Chelsea is just another example. The Club spent £490M. Lost £262M. Had 6 managers in 4 years, and going to the 7th now. Sold their Women’s team to themselves. The numbers are fascinating. But they’re not the real story.

Every Football Club has a Strategy. 

A Philosophy. 

Perhaps, a Recruitment plan, or a Game Model.

However, a great majority of them fail anyway, not necessarily because the Strategy was wrong. Or not because the players were bad.

Because the three people at the top were never truly aligned.

There is a relationship in Football that determines everything else. 

When it works, a Club can absorb almost any internal or external pressure. 

When it breaks, everything breaks with it.

I call it the Golden Triangle.

President. Sporting Director. Head Coach. 

Three roles. 

One direction. 

Or chaos.

THE THREE VERTICES

The Golden Triangle is a system of aligned tension, with clear Roles, Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations.

The President defines the Vision and protects the Project from external Pressure. In an ideal world, it shouldn’t not select Players. Does not choose Tactics. On the other hand, absorbs the noise when results are difficult. The best Presidents I’ve seen are almost invisible in good moments, and unshakeable in bad ones.

The Sporting Director is the bridge. Responsible for defining a multitude of tasks within the Football Department, from Methodology to the Game Model/Philosophy, the Recruitment Principles and Players’ Profile, and, mainly, the Long-Term Squad Structure. Nowadays, its Responsibilities extend to the alignment of other Departments, especially with the Financial Department, making sure that the Club is Sustainable. 

Crucially, the Sporting Director’s work must outlast any individual Head Coach. 

When the Coach changes or a Player is sold, the System continues.

The Head Coach executes. Full Authority inside the Training ground and on the pitch. The best coaches do not want to control Recruitment, but they want to trust it.

The triangle works when each vertex respects the boundaries of the other two. 

It fails when those boundaries are crossed, in any direction.

Similarly, in Youth Football, the same Principle applies to Club-Players-Families. If one feels that another in the equation isn’t providing the expected, the relationship deteriorates until it’s done.

In both cases, this can come from any direction, and it’s a matter of time before they’re done.

A REAL-CASE SCENARIO – CHELSEA FC – THE NUMBERS

Chelsea’s accounts for the year ending June 2025:

• Revenue: £490.9M (+5%);
• Loss after Tax: £262.6M (Premier League record);
• Wages to Turnover: 73%, above sustainability threshold;
• Player Amortization: £212.2M, up 12% (result of Long-Term Contracts and Agreements with Players and Clubs, which is shown as a Strategy on Short-Term, but potentially creating pressure on the Long run;
• Profit on Player Sales: £57.9M, down from £152.5M in 2024.

Revenue grew. 

Wages grew faster. 

Player amortisation grew fastest of all, reflecting the before-mentioned Strategy of Long contracts to spread Costs across years. Clever short-term Accounting, but Structural pressure for years to come.

And yet… Chelsea passed the Premier League’s PSR rules.

How?

THE SALE THAT WASN’T QUITE A SALE

In 2024, Chelsea’s accounts showed a Profit of £128.4M, transforming from a £90.1M loss the prior year.

The explanation: Profit on disposal of subsidiaries: £198.7M.

Chelsea had sold their Women’s team.

Not to an independent buyer. 

To Blueco 22 Midco Limited, a fellow subsidiary of the same parent company, Blueco Limited, controlled by Todd Boehly’s consortium.

The sale valued Chelsea Women at approximately £200M, 17 times the team’s annual revenue of £14.7M.

For context, Angel City FC in the more commercially developed NWSL sold for just over seven times revenue.

Without this transaction, Chelsea would have posted a loss of approximately £60M in 2023-24, added to their £79M loss in 2022-23, placing them at negative £139M going into 2024-25, well beyond PSR limits.

The Premier League reviewed and approved the Transaction. 

Chelsea passed PSR: Technically, Legally, Compliant.

