I actual wonder if City are not a vehicle for social change back home the UAE has western enclaves has embraced western culture but has kept tradition. I think it looks like it will keep progressing. Being top dog in the premier league with its diverse teams rainbow lace anti racism and successful women’s teams in one of the most progressive nations in the world even if we taken a backwards step in recent year
I imagine the young and the western educated leaders are not so traditional but then again they where often educated in America and look what large awaits of them think of anything so called woke
Pure speculation not much knowledge of UAE and suspect main motive to owning city is financial
I've put this on here before but it bears repeating.
At the time of the takeover I read an article by a Canadian journalist that was about the Formula 1 races being held in Dubai? (I know nothing about Formula 1 but it was the first race to be held in the Middle East) and Etihad had begun sponsoring Ferrari, I think Sheikh Mansour bought shares in Ferrari too.
Anyway, City had a brief mention when they were discussing the sporting and cultural institutions that Middle Eastern, and in particular UAE countries, were getting involved with and the article was about why these countries were branching out in to these fields.
The consensus of the article was that one of the main driving factors was to help bring their society into a more Western capitalist mindset rather than one based on religion and the hierarchies of the nomadic tribes that are native to the area.
It spoke about how the ruling families were all western educated at places like Oxford, Cambridge and the US Ivy League universities but the religious Imam's still held a lot of sway over the people and on how the countries are run. They figured that bringing sporting events to the country and getting involved in sports other than horse racing abroad would help introduce the general population of the Middle East to worldview's and cultures outside of their normal experiences which would take some of the control away from some of the stricter Imams. This would then allow them to have more control of the country and remove some of the more oppressive religious laws. This would in turn help them to make their countries more open to becoming tourist destinations allowing them to diversify their economies.
This was written well before the concept of sportswashing was invented and at the time I thought it made perfect sense, definitely more sense than the sportswashing accusations. We can definitely tell that people in Abu Dhabi are seeing more of UK culture through City by the meltdowns we see online from Middle Eastern people when Pride and the like is mentioned, although with the rise of the religious far-right here, and in particular the US, maybe the religious intolerance of the Middle East is spreading in the west rather than western tolerance being spread to the Middle East, but I digress.
Having said all that, unlike seemingly every scouser under the sun, I have very, very little knowledge of the social, economic, political or religious setup of the Middle East so who knows.
