What are your ambitions in Manchester City?
*Sheikh Mansour Smiles immediately* - "Those who support the club, congratulations on the win yesterday. I think our ambitions are big and a lot of people thought that the investment in the club was just about spending money and buying the most expensive players. But, I think as a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and as an investor in the United Kingdom, we wanted to deliver a message, that we are – yes we do have a lot of goods but we must use it in a correct way and we must be good at our investments and use our money in a correct way."
He adds later: "We think that this investment in this club is successful because the club was a mid-table team and now it’s distinguished club not because we spent a lot of money, but compared to other clubs in the United Kingdom and outside the UK, spent more than Manchester City in the previous season and their results were disappointing. What’s most important for us is to give a good impression of the Emirati investor in the UK, Europe and the West." *He then says that this club is supported by lots of Arabs in Europe and they attend lots of matches in the Etihad and that this club is for all the people in the Middle East*
"I want to point out something very important that we have done the last 3 or 2 seasons. We focused our attention on the youths. Not only that, we also focused on cooperating with the local community because the philosophy of the clubs in Europe is that part of the community work happens in the local city. So this gave us a new experience because most of our local clubs (UAE clubs) focus all their attention on one thing only, one idea and they forgot the community work. A new academy has been made to help the locals in Manchester. We also focused on talents that play outside of Europe, South American players, Africans, mostly youths to invest on them."
"I’d like to say that the investments on a club shouldn't just be about buying players, but its about the youths, the infrastructure, the local community and we have UAE students who go to the club, to learn from their experience because I think the competition in the UK is the best competition in the world."
