Brighton & Hove Albion

Brighton and Hove Albion are the club that every sporting director in Europe desperately wants to copy and none of them can, which tells you everything you need to know about just how good their model really is. The Seagulls were playing at Gillingham’s ground in the late 1990s, homeless and heading for oblivion. Now they are a consistent top-half Premier League side who sell players for obscene profits, replace them seamlessly, and make the whole thing look offensively easy. This is not merely a good football club — it is a rebuke to every organisation that has ever claimed you need to spend your way to relevance.

The appointment of Fabian Hurzeler in 2024 was vintage Brighton: take an obscure young German coach nobody outside the Bundesliga had heard of and hand him the keys. It worked, because of course it did. Hurzeler became the youngest manager in Premier League history and promptly maintained the club’s reputation for attractive, possession-based football while layering in his own tactical nuances. The American Express Stadium, with its 31,800 capacity on the outskirts of the city, has become a laboratory for ideas that the so-called elite end up borrowing two years later.

Australian fans have a legitimate emotional connection here through Mat Ryan, who guarded Brighton’s goal during the club’s early Premier League years and gave the Seagulls a foothold in the Australian sporting consciousness. That bond endures, and for good reason.

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Brighton’s 2025-26 campaign is further proof that the Seagulls operate on a different intellectual plane from most of their Premier League competitors. Hurzeler’s side continue to play football that is both aesthetically pleasing and ruthlessly effective — a combination that should not be as rare as it is in this league. The recruitment operation remains the envy of Europe, identifying talent from obscure corners of the globe and turning them into players worth five times what Brighton paid. The Amex sells out regularly, expansion plans are afoot, and the only question worth asking about this club is not whether they will sustain their success but how long it takes them to win something. Because that, ultimately, is the one thing missing from a story that otherwise borders on perfection.

VS — Chief sports columnist, australiafootball.com