The Athletic has decided on the 35th anniversary of Hillsborough to re-publish an article that was originally released two years ago, which details the horror of the day, as well as the impact on some of the survivors.

When Martin Roberts returned to Halifax on the night of April 15, 1989, he wet the bed as he tried to sleep. The next morning, he did not say a word to either of his parents, his sister or his brother about what he had witnessed the day before in Sheffield, where 97 Liverpool supporters lost their lives in a steel pen he somehow escaped from.

Martin spent Sunday walking around the garden for hours, hopelessly trying to make sense of it all. By Tuesday morning, he was working again, at Barclays bank. His boss called him into a side room and asked how he was feeling. A stupid question. Martin wondered what his colleagues were thinking, fearing they believed what had been written in the papers about fans like him.

Martin’s deepest scars from Hillsborough were not physical but mental. His father, Liverpool-born, possessed old-school values. His generation understood broken arms and broken legs, but Martin’s pain was not visible. This contributed to him throwing himself into his career and back into what seemed like a normal life. He thought he was coping. Martin…

Chelsea face a battle to comply with the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) and could be forced to sell players before June 30 after their financial state was laid bare in a sobering set of accounts.

The club’s accounts for the year ending June 30, 2023 saw them post a pre-tax loss of £90.1million ($112m), while wages climbed from £340.2m (2022) to £404m in 2023.

Only Manchester City’s annual wage bill (£423m) is higher than Chelsea’s. Last season, City won the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup. Chelsea men’s team finished 12th in the league, though the women’s side won the Women’s Super League and the women’s FA Cup.

Chelsea’s accounts also show that between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, they spent a total of £745.2m on new players. Their accounts note that a further £454.1m has been spent on players since June 30, 2023. They raised £203m from player sales and made a net profit of £62.9m on player trading overall, thanks to the sales of Timo Werner to RB Leipzig, Kalidou Koulibaly to Al Hilal and Jorginho and Kai Havertz to Arsenal.

It is that time of year again. Lighter nights, daffodils and the sobering discovery of just how much your football team has handed over to agents.

The Football Association (FA) published its annual figures yesterday and, as is the norm, they were bigger, more gasp-inducing than ever before.

The Premier League’s 20 clubs combined to pay £409million ($509m) in agents’ fees in a 12-month monitoring period that began on February 1, 2023. Include the EFL’s outlays and English clubs handed over close to half a billion to that select group of men and women representing a footballer’s interests.

It was the usual suspects leading the way but the Premier League’s spend continues to rise. This year’s total is markedly up on the £318million of last season and almost twice the amount paid in 2017-18.

The Athletic picks out the key points from the FA’s latest report.

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Chelsea drive spending records… again

An age of excess at Stamford Bridge has seen Chelsea spend like no club has ever spent before. Close to £1billion has funded a lavish overall that is yet to deliver discernible progress under the Todd Boehly-Clearlake-led ownership group and the fees paid out to agents are another marker of their intemperance.

Brace yourself for Chelsea’s full outlay over 12 months:…

Stuart Broad had the right idea.

The legendary England cricketer ended his playing days by hitting a six off his final ball with the bat and taking a wicket from his final delivery with the ball to win a match. Against Australia, his country’s most historic rivals, no less.

But he is the exception, not the rule. Thousands of professional sportsmen and women retire every year in circumstances far less celebrated and completely out of their control. But there are some controllables, right? Like bowing out at the top? Growing old gracefully? Or even just retaining your dignity?

There is another way — let’s call it the Cristiano Ronaldo way.

This way involves moving to a retirement league for a humungous payday and playing with and against vastly inferior opponents in a league where 14 of the 18 clubs have an average attendance of fewer than 9,000.

OK, fine, who is realistically going to turn down a reported £173million-a-year salary and king-like status? But there is still a way of behaving in a sophisticated, cultured manner while pocketing said cash.

All of which begs the question: Cristiano Ronaldo, what are you doing?

During Al Nassr’s Saudi Super Cup semi-final…

What’s the one thing (well, okay, one of the things) that separates James Ward-Prowse and Lionel Messi? Unlike Messi, Ward-Prowse has scored an ‘olimpico’.

An olimpico is a goal scored directly from a corner kick. They are unmistakably memorable and to pull one off involves a combination of skill, opportunism and luck. Arsenal and France legend Thierry Henry scored an olimpico for New York Red Bulls against Columbus Crew in 2012. Ex-Manchester United and Real Madrid midfielder David Beckham, now Inter Miami’s co-owner, scored directly from a corner kick twice for LA Galaxy in 2012.

U.S. women’s national team icon Megan Rapinoe is the only player in women’s or men’s soccer to score two olimpicos at the Olympics. Last season, Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz scored directly from a corner in a friendly against Walsall, a Carabao Cup tie Bolton Wanderers and then against Arsenal in the Premier League.

The player who is thought to have scored the first olimpico, Argentinan Cesareo Onzari, did so in a friendly against reigning Olympic champions Uruguay in 1924, hence the name.

A century later and despite racking up over 800 career goals, Messi is yet to score one. There are YouTube compilation videos chronicling the 36-year-old’s many attempts over the years.

