Latest news with #EnglishFootball
The National
2 days ago
- Business
- The National
Deloitte warns uncertainty over English football regulator hampering investment
The English football system is 'under strain' and a lack of clarity around how it will be regulated in the future is 'unhelpful' to would-be investors, according to a new report. Europe's 'Big Five' leagues generated more than €20 billion (£16.9 billion, $22.8 billion) for the first time in season 2023-24, Deloitte's latest Annual Review of Football Finance found, with Premier League clubs reporting aggregate revenue of £6.3 billion ($8.5 billion). An independent regulator for England's top five leagues is set to be created by the Football Governance Bill after it has completed its progress through the UK Parliament, but concerns remain – particularly at top-flight level – about the impact of regulation on the league's growth potential and ability to attract fresh investment. Tim Bridge, lead partner in Deloitte Sports Business Group, also believes issues around the competitiveness of the Premier League must be addressed. 'There can be no doubt that the system in English football is under strain,' he wrote in the foreword to the report published on Thursday. 'Repeated reports of fan unrest at ticket price and accessibility demonstrate the challenge in the modern era of balancing commercial growth with the historic essence of a football club's role and position in society: as a community asset. 'We still await the output of the Independent Football Regulator to fully understand how this may impact the game in England, but it is clear that the way in which the game is governed and the regulation that underpins it needs to seek to drive value, fan engagement (both physical and digital) and competitive balance. 'The two most recent seasons (2023-24 and 2024-25) underscore the challenge, as in each season all three clubs promoted from the Championship were subsequently relegated after just one season in the Premier League. 'The financial implications of the 'yo-yo effect' on clubs, their spending and overall competitiveness are major factors to address in order to continue attracting high levels of investment across the system. 'This should though be viewed by all those running the game as an opportunity. The level of interest and the demand to engage with English football remains high and investors still see the opportunity, particularly when there is a strong community link or adjacent investment opportunities, but the lack of clarity over the future regulatory regime is now unhelpful.' Mr Bridge noted other top leagues are closely observing how the English regulator takes shape, highlighting an economic report by Spain's LaLiga in 2022-23 which welcomed the introduction of a regulator in England to help contain inflationary pressure on wages and other football spending. The Deloitte report again illustrated how far ahead the Premier League is of its 'Big Five' rivals, with its aggregate revenue almost double that of the next highest earner LaLiga – whose clubs generated a combined €3.8 billion in 2023-24.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Sporting director confirms Liverpool beat 'giant' clubs to new signing
Liverpool's second signing of the summer is Armin Pecsi from Puskas Akademia. The Hungarian international is the second player from his nation to currently represents the Reds. He'll join Dominik Szoboszlai in the Liverpool first team, where he's expected to occupy the number three role behind Giorgi Mamardashvili and Alisson Becker. Advertisement That means he'll also be playing U21 football in the Premier League 2 where he'll be tasked with adjusting to the demands of English football. It's an exciting and long-term signing for the Reds. Pecsi is highly rated and has a growing reputation among European clubs.
New York Times
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ravel Morrison interview: Older, wiser and ‘moving on' after Manchester United troubles
If you have any preconceptions about Ravel Morrison — and, let's face it, many people do — it might come as a surprise that, close up, he is not the person you may expect him to be. For someone who is regularly portrayed as one of the bad-boys of English football, it turns out he is actually rather pleasant company. Advertisement This alleged troublemaker wants to know if he can fetch me a coffee. Maybe something from the fruit bowl? He thanks me for coming and asks how I will be getting home. Only little things, you might think, but not every footballer is so courteous. There is humour, too. At one point, mid-interview, a friend wanders over to say hello. Morrison gets up from his seat to introduce everyone and explains that The Athletic's correspondent is, in fact, the 'chief scout from Real Madrid'. And for a brief moment, his mate falls for it — maybe because, even now, if you put Morrison into a training session with the stars of the Bernabeu, you would expect him to hold his own. As it is, his career has taken a different path since those early days at Manchester United when Sir Alex Ferguson regarded him as the most talented boy he had seen during all his years in charge. The boy has become a man. Morrison is 32 now — older, wiser, a lot more worldly than the kid who got into trouble, ended up in court and left Old Trafford without fulfilling that rare potential. So why does it remain so difficult for him, all these years on, to break free from his past? 