The English Football Thread

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Johnnyeye 7,415]

12 hours ago, Jason said:

Heads need to roll if we don't beat Arsenal on Boxing Day...

it would be so typical of us, we make shit teams look great.

[Johnnyeye 7,415]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

It'll be Arteta's 1 year anniversary in the Arsenal job on the day we play on Boxing Day...

ffs its written already, altough we did spank them 6-0 on Wenger's 1000th game in charge, and dont be surprised to see that bald cunt Anthony Taylor as ref for this one.

[Johnnyeye 7,415]

12 hours ago, iceboy said:

SHIT CLUB

and fans

[Alabama 1,992]

Few months ago TC posters rated Arteta more than Lampard....its so criminal looking how disjointed, disoriented, disinterested and abysmal Arsenal is..Lol Arteta the second coming of Pep...

Arsenal is shit...

 

[chelsea_4_eva 1,144]

Saw a few rumours that the senior player that doesnt talk to arteta is david luiz lol. If it is, you know whose side his best mate is on.

[milka 3,308]

 Arsenal -- > Championship 

[Strike 6,965]

4 hours ago, Jason said:

It'll be Arteta's 1 year anniversary in the Arsenal job on the day we play on Boxing Day...

they'll play like its their cup final

[Milan 17,835]

So only Liverpool, Everton, Southampton and Brighton can still have the 2,000 fans in their stadiums.

[Atomiswave 6,072]

9 hours ago, Johnnyeye said:

it would be so typical of us, we make shit teams look great.

Its christmas mate, you know how we deliver pts to strugglers in this time of year.

9 hours ago, Johnnyeye said:

ffs its written already, altough we did spank them 6-0 on Wenger's 1000th game in charge, and dont be surprised to see that bald cunt Anthony Taylor as ref for this one.

I wouldnt be surprised one bit, then again they are all bent, they just take orders and perform accordingly.

[Laylabelle 9,300]

2 hours ago, Milan said:

So only Liverpool, Everton, Southampton and Brighton can still have the 2,000 fans in their stadiums.

Lasted what 2 games us anyway...

Think said about Leeds dropping a Tier

[Vesper 27,336]

21 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

PSG also lost. Looking at tables in all top5 leagues is crazy. I'm loving it! 

I do not like the EPL table, as when you give manure, shitty, and villa their games in hand, we are 7th, almost 8 (shitty right under us on GD.) The fact Manure is likely above us is sickening. Those insanely numerous PGMOL robbery calls in their favour may cost us the CL next year. It is why I go so batshit crazy.

It is so strange but I think I hate Manure now more than the bindippers and closing in on spuds. Victimpool now have nothing really to deny them anymore (now that they won the epl,  but I still hate 99% of all scousers, most ar vermin). Spuds obviusly do have many things to deny. But I fucking hate the way Manure is being saved by the refs. None of the other teams in the EPL get the amount of dodgy calls week in and week out. Not pool, not shitty, not us, not arse, not spuds, no one. Only leagues where teams get this are Barca/Real in La Liga, and Juve (used to be AC Milan as well) in Serie A, plus Bayern (to a lesser extent, Germans are pretty fair overall, unless it involves war, lol) in the Bundelisga. PSG gets bad calls against them all the time, most of France hates them, save for Mbappe.

 

Btw, I know I am pretty much the only one who rambles on about it, but GODDAMN us losing that fucking 2012 FIFA World Club championship. The dipper and manure cunts ALWAYS hold that over our heads, as they can claim world champions and we cannot.

Fuck!

[Vesper 27,336]

Merci, gentleman Ged, et adieu

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Gérard Houllier at Anfield, the place he called home between 1998 and 2004. Photograph: Malcolm Goy/Shutterstock

Scott Murray

RIP GED Gérard Houllier never did win the league with his beloved Liverpool. Not technically. But he did win the FA Cup. And the League Cup. And lift Euro Vase after the Greatest European Final Ever. And the Super Cup and Charity Shield. And another League Cup. And he built a team that only required the addition of Xabi Alonso and Luis García, plus moving Jamie Carragher over a bit, there you go son, stand there, to win Big Cup in the Greatest European Final Ever II. And without his root-and-branch philosophical rebuild of the club, there’d have been no chance of Rafa going close, of Brenny going closer, of Jürgen going even closer before finally, at long last, getting there. Ged, who has died at the age of 73 after a heart operation, set Liverpool’s title ball rolling in the right direction again, all those years ago. History will mark his contribution. We’re chalking one up for him, put it that way.

