Manchester City Has Gone Global
LONDON — When Manchester City appointed Txiki Begiristain last week as its new director of football, some observers concluded that this was the English seeking to follow the path, and the style, of Barcelona.
It may be. City had recruited Ferran Soriano, Barcelona’s former financial vice president, as its new chief executive officer three months ago. And speculation grew that Barca’s erstwhile coach, Pep Guardiola, currently taking an extended family break in New York, could in time complete the virtuous circle of Barcelona’s former executives in Manchester.
Hold that thought. At the moment, City has a team manager, the Italian Roberto Mancini, and his contract was recently extended to the summer of 2017.
In fact, something more worldly is taking shape in the neighborhood where Manchester United had long been deemed king. Some, including Forbes magazine, place United as the richest club in the world. But City, which ousted United by a tiny margin to win the English league title this year, appears to be redefining the dimensions of soccer on a global scale.
Already, its finances, its head office management and its team are headed that way.
The owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his appointed chairman at the club, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, have American university degrees in political science and economics respectively.
Both are domiciled in Abu Dhabi, from where City’s new wealth emanates.
And though Sheikh Mansour is spotted around City’s Etithad stadium less often than a golden eagle in downtown Manhatten, his stewardship has revolutionized the English club. City, to put it kindly, has always been the poor cousin to United in Manchester.
Then along came Thaksin Shinawatra, the exiled former prime minister of Thailand, who briefly owned City before selling out to Abu Dhabi in 2008. From then until now, the upward spiral has been extraordinary.
The sheikh has spent £481 million, or about $776 million, on 30 players in those four years. The current squad, led by a Belgian, Vincent Kompany, has players from 10 different countries, and a new academy — once again emulating Barcelona — is under construction.
Everything about “Abu Dhabi” City suggests the goal is long term. The past is respected, thus far, in the fact that the owners acknowledge that City supporters have been a long-suffering, incredibly loyal breed. And if the stadium name has been rebranded, the shirts remain sky blue.
Yet year by year, month by month, the changes coming down from the boardroom take the club further away from its roots. The owner, chairman, chief executive, director of football, team manager and captain do not have English as their first language.
The backup staff, in areas like marketing and commerce, are also different from the homely origins of a club that for years — generations — seemed to just muddle through.
At times, City courted financial disaster and smiled chirpily in the face of comparisons with what its fans considered the imported wealth of big brother United.
Now not only are the heroes on the field men like Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure, and David Silva, but the people helping to shape a very different structure also come from abroad, and come highly qualified in foreign fields. The roles that Soriano and Begiristain may play in bringing Barcelona expertise to City either will gel with Mancini’s coaching mentality or, as is entirely possible given the Italian’s restless and volatile nature, lead to a change of team management.
Last weekend, following City’s defeat against Ajax in Amsterdam, the crowd at the Etihad booed the team at half time before it eked out a 1-0 home victory over Swansea City. That, too, was symptomatic of the new City, supporters who for decades tolerated failure now expecting to be winners every time out.
For all we know, similar pressures permeate the back room. The connections between the owner and chairman, who were educated in the United States, is maintained by the fact that Soriano also studied business in New York, and Tom Glick, City’s chief commercial and operating officer, is a native of Colorado and a former chief marketing officer with the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise.
All these connections, blending America’s winning mentality with its keen eye on the dollar, is now at work under Middle East control in the blue half of Manchester.
The push last season to win England’s league for the first time in 44 years is considered only a platform toward the Champions League, where Mancini has yet to prove his credentials.
The Italian had shown with Inter Milan that he knew how to build a team to win the domestic competition, Serie A. He left there because he did not translate that into Champions League success, and his successor Jose Mourinho used largely his team to deliver that European trophy.
So now, with two new arrivals from Barcelona in decisive roles, in terms of recruitment and player development, the speculation will rise that, regardless of how much it would cost to pay off Mancini’s new five-year contract, Soriano and Begiristain know a man who knows how to win the Champions League.
Guardiola will not lie idle in New York for long. The whispers are that he fancies a crack at English soccer management, and that London — most likely Chelsea — would be his preferred destination.
Manchester City, though, is the coming project. The sheikh rarely talks about soccer as much as he talks, and rides, thoroughbred Arabian horses. But his ambitions appear to be beyond winning in England. And there are signs that this sheikh is bedding down for the long term.
He might ultimately be a better owner than Russians who use soccer to create a new image for themselves, or Americans who look for dividends in return for investment. And there are precious few English owners of English teams who can compete in their own backyard anymore."
Cheeky & Fairyann got a lot to do!
