Manchester United just reported their Q3 FY2026 numbers. Here's what we should all be paying attention to. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 Nine months to 31 March 2026: → Revenue: £520.1m (+3.5% YoY) → Adjusted EBITDA: £187.5m (+29.0%) → Operating profit: £37.7m (vs. a £3.2m loss a year ago) → Net loss: £14.3m (improved 51% YoY) Full year guidance raised to £655–665m revenue and £200–210m EBITDA. A genuine turnaround, but the detail is where it gets interesting. 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 1. Broadcasting is the real story Q3 broadcasting revenue jumped 57.1% to £64.9m. That's a club finishing higher in the table and a new international rights cycle paying out. Finishing third contributed to higher broadcasting revenue and UEFA Champions League qualification. 2. The wage to revenue ratio is the metric to track Employee costs as a % of revenue dropped from 46.6% to 42.2% over nine months. The headcount cuts are working. But the elite benchmark sits closer to 35–40%, and new deals for Mainoo and Maguire mean the pressure on this ratio isn't going away. 3. The Amorim exit cost £16.7m in a single quarter That exceptional charge single handedly erased what would have been a strong operating result. Managerial instability besides being a footballing problem. Is still very much a balance sheet problem. 𝗭𝗼𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝘁 Manchester United still carries a layered debt structure: $650m of USD non-current borrowings, a £260m revolving credit facility balance, and £262.5m of current borrowings including accrued interest. That keeps refinancing and FX risk on the agenda. The stadium is the wildcard. Matchday revenue (£117.9m, down 4.1%) is the weakest of the three streams. A 100,000-seat ground would transform that, but the financing math at current debt levels is genuinely complex. The question for the next 12–18 months is this, can Champions League revenue and cost discipline generate enough headroom to address the debt while sustaining a top three squad? That's the trade off every sport business executive in football should be watching. One to watch closely.

Zamalek is one of the one of the most decorated clubs in African football history. They just won their 15th Egyptian Premier League title. Barely a headline anywhere. Because all our focus is on Saudi Arabia. But what if the smarter play has been sitting right there in Cairo the whole time? See it this way, while Public Investment Fund (PIF) have poured hundreds of millions annually into the Saudi Pro League (SPL), the world's most demographically powerful football market in Africa and the Arab world is being almost entirely overlooked. The mismatch is hard to ignore once you see it: Egypt has approx. 107M people. Median age around 24. A diaspora of more than 10M spread across the globe. One of the most passionate football cultures on earth. Saudi Arabia has 35M people. A market built deliberately, with government capital, from the top down. And yet the capital flows look like the inverse of the opportunity. Zamalek's title week made this concrete. Days before lifting the league trophy, they lost the CAF Confederation Cup final to USM Alger. Cairo was down. Then Wednesday came, and those same streets erupted. That swing from continental heartbreak to domestic euphoria in the space of weeks, is not something you can write a cheque for. Saudi Arabia is still in the process of building that. Al Ahly and Zamalek have been producing it for over a century. The bull case for Egyptian football : 1️⃣ Organic cultural equity built over 100 years. There is no shortcut to it and no amount of transfer spending that replicates it. 2️⃣ CAF dominance gives Egyptian clubs a continental brand reach across 1.4 billion people in Africa and MENA. Saudi Arabia has no equivalent foothold there. 3️⃣ Entry valuations remain low. Currency headwinds and infrastructure gaps have compressed prices well below what comparable passion markets command. Ripe for patient capital. 4️⃣ Commercial upside is almost entirely untapped. Sponsorship, naming rights, streaming, Saudi Arabia monetises aggressively from day one. Egypt has not seriously started. 5️⃣ The talent pipeline still works. Egypt produces elite players at academy costs a fraction of Europe's. A structured development model could generate outsized returns on transfers alone. Do not get us wrong, the risks are real and should be priced in honestly. Currency exposure is structural, hard currency deal architecture is not optional. Also governance opacity creates friction that institutional capital is not used to navigating. Neither changes the fundamental asymmetry. We are not saying Saudi Arabia is a bad investment, it clearly isn't. It just happens to be crowded, expensive, and state-engineered. So to the investors out there, with patient capital, Egypt is the opposite of all that.

Last night, the president of the world's most valuable football club called a surprise press conference. He didn't announce a manager or unveil a new signing. Florentino Pérez came to tell you he isn't going anywhere. If you strip away the theatre, this is just another governance story. • Florentino Pérez, 79, has run Real Madrid C.F. for 26 years, 76 titles, a €1.3bn stadium, revenues that rival mid-sized multinationals • He called elections three years early and invited challengers. The subtext: no one will run • He refused to discuss managers, players, or sporting direction, all deferred until after the vote • He confirmed intent to submit a formal dossier to UEFA over the Negreira referee corruption scandal • He reaffirmed the Super League project as an active strategic ambition, not a closed chapter The fundamentals are not the issue. The squad is the most valuable in the world per Transfermarkt. The balance sheet is clean. The institution is strong. But the sporting operation is frozen at the exact moment rivals are planning. And calling early elections doesn't just consolidate power, it signals that even Florentino Pérez understands the clock is running. The leadership question at Real Madrid is no longer theoretical. Something to watch.