'Even now, I can guarantee that if I signed for a club in England, the headline in all the newspapers would be something negative,' he says. 'If another player at United gets into trouble, he's always 'the next Ravel'. Anything that anyone does wrong gets linked to my name. It pops up on my Instagram and I'm thinking, 'Oh, not again… how many years is this now?'. 'What I've found is that if you get a reputation early on, it can stick with you through life. Or it does with me, anyway. 'So many people have formed an opinion about me, but those opinions are based on things that happened 10 to 15 years ago. I'm 32 now. I've played football around the world and had a good career. I'm not a kid of 16 or 17 anymore.' Advertisement He has spent the past nine months at Precision FC, a British-owned club in Dubai that was founded in 2023 and hailed his arrival last September as 'more than a signing — it's a statement, a game-changer for both our club and football in the United Arab Emirates'. Playing abroad has never fazed Morrison, from Lazio in Italy's Serie A to Atlas in Mexico's Liga MX, as well as spells with Swedish club Ostersund, Dutch team ADO Den Haag and a stint in the United States with DC United. The experiences, he says, have taught him a lot about football and life in general. Recently, though, he has set his mind on moving home and reminding English audiences of the talent that saw him light up the Premier League, all too briefly, in West Ham's colours. Steve McClaren, Jamaica's national manager, has stated publicly — as well as telling Morrison in person — that he needs to return to Europe to play at a higher level. 'The level is not the best,' Morrison says, almost apologetically, about football in the UAE, where Precision FC play in the third tier. 'The club have been very good to me. Training is good. We've got a lot of good players and it's a nice life. I'd just like to be playing at a higher level. 'In Dubai, we're beating teams 7-1 week in, week out. I can go into games thinking, 'It's going to be easy today'. It's too easy — you feel like you're not developing.' So, who has been in touch? Well, lots of people, inevitably. Everyone knows about Morrison's talent, his vision and ability to play passes that other footballers do not even see. It's just not that straightforward when notoriety clings to you like superglue. 'I do believe I can play in the Championship — easy,' says Morrison. 'The frustrating thing is I'm not getting the opportunity. 'My agent has spoken to a lot of sporting directors, chief scouts and heads of recruitment, and we've got really close (to an agreement). Then they get the manager's opinion and it becomes, 'Ah, but he's done this, he's done that', and they are speaking about things that happened when I was a kid. Time has moved on, it's over a decade ago. But it's crazy sometimes how people don't move on.' In football, it has always been easier to get a bad name than to lose one. In Morrison's case, however, he has been such a subject of fascination that it is difficult to think of any modern-day player since Mario Balotelli, with Manchester City, who has had so many wild stories attached to his name. Advertisement So we go through a small selection, one by one. Was it true, on his first day at Lazio, that Morrison decided he had to leave Rome because they did not serve salad cream in the club canteen? 'I've never heard that one,' he says, and now he's laughing. 'No salad cream? I'd just take my own salad cream!' At West Ham, did he complain about his accommodation because he was convinced it was haunted? 'Ahahaha! I haven't got a clue where that's come from, either. Honestly, every time I speak to someone different, there is a story that I had never heard before.' Was he a beer monster? No, again — the man sitting here today is virtually teetotal. Yet when he appeared on the Undr the Cosh podcast recently, one of the presenters told Morrison he had always assumed he must be a big boozer. 'That was a mad thing to hear,' says Morrison. 'I don't know how anyone ever got that idea. I will maybe have a drink if it's Christmas or a special occasion like a birthday. But I don't go out drinking at weekends, or even once a month, because it just doesn't appeal to me. 'Then I went on Undr the Cosh and (more laughter) they asked if it was true I'd p***ed in (Birmingham City manager) Lee Clark's pond while I was supposed to be looking after his fish.' So where does all this come from? And here's a wider question about the way Morrison is often depicted: would it have been different if this were a white kid? Morrison, raised in the same Manchester suburb as Marcus Rashford, takes a few seconds before answering that one. 'I think so, yeah. There have been a lot of players — and I don't want to say names — who have got into trouble, been caught drinking and dragged out of nightclubs, and it's all forgotten about. I get in trouble once and it is still used against me all these years later.' It is a difficult, complex subject, and, to be clear, Morrison makes the point more than once that he has done some 'stupid things' and has to take personal responsibility. Advertisement At West Ham, there were occasions when he missed training because he had been up all night on his PlayStation. 