Gérard Houllier, former Liverpool and France manager, dies aged 73 Read more

Ged’s greatest signing was Sami Hyypia; his most romantic, Jari Litmanen; his cleverest, Gary McAllister. All played their part in that 2000-01 treble season packed with memories. Safe Hands Sander lifting the League Cup with a 1950s-style Tiger-comic cry of “hooray”; Stéphane Henchoz performing octopus tricks on the goalline to set the scene for Michael Owen running away giggling, what was rightfully Arsenal’s tucked under one arm; Robbie Fowler wandering about Dortmund with Euro Vase while dressed as the title character from Gilligan’s Island. Oh, and that McAllister free kick against Everton, to which Ged reacted with a perfect mix of disbelief, delirium and delight, the football-loving little boy sparkling in his eyes once again. Beautiful scenes. Houllier could well have won the league in 2002 in any case. His team were more than good enough, and full of confidence after the treble-winning season, but their campaign was derailed by the aortic dissection that nearly took him, then aged only 54, way too soon. He was never quite the same force of nature after that huge scare, though that didn’t stop him going on to win a couple of French titles with Lyon, adding to the one he’d secured for PSG back in 1986, the first in the club’s history. Throw in his contribution to the great France teams of 1998 and 2000, developing the likes of Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet, and that’s some body of work to leave behind all right. Merci, gentleman Ged, et adieu. QUOTE OF THE DAY “My mate, my colleague, my boss. One of the greatest moments of my life was when we come together in 1998. Just to be in his company was an absolute treat. So loyal, so passionate and extremely fierce. Since we finished, at the end of every conversation we had, I told him I loved him and would always be grateful for him giving a wonderful partnership. RIP Boss” – Phil Thompson with a heartfelt tribute to the man he assisted in the Liverpool dugout.

Good times. Photograph: Phil Noble/PA

RECOMMENDED LISTENING The latest Football Weekly will be here soon. FIVER LETTERS “Back in the days before I worked on Big Website, my best mate had to undergo major heart surgery at Broadgreen Hospital in Liverpool and was understandably bricking it. It turned out the surgeon was the same man who repaired Gérard Houllier’s heart a year earlier. I wrote to Liverpool, more in hope than expectation, to ask if Houllier would perhaps pen a short note wishing him well as I thought it would help ease his nerves and do him the world of good. A few days later who turns up at his bedside to talk about all things Liverpool with him? Yes, Géd. What a man!” – Gregg Bakowski. “So the last 16 of Big Cup was drawn today. Remember when this was the Round of Arsenal? Heady days, Gooners, heady days” – David Maddock. “After enduring the Manchester derby, Crystal Palace v Spurs and Arsenal v Burnley, I’m just curious how long we all have to pretend that there’s any quality football or vague semblance of entertainment this season? P.S. I’m asking on behalf of a bored friend who has too much time on his hands and will be watching regardless anyway …” – Noble Francis. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day prize is … David Maddock. RECOMMENDED SHOPPING Available at our print shop now, Tom Jenkins’s pictures of the past decade. There’s also this Pelé picture there too. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS The Big Cup tombola came and went, and it’s bad-ish news for Chelsea and Liverpool, while Manchester City got a kinder draw against Borussia Mönchengladbach. To Big Vase! Manchester United have drawn La Liga leaders Real Sociedad, while Arsenal will be overjoyed to have picked Benfica out of the hat.

The results of the Big Cup tombola, in full. Photograph: Harold Cunningham - UEFA/Uefa/Getty Images

Frank Lampard’s Chelsea manager Frank Lampard, who used to make intelligent runs into the box and has a GCSE in Latin, thinks more fans should be allowed back into stadiums. Won’t somebody think about the coffers of Big Cup clubs? Kiernan Tierney thinks the blame for Arsenal’s worst start to a season in over 45 years lies solely with the players. “There’s no way to disguise it. It’s terrible, to be honest” sobbed Tierney. “We have got a great manager and we believe in him 100%. The blame is on us, nobody else.” Borussia Dortmund manager Lucien Favre is now just Lucien Favre after the Bundesliga club sacked the 63-year-old following the 5-1 defeat to Stuttgart. Neymar knacked himself in PSG’s defeat and some guy called Leo Messi saved Barcelona: it’s all in our snazzy Euro round-up. And in USA! USA!! USA!!!, awesome ballers Columbus Crew won the local trophy. STILL WANT MORE? Gérard Houiller’s obituary, charting his journey from being a language assistant in Liverpool in 1969 to his managerial heyday. And here’s a lovely video tribute too. Andy Brassell on that Dortmund sacking and their temporary appointment of Edin Terzic, who according to the picture in this article, has just arrived from a Sum 41 video.

