Lisandro Martínez's rebuke of Manchester United's squad planning

Key takeaways

• ESPN reports that Lisandro Martínez criticised Manchester United's hierarchy after a 2-0 defeat to Atlético Madrid, saying the club had not prepared a squad of Champions League quality.
• Under UEFA rules, Champions League squads are registered on capped lists with quotas for locally trained players, so the size of a squad matters less than how it is built.
• At a modern club, squad-building decisions belong to a chain of executives, recruitment staff and owners, which is why a player's criticism of "the top" points to that structure rather than to the head coach alone.
• A first-team player criticising decision-makers in public is unusual, and it shows how disputes over squad planning can shape the next transfer window.

Martínez's criticism of the Manchester United hierarchy

According to ESPN, Martínez spoke in a pointed interview after Manchester United lost 2-0 to Atlético Madrid. He said the people running the club had not put together a squad of Champions League quality, and that the players expected more from those at the top of the organisation. ESPN describes the interview as fiery.

The report does not say which decisions he had in mind. It is not known whether he meant particular signings, departures, the balance of the squad or how spending was set. It is also not known whether the club has responded. This article does not guess at any of that.

What matters for this section is where he aimed the criticism. After a defeat, a player would normally talk about the performance, the tactics or the dressing room. Martínez is reported to have pointed at the hierarchy, meaning the people who decide which players arrive, which leave and on what terms. That moves the discussion from the pitch to the transfer market and the boardroom. It also raises a practical point: in modern football, the quality of a squad is mostly decided months before a ball is kicked, in negotiations, contract decisions and registration deadlines.

Champions League squad registration rules

A squad that can compete in the Champions League has to meet UEFA's own registration system as well as a club's ambitions. Clubs submit a main list of players, known as List A, which has a fixed maximum size. Part of that list must be filled by locally trained players. UEFA splits these into two groups: those trained by the club itself and those trained by other clubs in the same national association. If a club cannot fill those places, the list has to be shorter. It cannot fill the gaps with extra players from elsewhere.

A second list, List B, covers younger players who meet UEFA's eligibility criteria on age and time spent at the club. These players can be added without taking a List A place. A strong academy can therefore make a European squad deeper without using up the limited senior places.

Registration also follows deadlines. Clubs lodge their lists before the competition stage begins and can make limited changes at set points during the season. A player signed outside those points cannot simply be added for European matches. So a club that wants a "Champions League quality squad" has to line up its recruitment with UEFA's calendar as well as the domestic transfer windows.

The upshot is that a squad can look large on paper but be thin once it is registered. If senior players are mostly from abroad and the club has few homegrown players, the coach may have fewer usable senior options in Europe than in domestic football. Whether that applies to Manchester United now is not known from the source. The point is that squad quality in European competition depends on planning, not just on how many players a club has.

The recruitment chain behind a squad

When a player says the squad falls short and blames "the top", he is pointing to how decisions are made at a large modern club. Squad building now usually runs through a layered structure. Owners and the board set the budget and the overall strategy. A chief executive or equivalent turns that into commercial and financial limits. A sporting director or director of football is usually responsible for the squad plan. Below that, recruitment and analytics staff find targets, and negotiators deal with clubs and agents.

The head coach usually has a say in this process but rarely controls it alone. The idea is continuity: if the coach changes, the squad plan should not have to be rebuilt from scratch. The downside is that responsibility is spread out. When results disappoint, it can be hard to see whether the problem was the plan, how it was carried out, the money available or the market itself.

Financial rules add another limit. UEFA's squad cost rules restrict how much of a club's revenue can go on wages, transfer amortisation and agents' fees. Domestic competitions have their own sustainability rules. Under these frameworks, a fee is usually spread across the length of a player's contract in the accounts, and wages are a fixed cost for years. Every signing therefore reduces what the club can do in later windows. A hierarchy that has committed heavily to long contracts may have little room to fix weaknesses later, even when they are widely recognised.

Contracts work in the other direction too. A player who is not part of the plan but has years left on a well-paid deal can be hard to move. Other clubs may not match the wages, and releasing him early costs money. A squad's shape can therefore stay fixed long after the people who built it would have liked to change it.

What the episode reveals about modern squad building

Taken together, the interview, the registration rules and the recruitment chain show the gap between how a squad is judged and how it is put together. Supporters, players and pundits judge it on the pitch, often after a single match. It is assembled over several windows by people working within registration quotas, financial ratios and existing contracts, and those limits rarely show on matchday.

Martínez's reported comments bring those two timescales into contact. By aiming at the hierarchy, he put the criticism on the people who decide the budget, the targets and the contract terms, not on the people who pick the team. In practice, that is where the size and depth of a Champions League squad are decided.

Comments like these can have consequences. They can put pressure on how leadership explains its recruitment strategy. They can shape discussions before the next window. They can also raise questions about how a club handles internal disagreement when it becomes public. None of those outcomes can be predicted from the information available, and how the club will respond is not known.

What can be said is that "squad quality" is not one number. It depends on the balance of positions, eligibility for registration, the age profile, contract lengths and how much money is free for the next window. A club can spend heavily and still end up with a squad that does not fit the rules or the coach's demands. Martínez's complaint, as ESPN reports it, is a reminder that the transfer market is where those choices are made.

Sources and further reading

• ESPN: original report on Lisandro Martínez's comments about Manchester United's hierarchy after the defeat to Atlético Madrid.
• UEFA: competition regulations covering List A and List B registration, locally trained player quotas and registration deadlines.
• UEFA: club licensing and financial sustainability regulations, including the squad cost rule.
• Premier League: handbook sections on squad registration and financial sustainability for domestic competition.