'I was still really young (19) when I moved to London. When you're on the PlayStation, you feel like you've been on an hour, but when you look at the time, it's three in the morning and you've been on for four hours. 'I just couldn't wake up sometimes. They were easy mistakes to make — stupid mistakes, yeah — but it's not like I was out drinking in town every weekend and having fights. It was only once in a blue moon when I would be late.' More seriously, there was the 2011 case at Trafford youth court when a 17-year-old Morrison, three months after his Manchester United debut, pleaded guilty to two offences of intimidating a court witness — the 15-year-old victim of a street robbery perpetrated by two of Morrison's friends — and was given a 12-month referral order. 'I do feel unfairly represented sometimes,' he says. 'But then again, I have to look at myself because it all stems from my own mistakes. I did some things that were wrong and I can't blame anyone but myself.' Did United do enough to help the teenager through his behavioural issues? In court, it was noticeable that nobody from Old Trafford went along to support him. Those of us who sat through the proceedings heard the judge questioning whether United were providing suitable care. One detail, in particular, stood out: that Morrison had been diagnosed with ADHD and was not taking his medication, on United's say-so, because the club had concerns it would breach anti-doping rules. It was a difficult position for all concerned, but especially Morrison. 'I was on medication at first, but then it got stopped,' the player says. 'I don't know if it was (a ruling from) FIFA itself, because of the restrictions. But they (United) couldn't let me take it. It's not United's fault, though, because if it's a banned substance, there is nothing you can do. They were protecting me from being banned.' Advertisement Fourteen years on, Morrison still has an apartment in Manchester, meaning he can be close to his mother, Sharon, and two younger brothers. He admits to feeling homesick at times. A typical evening, he says, is to 'watch a series on TV, chill and get in bed'. It doesn't sound very rock 'n roll, but Morrison is coming to a point in his life when the conversation can also veer off-subject into debating Manchester's one-way traffic system. He likes to play padel and, if he is home, he will meet some of his old team-mates for a Tuesday night kickabout. People who meet him are often surprised by how much he loves his sport and how open and friendly he is. Not once has he blamed ADHD for his past issues. The caricature of Morrison, of course, is very different. But that is his point: it's a caricature. Or why, for example, would Wayne Rooney, his former Old Trafford colleague, sign him twice for both Derby County and DC United? 'I've got on with every manager I've played for: Wayne Rooney, Lee Clark, Jonathan Woodgate (Middlesbrough), Chris Wilder (Sheffield United), Harry Redknapp (Birmingham), Ian Holloway (Queens Park Rangers), many others, too. Despite what people think of me, I have never had a toxic relationship with any manager, ever.' His happiest time in football? That was at West Ham, he says, where the fans loved his skills and Morrison left the impression that he was on first-name terms with the ball. For the record, he speaks highly of Sam Allardyce, too. Yes, they did fall out, as widely reported, when Allardyce allegedly put pressure on Morrison during contract talks to link up with his own agent (a claim denied by the manager). And yes, Allardyce did use his 2015 autobiography to question whether Morrison was cut out to be an elite footballer. But maybe it says something about Morrison that he prefers to remember happier times rather than harbouring a grudge. Advertisement 'I got on really well with Sam until that disagreement about the contract,' he says. 'I haven't read his book. He's said what he's said, but I've only got good things to say about him.' As for Manchester United, Morrison retains fond memories of the club that took him on, aged eight, a few days after the boyhood Arsenal fan was released from Manchester City's junior system for allegedly being too small. 'I do wish I had never left United,' he says. 'If you speak to Warren Joyce (formerly United's youth coach), they all loved me. I'd always bring a good vibe, I was never negative. 'I got on with Sir Alex — I haven't seen him since I left, but I'd love to have a chat with him — and I remember (one of Ferguson's assistants) Rene Meuelensteen telling me I shouldn't leave. 'I don't think I was difficult to manage. I just didn't see any real opportunity to get in the team when they already had Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and so many others. United were in Champions League finals, winning Premier Leagues. I didn't want to hang on any longer.' Reflecting on his career since then, Morrison will admit he has not lived up to the potential that saw him, as a teenager, hailed as the future of English football. He knows he has fallen short. He has, however, won 20 caps for Jamaica since switching allegiances in 2020. His heart is set on representing the Reggae Boyz at the World Cup and he is firmly in McClaren's plans. And beyond that? Morrison has already started his coaching qualifications. 'Football is a very simple game,' says a man with the most complicated of stories.
