-off. Strip that and £4m cost linked to ground returning to club hands and #SCFC lost further £25m last season
Coates family put in £46m cash, taking total funding since May 2006 takeover to nearly £400m
