It's no secret on here that I think Soriano is full of shit. He is a consultant, of course he is. Having said that, I don't doubt the wider gist of his presentation because that isn't revolutionary, it is just business sense.
But he is currently making one big mistake as far as I am concerned. I had a quick skim read of his book and it was certainly interesting but, for me, he made two points which struck me as relevant.
First, that Barcelona benefits from a nationalistic sense of pride in having a successful football club. For obvious reasons. Second, that football executives have to understand the "pitch" on which they are playing.
You will see where I am going with this. Manchester City isn't Barcelona. Manchester isn't Barcelona. The North West of England isn't Barcelona. At the end of the day, football fans in England arent the same as football fans in Spain. The "pitch" isn't the same. And he will be finding that out pretty soon, I expect.
My old boss used to tell me that it takes many generations to build up a successful brand, but only one generation to destroy it. Soriano is hugely underestimating the importance of a strong, local fanbase to the English football "pitch", and he may well be that one generation as far as City's fanbase is concerned.