Sum 41 vibes, right. Composite: Reuters/Getty Images

Adam White and Eric Devin on how Lyon beat PSG, and the brilliance of young Brazilian Lucas Paquetá. Count ‘em, here’s 10 things from the weekend’s Premier League action. And Rachel Brown-Finnis has reviewed the WSL action here, too. Nicky Bandini on the demise of Fiorentina, and why romanticism between Cesare Prandelli and La Viola might not be enough. Casey Stoney, the Manchester United manager, speaks exclusively to Suzanne Wrack. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! THERE HAVE BEEN BETTER YEARS

[Vesper 27,336]

Special report: City Football Group. Part two – does it work?

https://theathletic.com/2244579/2020/12/10/cfg-manchester-new-york-city-soriano/

In the summer of 2014, Manchester City’s most senior scouts were tasked with compiling a list of five candidates to become Melbourne City’s “Designated Player” — whose wages could be unlimited and would not count against the Australian club’s salary cap. These were scouts who had recently come under the umbrella of City Football Group and had been asked to add matches between Melbourne’s A-League rivals Brisbane Roar and Sydney FC to a schedule that had previously focused on top-level European assignments. It was not a particularly easy, or happy, adjustment.

They managed to come up with just two names and had to be reminded, quite sternly, that these tasks were just as pressing as their work for Manchester City’s first team. They were also advised to treat each meeting as if Sheikh Mansour himself were in the room with them.

Fast-forward six years and the centralised team that oversees footballing operations for CFG totals around 100 people. It is a vast operation.

The Athletic has spoken to sources across the globe to help explain the vision for CFG, why the group has chosen certain clubs and leagues to be part of it and how its sides share information and resources.

You can read Part I here. In Part II, we look at how CFG identify, develop, loan and sell players, focus on New York City FC and analyse the commercial aspect of a business whose most valuable asset, Manchester City, is valued by US business magazine Forbes at $2.7 billion (£2 billion).

We also ask what the future is for a business which aims to become football’s version of the all-conquering All Blacks, New Zealand’s national men’s rugby union team…

Recruiting players good enough for Manchester City’s first team, another CFG club or who can be sold for profit

Players signed by — or for — CFG clubs do so under the Emerging Talent programme, which is headed up by Brian Marwood, managing director of global football. While Txiki Begiristain signs players for the Manchester City first team as sporting director, Marwood seals the deals for those who will need to bide their time before ever running out at the Etihad Stadium. In fact, most will never do so — at least, not in a City shirt.

There are three main goals when CFG sign these players: they will either be good enough to play for Pep Guardiola’s first team, for another CFG club or they will be sold for profit. Just one or two big sales are enough to offset the running costs of the smaller CFG clubs, even if most players to pass through the clubs have left for free rather than for profit.

Research by The Athletic has shown 36 per cent of players to have arrived at CFG clubs since 2013 have left for free and the group has made a profit in the transfer market on only 7.5 per cent of those players. CFG clubs have made a total loss of around £420 million in terms of player trading, although only Manchester City are in the red. The other nine CFG clubs have made a net profit of £19 million.

While many players have been bought by Manchester City and sent to Melbourne (19), Spain’s Girona (16) or NYCFC (four), only one player brought into CFG under the Emerging Talent programme to date has made an impression on the City first team: Oleksandr Zinchenko. He was initially loaned to Dutch club PSV Eindhoven, narrowly missed out on a further loan to Italy’s Napoli in the season he achieved his breakthrough and then refused a £15 million domestic move to Wolverhampton Wanderers a year later.

It is rare, to say the least, for one of these players to make the grade. So how can they be convinced that this is the right move for them?