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
PSG and Inter prepare to serve up a continental treat in Bigger Cup final
With the 2024-25 season in Uefa-land drawing to its glamorous close, is there a better time to assess how the whole thing went down with everything considered in the round? Yes! But Football Daily doesn't publish on Sunday morning, so let's make the best of a bad lot. And it's been a good year for English football all right. Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United went to the artistic and creative mecca of Bilbao and staged what can only be described as a dirty protest, a Chelsea squad worth £1,400,000,000 struggled against (though eventually steamrollered) a team collectively priced at 0.96% of a Mykhailo Mudryk, and it's fair to say the rest of the continent will be extremely glad to see the back of us. It was a close-run thing that there's no English representation in Saturday's Bigger Cup final, mind you. Paris Saint-Germain may have reached tomorrow's mega-game by beating all four Premier League contenders, but it wouldn't have taken too much for matters to pan out in a very different way altogether. Perhaps if Manchester City hadn't, for a couple of John Bondian months, reverted to their 1977-2009 norm? Perhaps if Willian Pacho hadn't been able to clear Ian Maatsen's fine volley off the line during the last knockings at Villa Park? What if Liverpool's analytics department had told Jürgen Klopp to cool his boots over Darwin Núñez? And how about a world in which Mikel Arteta didn't spend his life obsessing over WWE-style corner routines and turned the attackers loose instead? Give the old open play a quick go? See what happens? Eh? The slim margins. And so it's fair to say the rest of the continent will be extremely glad to see the back of us. And yet, having said all that, Internazionale aren't necessarily guaranteed to bring big smiles to the big event either. Anyone who speaks fondly of their 1964 and 1965 champions, Helenio Herrera, catenaccio, liberos and all, are trying way too hard, lying both to you and themselves. There's a reason even some Rangers fans were cock-a-hoop when Celtic's Lisbon Lions did their thing. Inter's 2010 winners, meanwhile, are solely remembered these days for driving Barcelona up the wall and round the bend, the final that year almost an afterthought for José Mourinho, his main goal of breaking Po' Pep's noggin already achieved. Although to be scrupulously fair, Romelu Lukaku provided some primetime Saturday-night light entertainment two years ago when keeping goal for Manchester City. So it's swings and roundabouts. This year Inter could finally feature in a showpiece to remember, as anyone who watched their latest iteration's gloriously batty defenestration of Barcelona in the semi-finals can attest. Admittedly their 7-6 aggregate win denied everyone the dream final showdown of Lamine Yamal and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, but it'd be churlish to deny Inter their destiny after their role in that instant classic, two matches that scraped the sky before finally breaking into heaven when Francesco Acerbi, 83½, celebrated his campaign-saving stunner with a joyous Fred-Astaire-style mid-air heel-click. Anything similarly thrilling and life-affirming tomorrow – e.g. Davide Frattesi pulling off exactly the same celebration but backwards and in high heels – and it'll be an occasion to remember. We're not there for a start, so have fun, Europe! Follow England 4-2 Portugal in the Women's Nations League with Xaymaca Awoyungbo tonight (7.45pm BST). And don't forget to join us for Bigger Cup buildup on Saturday, before PSG 1-2 Inter (aet) live with Scott Murray (8pm BST). 'It doesn't take a genius to work out that every attacking stat for Arsenal is down from what it was last year when they finished second. Then they finished second again. Whether it was the manager, or whether it was the top brass whose decision was it to go into the season without having a striker, it's cost them dearly because they never really put up a serious fight to Liverpool' – Alan Shearer gets his chat on with Alexander Abnos, and appears to fancy a gig with AFTV. 'How do Chelsea fans feel about a £1bn+ investment yielding the Conference League trophy? To paraphrase Tina Turner, Wroclaw Got To Do With It?' – Peter Oh. 'Re: Thursday's Football Daily main story – 'I would rather defecate in [my] own hands and clap' will be my new method of refusal to various people for sundry suggestions from now on' – Simon McMenamin. 'Can we say Chelsea have Delap in their hands now?' – Krishna Moorthy. Send letters to Today's prizeless letter o' the day winner is … Rollover. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Bruno Fernandes have had plenty of battles down the years. For the record it's W6 D5 L3 for the Liverpool right-back against Manchester United, while Fernandes has won just a single game in nine Premier League appearances when facing their fierce rivals. But who knows? Their next head-to-head could be an unexpected showdown in next month's Club World Cup. After reports of being only prepared to pay Liverpool in cured meats and Panini stickers to get TAA in time for the big bash in the USA USA USA, Real are now willing to line Liverpool's pockets with a boo-calming £10m when the transfer window opens on Sunday. Fernandes, meanwhile, is pondering whether taking a monstrous wage offer from Al-Hilal is a better option than losing friendlies to pub teams in Malaysia. Real Madrid face the Saudi side in the Club World Cup, so if Fernandes does do one, it's on: Trent v Bruno on 18 June in Miami. A former Royal Marine has appeared in court accused of driving into and injuring fans at Liverpool's Premier League victory parade on Monday. Paul Doyle, 53, appeared at Liverpool magistrates court on Friday charged with offences including wounding and causing grievous bodily harm to six people. West Ham have been fined £120,000 for homophobic chanting by fans during their 2-1 Premier League loss at Chelsea in February. The club accepted the FA charge of misconduct and have vowed to ban those involved from future matches. Milan have reappointed Massimiliano Allegri as head coach, one day after sacking Sergio Conceição. Allegri won the scudetto in 2010-11 during his previous spell in charge at San Siro, and takes over a side with no European football next season. Elsewhere in Italy, Raffaele Palladino has left his role as Fiorentina manager by mutual consent, just three weeks after signing a contract extension until 2027. Kelly Simmons, the former FA director of professional women's football, has said Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe's remarks about Manchester United's WSL side 'send a signal … about what he thinks about women, not just the women's game.' Chelsea are poised to add Liam Delap to their attacking ranks after triggering the Ipswich hot-shot's £30m release clause. Having successfully kept Mohamed Salah on board amid Saudi interest, Liverpool have turned around to find Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal sidling up to Luis Díaz and Darwin Núñez respectively. Manchester United have spoiled our fun by ending their post-season Asia tour with a win. Chido Obi scored twice in a 3-1 friendly win over a Hong Kong XI. And fancy another trophy, Spurs fans? Tottenham will face either PSG or Inter in the Uefa Super Cup final on 13 August at Udinese's Stadio Friuli. Not so long ago, Michelle Agyemang was a ballgirl for Sarina Wiegman's first England game at Wembley. Now the Arsenal star is chasing a place in the Euro 2025 squad, as she tells Tom Garry. Tom also got his chat on with Esme Morgan, the England and Washington Spirit defender who's hobnobbed with diplomats and adopted a kitten. Xaymaca Awoyungbo takes in the Unity Cup, a tournament at Brentford's Gtech Stadium for London's diaspora communities to celebrate. PSG have enjoyed a youthful, crowd-pleasing regeneration this season, but a Bigger Cup win for them is still an even bigger win for Qatar, writes Barney Ronay. Philipp Lahm is looking forward to a France v Italy final on Saturday after years of Spanish and English teams making the big game. In Switzerland, third-tier Biel-Bienne are taking on the mighty Basel/Basle/Barrrrl in the Cup final. Michael Yokhin charts their journey from bankruptcy to the big game. On this day in 1979: a big Cup final in Munich, won by Nottingham Forest after Brian Clough's side beat Malmö 1-0, Trevor Francis scoring the only goal. John Robertson (pictured left) got the winner when Forest defeated Hamburg to retain the title 12 months later in Madrid.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Manchester United's leap from semi-failure to epic failure just feels right
Oh yes, Europe. Now you see it. Now you understand why we're harvesting your players, hoovering up your football culture, poaching your 27-year-old rollerblading hyper-nerd coaches. This is the spectacle we're creating over here on our island of trade and innovation. Behold our Europa League final, our Wednesday night field of the cloth of gold. Look on our works and … well, maybe go out for a sandwich instead. The all-English Europa League final has already taken some stick for not being a spectacle worthy of the occasion. Or at least, for looking like what it was: two muddled teams scrabbling for the last escape ladder. It would be normal at this stage to bring out the phrase about a pair of bald men fighting over a comb. But baldness at least has a pattern. Baldness is orderly. Baldness is noble. This was more like two men with bad, failing hair transplants fighting over an emergency toupée. But Wednesday night was also a significant outcome for English football generally. From a neutral perspective the correct bad team won. The good bad guys beat the bad bad guys. The people for whom this was the greatest moment of their supporting lives got to go berserk at the end, rather than a fanbase for whom this would always have been a consolation, a make-do after another lost season, like scraping the burnt top off a frazzled lasagne and grimly serving it up anyway. The second half was also a properly absorbing spectacle, if only because Manchester United had most of the ball and were forced to just exist out there in all that light, confused by the space, the angles, by the inflated sphere at their feet, a non-team applying itself earnestly to some incomprehensible task, like a labrador trying very hard to drive a steam engine. Tottenham are at least a well-run club. There is merit in their success. This is basically what Ineos would like to create. Small wage bill. Managed discontent. Big stadium that makes money. A modern football club has been called into being here, in contrast to the Glazer‑sphere, where just walking