GO…

Wednesday was another dramatic day in the saga involving former Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president Luis Rubiales, as an investigation into alleged corruption during his term from 2018 to 2023 gathers pace.

The 46-year-old was detained by police officers and questioned about his role in potential crimes of money laundering and misuse of RFEF funds. Investigators believe Rubiales and a number of his associates were involved in a number of different schemes linking Spain, the Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia and China.

Rubiales resigned as RFEF president in September, having already been provisionally suspended by FIFA for his behaviour after Spain won the 2023 Women’s World Cup, when he held his crotch in celebration just a few seats down from Queen Letizia and the 16-year-old Princess Sofia of Spain, before grabbing star forward Jenni Hermoso by the head and kissing her on the lips during the medal ceremony.

For his kiss on Hermoso, Rubiales is to go on trial on charges of alleged sexual assault and coercion (which he has always denied), with prosecutors seeking a two-and-a-half-year jail term.

Here, The Athletic explains the latest dramatic developments in Spanish football’s growing crisis, and the potential consequences for Rubiales and the RFEF.

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Why was Rubiales…

Tori Penso and Rebecca Welch are among the 21 referees who have been chosen to officiate football matches at this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.

Penso, 38, became the first woman to referee a regular season Major League Soccer match in 20 years back in 2020.

The American official also took charge of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Australia.

Welch, 40, became the Premier League’s first female referee when she took charge of Fulham’s 2-0 defeat to Burnley on December 23. She has been refereeing since 2010 and became the first woman to officiate a match in the men’s Championship — the English second tier — at the start of 2023.

Welch told The Athletic in 2021: “My gender has never held me back in refereeing. There’s never been a point where I’ve come away from a game feeling that they have treated me a certain way because I’m female. They might treat me a certain way because I’m a referee and they don’t agree with a decision but I’ve not come under that scrutiny.

“I know other people who have. Ninety-eight per cent of people won’t bat an eyelid when a woman turns up to referee their game, but there’s another two per cent who will. In years to come, there won’t be that exposure around it. That sounds negative, but it’s really not. It…

It is probably a mistake to start with a British cultural reference that is nearly 29 years old, but this is a story about misgivings and mistakes, so it feels apt.

In 1995, the late, great comedian Caroline Aherne had a spoof talk show in which she played a character called Mrs Merton, an elderly lady from Manchester who would ask celebrities disingenuously blunt questions.

“So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” was her famous opener to Debbie McGee, the glamorous assistant and wife of the aforementioned TV magician.

A version of that question had been rattling around my head while I tried to find a common thread between the four case studies we have done this week on men who want to buy football clubs.

So, Chris/Dozy/William/Thomas, what first attracted you to the cash business with property assets that would guarantee weeks, if not months, of positive media coverage and a huge dopamine hit from the gratitude of strangers?

Because when you put it like that, it is not hard to see how bidding for football clubs might be addictive/a good smokescreen/useful advertising/worth a go (delete as applicable).

We picked Chris Kirchner, Dozy Mmobuosi, William Storey and Thomas Zilliacus this time, but if there are any streaming giants reading, we could flesh out…

Chelsea manager Emma Hayes has ignited a discussion about player-player relationships in the women’s game amid the sport’s wider reckoning with player-coach relationships.

“Player-coach relationships are inappropriate. Player-to-player relationships are inappropriate” the future USWNT head coach said at a press conference on Thursday.

“It’s about the challenges it poses. One player’s in the team, one’s not in the team. One might be in the last year of their contract, one might not be. One might be competing in a position with someone else. You don’t need me to spell that out. It presents challenges.

“Longer-term, in an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to deal with that. It is quite challenging for coaching teams to have to deal with it.”

Following Chelsea’s 3-1 victory over Arsenal on Friday, Hayes expressed regret over her comments. “I let myself down,” she said. “I didn’t think it was right for me to use the term ‘inappropriate’ for the players.

“I don’t take those things back but I have zero criticism of any player in my dressing room for anything — their professionalism, for what they’ve given to the club — regardless of their status, regardless of who they’re in a relationship with.”

Hayes was hit with social media criticism…

When the managers of all 12 Women’s Super League (WSL) clubs sat down for their press conferences on Thursday and Friday, this weekend’s matches were not at the top of the agenda.

Following the news last week that Willie Kirk was under investigation by Leicester City over an alleged relationship with one of his players, The Athletic and other media organisations pressed his managerial counterparts for their views on whether relationships between players and coaches can ever be acceptable.

Most, but not all, were definitive that the dynamic must always be strictly professional. The allegation against Kirk — Leicester say he is assisting them with an “internal process” — comes only a few weeks after it emerged that former Sheffield United manager Jonathan Morgan had a ‘secret’ three-year relationship with a teenage player while he was Leicester manager. Morgan has accepted he crossed the line of what was acceptable but says he has been the victim of a “witch hunt”.

GO DEEPER

How Morgan’s ‘immoral’ relationship with his teenage player led to his sacking

Among the points raised by managers this week were the game’s transition from amateurism to professionalism, the power imbalance between a manager or staff member and a player, clubs’ codes of conduct and a…