Many players are simply happy to be signed for a club connected with Manchester City. Sources close to several players who have been identified as “emerging talents” point out that a big move is usually too good to turn down. City’s research has also shown players from Japan, for example, are desperate to move to Europe rather than to other Japanese clubs. Agents, likewise, will benefit from being known in their market as the person to do a deal with CFG.

The group is honest with the players, though, telling them that they will be loaned out straight away after signing. Loan moves are often agreed with the third club (inside the CFG stable or not) before the player is even formally under contract. Players and their agents generally appreciate there is a concrete plan in place. CFG’s mooted offer to Lionel Messi, for instance, was three years at Manchester City and then two more with their Major League Soccer side in New York.

Over the years, CFG’s central team has analysed the careers of many successful, big-name players to try to establish a framework that can be replicated. For example, they can look at the career paths taken by Cristiano Ronaldo or Son Heung-min and plot loans for their players along similar lines. How many minutes have they played, and in which leagues? There is a recognition, though, that it can never be an exact science.

The network of players is now quite something.

Angelino, for example, was signed as a youngster for Manchester City, loaned to New York City, then left CFG for PSV Eindhoven. The Spanish full-back then returned to the Manchester City fold via a buy-back clause in 2019 and is now likely to make his current loan at Germany’s RB Leipzig permanent for a fee of around £16 million.

Douglas Luiz was signed from Vasco da Gama in his native Brazil, loaned to Girona for two years and then sold to Aston Villa for £15 million in July 2019 after failing to obtain a British work permit. He cost Manchester City around £10 million, which appears to be about the upper limit for these deals. Pablo Moreno, an 18-year-old signed in July, cost £8 million, and Pedro Porro was £11 million last summer.

Moreno had played for Barcelona at youth level and was signed from Juventus, with Felix Correia, who Manchester City had signed from Sporting Lisbon in the summer of 2019, heading in the opposite direction to Turin. Moreno is now on loan at Girona. Porro was signed by City from Girona and, after choosing to go on loan a few days later to another Spanish club, Valladolid, he is now on loan at Portugal’s Sporting, with whom City have an agreement regarding youth development.

Perhaps the player from this pool with the best chance of making it to the Manchester City first team is Yan Couto, who was signed from Brazilian side Curitiba in July for around £6 million, a figure which could double if he plays five Premier League or Champions League games for City in the next five years. The 18-year-old right-back is hopeful that it will happen as the pathway spelt out to him was different to most of the others: when the move was agreed at the start of this year, he was told he would join up with City for pre-season.

This is as close to the holy grail as an Emerging Talent player can get: City are willing to take a closer look, with a view to including them in their 25-man senior squad. The pandemic put paid to those plans, however, and Couto is on loan at Girona now, too.

These players will be identified as part of the ongoing process of scouting for players who could play for City’s partner clubs. The pool of players good enough to play for Guardiola’s first team is relatively small and therefore stable, although any teenager in Europe to make a senior debut is automatically scouted. But there are thousands and thousands of players across the world who could play for Japan’s Yokohama, Melbourne, New York, Torque in Uruguay and so on. CFG clubs can also ask the central team to help them identify a player to strengthen their squad, and generally speaking, players signed directly to those clubs will simply stay there.

Data has played a big role in the identification of talent in recent years, but there has been a departure from this of late, in contrast to clubs such as Liverpool and Arsenal, and it is understood there had been some conflict between CFG’s data and scouting teams.
Although the CFG scouting team is relatively small, both centrally and at individual clubs, their reports on players are said to be very detailed. That’s partly because City’s partner clubs will see the opposition up close several times a season, and their scouting and match analysis know-how has already been improved by the central resources.

In the early days of the Yokohama partnership, Ayoze Perez, then at Tenerife in Spain but now with Leicester City after a £30 million move from Newcastle United, was suggested by the CFG central team but the Japanese side pressed ahead with their original plans. That is less likely to happen some six years on.

When it comes to Emerging Talent players, Marwood and his team will negotiate with the selling clubs, but players identified solely for a particular partner club will be left to the relevant sporting directors.

While this is about as naked an example as is possible of player trading quite often solely for the purposes of turning a profit, sources close to several players currently in the system, or even those who have been moved on after failing to live up to expectations, speak highly of the detailed nature of CFG’s planning.

For one thing, City’s loans team is considerably bigger even than other clubs with vast loan networks, and staff stay in touch with players and agents several times a week, analysing their performances and discussing their progress. Joleon Lescott, a former City centre-back, looks after CFG’s defenders.

