A friend of GuillemBalague.com, from the United Arab Emirates, gives us a unique insight in to the new owner of Manchester City and what the future may hold for the Premier League club...
Manchester city are now United. The Gallagher brothers don’t need to panic just yet, they won’t be wearing red and employing a gruff Scot anytime soon, but they are now part of the Abu Dhabi United Group. The most sensational of all takeovers has put City up there with the richest clubs in the world, and the money has gone were the mouth is: by signing Robinho from under the noses of Chelsea.
What do we know of the Abu Dhabi United Group? The view from here in the UAE is that they are seriously rich and don’t mind spending the cash. When we talk about rich we think of Roman Abramovich rolling in the green stuff, but he has nothing on these boys. Imagine owning your own country and one that has oil. Everything that happens in that country goes through you and your family. If someone buys a pint of milk, you get a cut, when someone gets a parking ticket on one of your roads, you get a cut. Add in everything else that people buy everyday and you can see that it all adds up to a fair few Robinhos. Oh, and I nearly forgot; there’s all that oil selling at $100 a barrel. It’s easy to see that Eastlands is now awash with cash.
The man behind all this is Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. The other Arab interest in the Premier League, the Dubai Investment Company that tried to take over Liverpool, was a group of wealthy individuals who expected a return on their investment. This is different. It is the Sheikh’s personal investment and not, as has been reported elsewhere, the government of Abu Dhabi’s money - they have their $800 billion invested elsewhere. Man City are his plaything and he will have the final say. The ownership model is very similar to Abramovich at Chelsea - so don’t upset the big man. The whole shooting match is being fronted by Dr Sulaiman al Fahim, who also runs the Abu Dhabi government’s real estate division, Hydra Properties. It is not the done thing for members of the Abu Dhabi royal family to do interviews or deal with the day to day running of a company. They will leave that to the minions like Dr Sulaiman, albeit multi millionaire minions.
What can City expect in the future? The only comparison is Al Jazeera: not the American hating TV Channel, but a Football Club in Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Mansour owns the club, one of the biggest in the UAE and he does not mind spending his money on them. They have just signed Rafael Sobis, the Real Betis and Brazilian Olympic team player, for 10 million Euros. This is not a lot by Premier League standards, but when you consider the club take no money at all over the gate - in fact the opposite is true, they even pay some fans to go to the games and act as cheerleaders – and you can see that Sheikh Mansour is serious about his football teams.
Al Jazeera are in the process of extending the stadium to 42,000 seat capacity, which is huge for a club that normally gets 5,000 a game. The new stadium is state of the art and has a training ground attached. It even has an indoor arena and hotel. The club, in terms of infrastructure, is miles ahead of anything else in the country and the team always has the biggest stars. Philip Cocu was there last season and George Weah graced the field around 9 years ago.
Al Jazeera have, like Man City, underachieved for a club of their size for years, so maybe that is why Mansour took the blues to his heart.
There will be interesting times ahead for City - and don’t expect patience to be a virtue. The league in the UAE is notorious for sackings. During the 2006/7 season 11 out of the 14 coaches were shown the door during the midseason break. One of the three remaining coaches was told that he would be sacked at the end of the season, but they didn’t want to pay off his contract, so he had to do the final 6 months of the season with the axe poised. Mark Hughes, you have been warned: don’t get too comfy in the office.
One thing does puzzle me: if the Sheikh wanted to buy the Al Jazeera of the Premier League then he should have gone for Newcastle. Why? Because they are a big club who have underachieved for years, they have delusions of grandeur - and both play in black and white stripes.
The Emirates Correspondent
