The Project?

Maly

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22 Jul 2009
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With recent transfers between CFG, it’s got me thinking about the bigger picture. This is all purely hypothetical as I’ve not read or heard anything in depth about the ‘project’.

So, the 1st thing we did was buy a load of top players to establish ourselves as a top European team.

The 2nd thing we did was to ensure that we have the best possible facilities for youngsters to develop not only from a football but also a personal level with St Bede’s. This way we attract the best youth Mancunian/UK talent/Global.

The next thing we are about to embark upon (Pep), is to give youngsters a clear progression to the first team, hence giving the best talent even more reason to join the ranks of and stay with God’s Own Club remaining as patient as they need to.

We have already bought other clubs around the world, which I foresee working on a number of levels now and in the future.

Firstly, it can potentially give our young players experience of senior football via loans. This puts the young players in a position where player’s lively hoods are on the line and every game means something, which is sadly lacking for those players between the ages of 19-21 (ish) with the current league structure and structure of academies. I think I’d advocate youth teams playing in lower divisions, to gain the experience and to grow as players, which I don’t ever see happening. Therefore we should have a competitive advantage on developing youngsters.

You may well think that other clubs, eg Chelsea, already loan loads of young players out to clubs to help develop them, but this is where our plan becomes a step above the rest. All of these clubs are part of CFG, so, I’d hope that the long term goal is to have ALL teams playing a similar ‘brand’ (awful word) of football. We could also loan a number of players out to the same club, so they continue their development TOGETHER in senior football.

Secondly, the vast majority of top players end up in Europe (along with some not so top players), so if we have clubs in other parts of the world and show a clear progression from any CFG club to Europe via City….ala Aaron Mooy, then this makes our sister clubs a more attractive proposition for players who have aspirations to play in Europe. Could this potentially mean that the majority of top players in the respective leagues which CFG clubs play in will want to join them, prior to being shipped off to Europe, thus making CFG Clubs the dominant force in their country and squaring the circle so to speak?

Even if these players never play for City’s 1st team, we will no doubt make small profits on the majority of these players and the money will also NEVER leave CFG books, it will just get moved from A-B within the group until profit is made on the said player when sold outside of the group. I see this as a visionary and an incredibly clever business strategy for football.

I’d actually hazard a guess that the utopia of this business model is for CFG to produce enough players of the right quality to only very rarely have to buy from outside of the CFG. What I mean by that is that maybe some of our young players will go in the opposite direction to some of our sister club’s players if they aren’t quite up to the grade of what we will need, giving young players a great opportunity to continue their football education in say the USA. So hopefully we should be able to give the quite a number of players in our academy a career path to professional football which suits their level. Again making us a more attractive option to join as a kid.

I could’ve just posted the future is blue but thought I’d share my thoughts. Anyone who bothered to read them & has some factual info I'd be interested to hear it.
 
We are no project - we are 122 years of history.
 
We are no project - we are 122 years of history.
Of course we have a rich history, I've not mentioned anything contrary to that anywhere. I'm talking about the project to turn our club and the CFG as a whole, into something which will dwarf other clubs in another 10-15 years. As in the business plan in place the likes of which have never been even thought of in football....never mind seen.

Do you see it panning out the way I've suggested? Or think I'm full of shit? Genuinely interested in hearing anyone's knowledge on the subject.
 
There will always be a need to buy in big players to flex our muscles. Sure I suppose the idea is to produce a few too.

Much of your musings sound a little grey suit corporate to me, if not also quite accurate to be fair. They're investing billions to make billions. Yeah whoop, doesn't really float my boat.
 
Interesting post OP. a key feature in all this seems to be the relationship or interaction between the CFG clubs, as we have seen with transfers between City and Melbourne for players that have never even appeared in a City squad.

I'm particularly interested in the impact of all this on the academy. The possibility of several City youth players being loaned out to the same club at the same time is an interesting prospect. What better way for these players to gain experience and also develop with their contemporaries, than in a first team of a club in a competitive league. Always reluctant to mention united, but the fact that so many of their class of 92 had come through the youth team together must have been of huge benefit to them.

City make no secret of their desire for the academy to provide future first team players and the CFG model certainly looks like it will be able to play a part with this.

On another note, the players that don't make it at City are likely be sold on for a profit, as with Seko Fofano who was recently sold for an initial £2.3 million. In days of FFP the more the club and CFG will be looking to capitalise on all ways of increasing income. In football, transfer fees are a huge contributor to net profit.

I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the CFG model in truth, it does seem like an avenue to make money, developing players for the City first team where possible. Chelsea seem to have a side business in developing or snapping up young players for nominal fees then selling them on for profit, to some extent the CFG seems like an elaborate version of this.