Something interesting happened in football rights this week. Disney+ has been named preferred bidder for men's UEFA Champions League rights across several European markets. The headlines have celebrated it as a win for UEFA and proof that demand for football is growing. That's true. But I don't think it's the most important thing to understand here. The more interesting question is why now, and what does it tell us about where football's media landscape is actually heading? Consider what Disney already had before this deal. Exclusive pan-European rights to the Women's Champions League. Europa League and Conference League rights in Scandinavia. A streaming platform with genuine global reach. What they lacked, until now, was a foothold in the crown jewel of club football. That gap has always looked deliberate. It now looks strategic. Under Josh D'Amaro, Disney appears to be asking a question that the legacy broadcasters stopped asking years ago, what does a serious, long-term commitment to European football actually look like for us? Not a tactical rights purchase. A platform strategy. See it this way, UEFA projecting rights values above €5bn annually is the consensus view, and probably correct. But the more consequential shift isn't the number. It's the composition of who's buying. When new capital enters a market that was previously dominated by incumbents, the dynamics change for everyone. Clubs gain leverage. Leagues gain options. And the broadcasters who assumed their position was permanent find that assumption tested. Paramount+ bought UK and German rights last November. Disney has now moved in several more markets. These aren't isolated events. When well capitalised new entrants start competing for assets that incumbents took for granted, the incumbents rarely see the full implications until it's too late to respond. Sky and DAZN should be paying very close attention.

Rayo Vallecano became the 17th Spanish team to ever reach a European semi-final. That's despite huge problems with the ownership and disasters off the pitch. At times, there's no running water or electricity in the stadium. Fans cannot buy tickets online. A match with Real Oviedo was postponed because the pitch was unusable. The job Inigo Perez has done is remarkable, and I will be delving into the tactics behind his success soon.

📉 𝗕𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲. → 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿: Iraola has delivered 𝟬.𝟮𝟮 𝗣𝗣𝗚 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 than Bournemouth's wage bill suggested they deserved - roughly 𝟴.𝟱 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻. For a club that size, that's not a rounding error. That's the gap between mid-table and a record points tally. → 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁: He's among the 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝟭𝟬 managers in the Premier League since 2019/20 on this measure. 𝟳𝘁𝗵 among Big 5 managers under the age of 45. → 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Marco Rose - the reported frontrunner - sits comfortably above the line (+0.16) on the same model. Different league, different resources, but the same habit: more points than was expected given the wage bill. 💡 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 Most clubs know exactly what they spend on players. Very few can tell you what their manager is actually worth relative to that spend. Bournemouth could - they tried to keep him. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗕𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀.

Shot maps tell you what a player does. But how do they compare to others in their position? I have upgraded my shot map visual to show percentile rankings against positional peer's - Igor Jesus is dominating Europa League forwards this season. The script automatically pulls three key metrics: goals, shots on target, and xG. Then, benchmarks them against all forwards with 180+ minutes played. Jesus being in the 99 percentile is no surprise, as he is the second top goal scorer. His 8 shots on target places him in the 87th percentile, and his xG being in the 93rd percentile, far above average across all metrics. This also gives me a template for future analysis, as well as giving me ideas on what these dials could be for other positions. What metrics would you have in mind for other positions? Would you swap any of the 3 metrics I have used for a forward?

The latest episode of The Tiki Tapas Podcast is now out, and it's a bonus one ahead of the Copa Del Rey final between Atletico Madrid and Real Sociedad: - Predicted lineups - A historical throwback to the 2013 and 2020 finals - A tribute to Antoine Griezmann - Tactical issues facing Pellegrino Materazzo and Diego Simeone Out now on YouTube and Spotify! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKi5vvpHeQk&t=6s

Across both legs, Bayern Munich generated 17 turnovers and 8 led to a shot vs Real Madrid. It really shows how Bayern Munich are so intense OOP and how Real Madrid are so poor under pressure. & I think most of Bayern chances came via possession regains in RMA half.

Many points to tackle here. Teams' quality from open play regressed; opponents defended better; reliance on dead ball increased. Manchester United is an outlier here, I think, because there wasn't a level below that one in the 2024/25 season. So, it was highly likely that a team with the quality added would improve, plus how United plays and how opponents defend against them must be taken into consideration, and the brilliance of Bruno Fernandes. Source: CannonStats