Ferran Soriano, 44, a senior airline executive who spent five years as vice-president of Barcelona during Joan Laporta’s tenure as president of the Spanish club, is understood to be under consideration for the post at the Etihad Stadium. Manchester City have been without a chief executive since Cook was forced to resign after the disclosure of an inappropriate email exchange between him and the mother of the club’s full-back Nedum Onuoha. A shortlist of candidates has been compiled by executives close to club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak who are handling the recruitment process in concert with headhunters Odgers. The chief executive’s post is currently being filled on an acting basis by John MacBeath.
The fact that Soriano is a leading candidate indicates City’s determination to throw the net wide and look beyond the existing pool of British candidates for what has become one of the most prominent positions in the game. He would add international experience and an international commercial approach that the club have identified as crucial to their plans to expand the City brand globally.
An entrepreneur who speaks five languages, Soriano is chairman of Spanish airline Spanair, a fact that may have helped bring him to City’s attention given their close ties to Etihad. Soriano was a central figure in the Laporta regime at Barcelona. He joined the board in 2003 and was appointed vice-president and head of economics at the club, and worked as general manager.
He resigned from the board along with Laporta in 2008, and is understood to have fallen out of favour with the current Barcelona president, Sandro Rosell.
In his first three years at the club revenues grew and the club moved into a profit-making position, but as well as commercial and financial input he had intimate involvement in the running of the football side of the business and had a close working relationship with Barcelona’s technical director Txiki Beguiristain.
There have been suggestions in Barcelona circles that if Soriano is appointed at City he may seek to bring Beguiristain, one of the most highly-rated coaches in the European game, with him. Were that to happen it would raise questions over the football structure at the Etihad, in which Brian Marwood has the senior role as director of football.
Marwood is highly regarded at the club and has worked closely with manager Roberto Mancini during recent high-profile issues, most notably the fallout from the Carlos Tévez controversy.
Soriano was closely involved in Barcelona’s transfer dealings throughout his five years at the club, and also has relationships with many of the leading executives in European football.
While at Barcelona he was a member of the executive committee of G-14, the grouping of the most powerful European clubs that then became the European Club Association. He also represented Barcelona on Uefa’s European Club Forum, and served on the competitions committee of the Champions League.
Soriano has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and consumer businesses, and has held senior positions at the Mac Group and Cluster Consulting, a telecommunications consultant. He currently chairs the airline Spanair, and was appointed after a group of leading Catalan businessmen bought the struggling airline network in 2009. He was charged with expanding connections to Barcelona but the company has run into trouble recently.