City seem to be at the epicentre of the CFG model which is great for us, I'm not sure how I would feel about it if I was a fan of one of the other CFG group clubs. I would be interested to get their take on it.
 
Interesting post OP. a key feature in all this seems to be the relationship or interaction between the CFG clubs, as we have seen with transfers between City and Melbourne for players that have never even appeared in a City squad.

I'm particularly interested in the impact of all this on the academy. The possibility of several City youth players being loaned out to the same club at the same time is an interesting prospect. What better way for these players to gain experience and also develop with their contemporaries, than in a first team of a club in a competitive league. Always reluctant to mention united, but the fact that so many of their class of 92 had come through the youth team together must have been of huge benefit to them.

City make no secret of their desire for the academy to provide future first team players and the CFG model certainly looks like it will be able to play a part with this.

On another note, the players that don't make it at City are likely be sold on for a profit, as with Seko Fofano who was recently sold for an initial £2.3 million. In days of FFP the more the club and CFG will be looking to capitalise on all ways of increasing income. In football, transfer fees are a huge contributor to net profit.

I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the CFG model in truth, it does seem like an avenue to make money, developing players for the City first team where possible. Chelsea seem to have a side business in developing or snapping up young players for nominal fees then selling them on for profit, to some extent the CFG seems like an elaborate version of this.

City seem to be at the epicentre of the CFG model which is great for us, I'm not sure how I would feel about it if I was a fan of one of the other CFG group clubs. I would be interested to get their take on it.
Of course we have a rich history, I've not mentioned anything contrary to that anywhere. I'm talking about the project to turn our club and the CFG as a whole, into something which will dwarf other clubs in another 10-15 years. As in the business plan in place the likes of which have never been even thought of in football....never mind seen.

Do you see it panning out the way I've suggested? Or think I'm full of shit? Genuinely interested in hearing anyone's knowledge on the subject.
Some good points but are we actually running the academy at a profit ?
Its said we are selling players on for £2/3m but in reality you here of city signing these kids on for undisclosed sums moving them and families over paying x no £ to train them x no £ in wages
The point is do we make anything out of it at the end of the day or will the real payback come from a player we sell for peanuts has a very good sell on clause similar to how Denis Suarez is panning out ?
 
Some good points but are we actually running the academy at a profit ?
Its said we are selling players on for £2/3m but in reality you here of city signing these kids on for undisclosed sums moving them and families over paying x no £ to train them x no £ in wages
The point is do we make anything out of it at the end of the day or will the real payback come from a player we sell for peanuts has a very good sell on clause similar to how Denis Suarez is panning out ?

Good point RE the cost paid at youth level and the additional expense of relocating famililes, I hadn't factored that in to my initial post. These are the early days of the CFA though and I believe the long term model will be geared for the academy to be a steady source of income for the club/CFG. I don't think we're just looking at the academy as a way of producing future first team players (although that is certainly the aim) but we're also looking at another way of increasing profit.

The Denis Suarez example is interesting as I think his preference was to move on so we never really got the chance to see that one through. We still stand to make a fair bit of money as Suarez's career develops, which I expect will be encouraging for the powers that be, perhaps it may be a sign of things to come.
 
Much of your musings sound a little grey suit corporate to me, if not also quite accurate to be fair. They're investing billions to make billions. Yeah whoop, doesn't really float my boat.
As long as City get home grown coming through sooner rather than later, the corporate end of the how it's bankrolled doesn't get me excited. Contrarily, I find it all a bit shady,a s is all big business.

City seem to be at the epicentre of the CFG model which is great for us, I'm not sure how I would feel about it if I was a fan of one of the other CFG group clubs. I would be interested to get their take on it.

That was the first thing I thought of while reading your piece. There is the risk of alienating the local fanbase of these clubs.


Wouldn't disagree with your synopsis, but I ultimately agree with these guys.
 
I don't see why the fans would be alienated, we are building excellent facilities for them, providing players by virtue of loans or by the pulling power we have. I certainly wouldn't be alienated if I was a Melbourne City fan for example.

We have essentially just given them two of the best players in the a-league, something that would be a dream for them a couple years back. We have given them the facilities, money and power to build successful youth and womens teams.

NYCFC fans seem a big arrogant but thats a typical sherman tank for you, without City there would be no NYCFC and no Villa, Lampard and Villa etc. I also envisiage a world class stadium, training facility and something akin to CITC in New York within the next decade.
'Soccer' is growing in USA, why not be at the forefront of it.
 

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