Manchester City’s plan for global domination

[KingsX]

This article is long, and sure to put the salt in your afternoon tea.  But informative reading for those who wish to understand where “the beautiful game” is going.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/15/manchester-city-football-group-ferran-soriano      Excerpts:

 

In 2006 Soriano presented 28 slides that set out his early vision. Thanks to the phenomenal growth in their worldwide fan bases, he noted, big clubs were being transformed from promoters and organisers “of local events, like a circus” into “global entertainment companies like Walt Disney”. If big clubs seized the opportunity to “capture the growth and become global franchises”, they would soon stand apart from their rivals, creating a new, world-conquering elite.

 

That corporation is City Football Group (CFG). It already owns, or co-owns, six clubs on four continents, and the contracts of 240 male professional players and two dozen women. Hundreds more carefully picked teenagers and younger children who aspire to greatness play in CFG’s lower teams. The longterm ambition is huge. The company will trawl the world for players – shaping and polishing them in state-of-the-art academies and training facilities across several continents, selling them on or sending the best to the clubs it will own (and improve) in a dozen or so countries. Supplied and shielded by the vessels around it, the flagship of this new football flotilla – Manchester City FC – will continue its already startling rise to become the world’s greatest club.

 

Melbourne Heart, as the Australian club was originally known, had only been founded in 2009. It won its first major trophy last season, just two years after City bought it and changed its name, and changed its colours to sky blue. “It’s like being a start-up tech firm, and Apple buying you.”

 

Once a player is loaned out, the parent club loses control over their development – as Chelsea can testify, having bought up so many young players that more than 30 are on loan at 24 different clubs. At worst, this leads to the warehousing of players and the ruining of promising careers. CFG’s integrated web of clubs, all (in theory) playing the same style of football, is meant to solve that. “In this system we control exactly what they do. The coaching is exactly the same. The playing style is exactly the same,” Soriano said. If this vision works out, successful players will progress from, say, Torque to New York, and then to Girona, and then – eventually – to Manchester City.

 

The next major purchase may well be in China, where the group is “actively looking” to buy a club. In October 2015, China’s football-loving president, Xi Jinping, visited City’s Etihad stadium; two months later, Chinese investors bought 13% of CFG for $400m (£265m), valuing the whole at $3bn.

 

[Finnegan]

CFG vs Red Bull to be the champions league final in every continent within twenty years. Great. 

[GaelicFox]

This will never be allowed to take hold 

 

too many historic vested interested clubs with powerful ears and minds 

 

All likely to end in a massive mess 

[Webbo]

Good read that.

[davieG]

1 hour ago, GaelicFox said:

This will never be allowed to take hold 

 

too many historic vested interested clubs with powerful ears and minds 

 

All likely to end in a massive mess 

Of course it could the only people in a position to stop it are too busy milking the system to give a toss. 

They've shown no intention so far of introducing suitable controls we've not even got a level playing field in the PL never mind world wide.

The fans won't be heard or be in any way united against this because those that might have the biggest influence are as guilty as those running football as they don't want to see their financial superiority and hence chances of success reduced, in fact quite the opposite 

[Rogstanley]

Just seems like a take on the long established feeder club set up to me. 

 

As long as rules around conflicts of interest are upheld ie as long as owners aren't allowed to own clubs in direct competition with one another then I can't see this becoming much of a problem.

[Manwell Pablo]

Not sure how long rules well prevent this tbf. Would you trust uefa and Fifa to safeguard the games intergrity over increasing revenue? Long term?

[Jordan]

They brought David Villa to NYC, so I'm gonna turn a blind eye to all the other bad stuff.

 

But to be more serious, talking about style, this is so true: there's a real CFG Way, and NYCFC didn't waste too much time before they started obeying Soriano's orders. In the team's first season (under American head coach Jason Kreis), there wasn't too much in the way of style--the team sort of stumbled through the season, patching things up and figuring out things as they went along. But when CFG moved Vieira over from the "Elite Development Squad" to NYC, there was the CFG stamp all over everything they did.

 

Immediately, NYC switched to a front 3 (in a 4-3-3) with Villa and the wingers swapping, attacking fullbacks, and an a fundamentalist approach to retaining possession, short passing, and building from the back. There weren't many, if any, MLS teams that would place the two CBs on either side of the box for goal kicks before Vieira took over. And NYCFC played this style following the letter of the law, no matter what. They improved in year 2, but style seemed more important than winning--the team went through some real growing pains, including a 7-0 shellacking at home courtesy of NY Red Bulls--and even in that game, NYC were going to play and learn the CFG style regardless of how painful the growing pains were.

 

The lessons paid off last season, but NYCFC were absolutely a laboratory of sorts for CFG.

Edited 15 December 2017 by Jordan