Player trading may not have been a priority in the early days of the CFG, but they have certainly made up for lost time and its importance to the global model will only become more pronounced in the coming years.

---

The City Football Group in action: A closer look at New York City FC

Ferran Soriano and Manchester City found New York attractive for all the same reasons he and Barcelona were interested in expanding into the US a half-decade earlier.

“Where can you find interesting soccer?” Soriano said in a 2007 interview with The New York Times. “On what level is the local competition? Is there money available to be spent? Are people ready to spend?”

Despite the American public’s relatively low level of interest in MLS, the massive population, ongoing demographic shifts and the high rate of participation in the sport made the country and its No 1 league too alluring. And in New York, one of the planet’s great cities, Manchester City were aiming for the commercial motherlode.

The greater New York area is perhaps the most important media market in the world. It’s also the biggest population centre in the US and corporate dollars are abundant. It’s hard to imagine a better city to move into for a European club looking to grow their global reach.

There were positives on the sporting side, too. An MLS team could become a proving ground for younger pros and coaches already in the CFG structure and provide a potentially fertile academy.

By November 2012, Manchester City representatives were meeting with league executives and then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg about a stadium deal at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

That meeting, which also included members of the Wilpon family, who then owned Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, didn’t lead to any clarity on a stadium. Everyone pressed ahead anyway.

In May 2013, the club brought baseball heavyweights the New York Yankees into the fold as a 20 per cent investor, with the idea that they would help navigate the city’s difficult political landscape to secure a stadium somewhere in its five boroughs. A few days later, MLS announced that Manchester City would start New York City FC as an expansion team in 2015, paying a $100 million expansion fee for the privilege. Of the 15 teams who have entered MLS or been granted expansion slots since 2009, NYCFC is the only one to have done so without an actionable stadium plan.

More than seven years since their expansion announcement and almost six on from their first match, they still don’t have one.

Since its founding, NYCFC’s primary home has been the famous Yankee Stadium.

The arrangement isn’t exactly friendly for the MLS club, who reportedly pay $1 million in rent per home match in the Bronx. The dimensions of the pitch are notoriously tight, something that hurts the team in their quest to play expansive, attractive soccer.

Availability is a major issue, too. The club has had to move several matches over the years, staging an October 2019 play-offs match at Citi Field, home to MLB team the New York Mets, nearly 10 miles away in Queens as it clashed with Yankees games. They have also played a significant portion of their 2020 home schedule at Red Bull Arena, across the Hudson River in neighbouring New Jersey, due to COVID-19-related restrictions at Yankee Stadium, where sightlines for fans are less than ideal.

As a tenant, NYCFC have fewer available revenue streams at home games than they would in their own stadium. They have less sponsorship inventory, no ability to host ancillary events, fewer premium seating options — all of it adds up. Perhaps most importantly, playing home games at Yankee Stadium and shuttling occasionally to Citi Field and Red Bull Arena gives NYCFC a minor-league feel. It’s harder for the public to take them seriously because of this vagabond status.

The team are closer than ever to getting into a new home, however. The New York Times reported in February that NYCFC are nearing an agreement with the city to build a 25,000-seat ground in the South Bronx. It would be part of a larger development not far from Yankee Stadium. The impact of COVID-19, however, means the estimates of construction beginning in 2022 and being completed by 2024 could potentially be pushed back by a year.

Their own stadium in New York would be a major boon to the value of the club, simply based on the real estate appraisal, even if the venue is leased through the city. A soccer-specific ground would likely also increase the visibility and overall interest in NYCFC, as well as add the important match day revenue streams that are so critical to MLS and a key part of operations for the league’s most successful clubs, including Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers and Atlanta United. A stadium would also give NYCFC and CFG a level of permanence it hasn’t had since arriving in town in 2015.

Winning on the field has not been an issue for NYCFC. They have the best regular-season record in MLS over the past five seasons. Translating that success to the champion-deciding end of season play-offs, however, has been more difficult. New York have won just one of the six play-off match-ups in their history.

David Lee, an Englishman who began his career working as the head of performance analysis for Exeter City, is NYCFC’s sporting director. “We haven’t had the success in terms of trophies that we would have wanted,” he tells The Athletic, “but I think there are so many things that have happened that we would consider successful.

