Tottenham Hotspur will travel across London on Tuesday night for one of the most financially consequential games in football history. Victory against rivals Chelsea would see Spurs take a big step towards maintaining their place in the Premier League after the club’s worst season in more than 50 years. Defeat would leave the door open to relegation and a potential drop in revenue of up to £270mn next year alone. Spurs’ plight belies its longstanding reputation as one of the game’s most shrewdly run clubs under former executive chair Daniel Levy, who was ousted last year by majority owners the Lewis family. Over the course of his 25-year tenure, Levy garnered a reputation for overseeing a lean, frugal operation — former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson once said that negotiating with him was more painful than his hip replacement. But his latter years were characterised by wasteful spending on players and worsening performances on the pitch. The spectre of relegation is pr...
Does Milan’s San Siro need to be demolished? Edwin Heathcote reviews the evidence from an architectural perspective in the Financial Times. Milan’s San Siro stadium is one of football’s great spectacles. Part of it is the atmosphere during a game, especially one of the Madonnina matches, the fierce derbies between the two teams that call the stadium home, AC Milan and Inter. But it is also the incredible sight of the architecture after a match, when the fans descending the huge concrete circulation cylinders create the dizzying impression of a building swirling around them, as if the whole structure is spinning in response. The Madonnina is named after the gilded statue of the Virgin that stands atop Milan’s Duomo. The San Siro is far bigger than even that huge gothic cathedral and, together with La Scala opera house, the three constitute a kind of trinity of revered Milanese monuments. Unlike the other two, however, the San Siro looks likely to be demolished....