up to Old Trafford feels like the most grudgingly tolerated consumer experience, a place where some day soon they're going to start stopping you at the perimeter in order to pour water down your neck, steal your iPhone, laugh at your shoes. This will be no comfort to United's supporters, who will stage another protest against the ownership before Sunday's final home league game against Aston Villa. But more widely there is a reassuring sense of logic in Manchester United failing. This is what should happen right now. The people running the club do not deserve success. Failure suggests, at the very least, some sense of order in the universe. It speaks to meritocracy, to social mobility, to non-negotiable sporting standards. And yes, with all due apologies, it is also fantastically entertaining. This is the brand now: Epic Failure. Even the scroll of score-settling agent-sourced headlines after Wednesday's defeat were totally moreish. Amorim Curls Into Ball In Laundry Room as Showdown Talks Loom. Revealed: Hidden Message as Wantaway Ace Posts Cryptic Pic of Wheel of Cheese. Arrogant Ratcliffe 'Ate Entire Packet of Chewing Gum' in Front of Crying Nurse. There are just so many layers now. One of the best currently is the way United's players will improve, unarguably and dramatically, the moment they leave the club. Were the players always better than they looked? Does the act of leaving release its own high-performance endorphins? There must be some way of harnessing this. Perhaps United could hypnotise their players into believing they've already gone. No, you're at Sporting Gijón now. Everyone loves you. The climate is nice. Tell him he's Antony and send him back out there. And if playing for United really is the equivalent of running inside an oxygen chamber then the club should seek to monetise this, reposition itself as some kind of rehab or rest cure. Send us your sullen, underperforming stars. They'll absolutely hate it. They'll hate it so much they'll be back in six months playing like maniacs. Although of course strict controls are needed. If United's malaise really is a performance-enhancing drug, how many times can you leave and come back flaming with hater‑silencing energy before you turn into a fentanyl zombie? Obviously Ruben Amorim is still fascinating, still locked in a managerial reign marked by highly visual mini-eras. Amorim turned up swaggering about the place like the handsome, successful man in an advert for caffeine-powered shampoo. Within two weeks he was already fumbling through the press conference doors looking haunted and hollow-eyed, a hostage shuffled from safe house to safe house. Right now he can't stop talking about how much he very obviously wants to leave, one step away from 'I will literally pay money not to manage this team'. The queen had a code where she would place her handbag discreetly on the table as a sign to her handlers she wanted to leave a function. Amorim is basically standing out there on his touchline every game shadowed by his own giant handbag, hauling it out at himself at the start of every half, scanning the stands for the rescue squad. As a wise man once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the Manchester United. Amorim is still likely to survive all this. He'll go on and do well at Milan. He'll defeat an English team at the Club World Cup five years from now and you'll catch his eye, sigh a little, and say: 'Yeah, we used to have a scene, didn't we. You look good. You look … happy. You look… less visibly mad.' Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion For now his role is to highlight the deeply muddled nature of United's executive, the madness of appointing an evangelical systems coach with an ill-fitting squad and no budget for parts, of crashing the team, Liz Trussing an entire season rather than compromising the one sacred principle, the one red line he can never cross, which is, er, having wingbacks. There is a great deal more incidental comedy here. The vast payoffs. The hiring of a 67-year-old fitness coach. Asking Joshua Zirkzee to lead a press, a player so slow time seems to catch up with him as he runs (note: Zirkzee will, of course, be second top scorer in the Bundesliga two seasons from now). Losing in Bilbao speaks to all of this. It fits. It feels right. Nothing should ever be too big to fail, as United were during the ghost-ship years, when it didn't matter how badly you treated this thing, money still came pouring in through the portholes. It doesn't feel like that now. United have £113m annual losses. The newly roided-up Champions League has entirely left them behind. There is a sense for the first time that maybe some things really do get lost, that no mega-brand is an island. And really, this might be good for everyone. This club has semi-failed for long enough, still pumping out cash even as the Glazers shaved a little more of its mane every year. Maybe it needs to fail properly, to fail in a way that might finally hurt those who actually own it, not just those who will follow it wherever it goes. It is self-evident that nothing really good can happen here until the Glazers are dislodged. It will take plenty of macro-turmoil before United finally becomes too cold to carry, not to mention a stream of sustained, cleansing failure along the way. If we're clutching at straws, there does at least seem to be no shortage of that coming down the pipe.