Important context: The Sale did not generate External cash. It moved an asset between related Entities within the same Ownership Structure. At the Premier League’s Annual Meeting in June 2025, a Proposal to Ban Internal Asset Sales was raised but never reached the required 14 Votes to pass. 

Aston Villa and Everton subsequently used the same mechanism.

UEFA’s rules do not recognize the artificial Profit from the Women’s team sale, Chelsea’s exposure to UEFA Financial Fair Play Sanctions remains an open question.

Therefore, we must assume that nothing ilegal was done, simply developed by the existent rules in place.

WHAT THE NUMBERS ACTUALLY SHOW

Since the £4.25B acquisition in May 2022, Chelsea have had:

6 Head Coaches: Tuchel, Potter, interim Lampard, Pochettino, Maresca, and Rosenior, appointed in January 2026, and dismissed recently.

Now, going to the 7th. 

Adding to Multiple Sporting Directors.

£922M spent on transfers since 2022. 

Many of those Players bought for one coach, inherited by the next, loaned out by the third.

This is exactly what a broken Golden Triangle looks like in Financial form.

Player Amortization at £212M is not a Technical Accounting problem, but the financial photograph of Recruitment without Structural Continuity.

Naturally, the triangle wasn’t broken by bad intentions. It was broken by the absence of clear boundaries, clear Strategy, Direction or Vision.

And money, without Alignment, only accelerates the collapse.

The fake assumption of the opposite is a big risk for any Club.

THE THREE WAYS THE TRIANGLE FAILS

In every Environment I have worked, from a Player at FC Porto and Portugal National Teams, to Coach and Technical Director at Sporting CP Academies to Alliance FC in Dubai (UAE) the failure Patterns are always the same:

1. The President who crosses into Sporting Decisions. Signing a player the Sporting Director didn’t want. Each of these undermines Institutional Authority and sends a signal to the market, and to the dressing room: that the triangle has a weak point. And everyone in Football is very sensitive to these signs.
2. The Sporting Director who doesn’t protect the Head Coach. Allowing the Coach to become the public face of a failing Recruitment Strategy. Pochettino left Chelsea after clashing with Sporting Directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley over Strategy and Management of the young squad; Ruben Amorim left Manchester United after publicly sharing his discontent with the Club’s Sporting Director plans, and many more follow the same example. The Triangle had already broken before all of them left.
3. The Head Coach who tries to control everything. Demanding full Authority over Recruitment, Medical or Performance Departments. Building a Squad around personal preferences rather than a defined Club DNA. Result: when he or she leaves, the cycle resets. Club is left empty.

None of these failures require malicious intent, in itself. The President wants what’s the best for the Club, and believes his Vision will create the needed path to achieve it; the Sporting Director preferes another Coach, another Style of Play; or the Head Coach is looking to win Games. 

Simply, most happen because the Boundaries were never clearly defined in the first place.

Chelsea will survive this.

With £49M in Cash, zero net debt, and a brand generating nearly half a billion in Annual Revenue, Boehly’s consortium can absorb a £262M loss and continue.

For now.

The question is not whether Chelsea, Manchester United, or any other Club will recover. 

They all will, and that’s the point.

It is whether they learn the right lesson, if they understood that if no one will remain indefinitely at the Club, but the Club will always be there, that everyone should work towards the Club.

Not the opposite.

The lesson is not about Financial Engineering. 

Not about PSR loopholes or Amortization Strategies.

It is about the Golden Triangle.

When the three people at the top are genuinely aligned, the Financial decisions follow a logic. 

The Departments suddenly align.

The Recruitment makes sense. 

The Contracts reflect a Plan. 

The Coaches stay long enough to implement what they were hired to implement.

When they are not aligned, the accounts tell the story – eventually.

£490M in revenue. £262M in losses. Six coaches in four years.

This is what happens when the triangle breaks.

How does the Golden Triangle work (or fail) in your experience? 

Looking forward to other perspectives.

The Data presented here had multiple sources that deserve the credit for their studies, as: Sportico, The Chelsea Chronicle, PL Football, GiveMeSport and Swiss Ramble.