“We don’t do this often in our world, but when you actually take a step back and see what’s been accomplished with the level of consistency in the regular season, what we’re achieving in the academy, I think there’s been so many successes to be really, really proud of. And we know that, hopefully, the next is us lifting a trophy.”

The early sporting returns of NYCFC as a part of the CFG web have been somewhat fruitful.

At the 2016 MLS college draft, New York traded for an English winger who had briefly played for one of the club’s local youth affiliates: Jack Harrison. As a boy, Harrison left Manchester United’s academy to attend the prestigious Berkshire School in Massachusetts, roughly midway between New York and Boston. He went on to star for one season at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, then earned a starting role at NYCFC, forming a formidable attack alongside big-name European signings Frank Lampard and David Villa.

After recording 10 goals and three assists in his second season with New York, Harrison made the England Under-21 team and caught the eye of his hometown club, Stoke City. Then still a Premier League club, Stoke offered a deal worth over $15 million (£11.3 million) with add-ons to sign him in January 2018.

“Really the conversation became, ‘OK, how much do we think Jack could be worth?’” says Lee. “‘If we move him through CFG and we manage a loan period for him, do we think he can be worth more than he is in New York right now?’ And I think the decision was yes, we do think he could be more valuable if we help him with the next one to two steps of his pathway.”

NYCFC had to first convince Harrison it was the better move but once he agreed, Manchester City purchased him that same month for a reported fee of around $6 million (£4.25m). Harrison was immediately loaned to second-tier Middlesbrough for the remainder of that season, then went on loan to Leeds United, also in the Championship, for the following campaign. He’s now in his third season on loan with the Yorkshire club; he helped them win promotion last season and has started 10 of their 11 Premier League games so far in this one, missing out only when the league’s rules dictated he had to against parent club City.

More importantly, from CFG’s perspective, Harrison’s value has increased since he moved from New York to England. If Leeds buy him at the end of this season, CFG will likely end up with millions more than it otherwise would if he’d been sold directly to Stoke, now a Championship side, instead.

“That’s one of the fantastic advantages we have here. We knew Jack’s personality inside and out because he was with us for so long, and so there’s a lot less risk … versus somebody from outside the group,” says Lee. “So I think we all felt really confident we could help him to improve as a player, find the right club where he could go and develop and improve and, from the club side, be a valuable asset.”

The player exchange has worked the other way, too, with NYCFC benefitting from players brought to MLS by CFG.

Yangel Herrera was a relatively unknown 19-year-old when he arrived in New York early in 2017 but quickly became a standout player in MLS and is now a regular for Venezuela’s national team and Granada in La Liga, where he is again on loan from Manchester City.

Herrera first landed on the CFG radar when a scout spotted him at a youth international tournament in Spain in the summer of 2016. NYCFC thought he’d be a good fit for MLS, but his profile blew up after he starred in the 2017 Under-20 World Cup qualifiers. His newly-elevated status meant MLS was no longer all that attractive an option.

But Manchester City changed the equation. The club had a specific plan in mind for Herrera: He would sign for City, then spend the first two seasons of his contract on loan in New York. If he progressed adequately in MLS, he’d move to Europe following the 2018 season. City absorbed some of his salary while he was at NYCFC, decreasing his salary cap hit, a vital part of any deal for an MLS team. Herrera could now be sold for a tidy sum next summer.

As much as Harrison and Herrera illustrate the benefits of CFG connections, the most valuable on-field benefits for CFG remain a work in progress. NYCFC hold homegrown territory rights — the area from which a club holds MLS contract rights over young players — in one of the most talent-rich areas in the United States. The New York-New Jersey region has produced some of the best players to ever turn out for the US national team, including ex-Man City midfielder Claudio Reyna (who was NYCFC sporting director from 2013-19), MLS side Houston Dynamo’s current head coach Tab Ramos, former Manchester United and Everton goalkeeper Tim Howard and ex-national team captain John Harkes.

In recent years, the region has produced several top young professionals, including New York Red Bulls homegrown product and now RB Leipzig midfielder Tyler Adams, French club Lille’s striker Tim Weah and Borussia Dortmund forward Gio Reyna (Claudio’s son), who played for the NYCFC academy but left for the German club on a free transfer without having signed a professional deal after he turned 16.

Despite having played just four MLS games for the first team, 17-year-old defender Joe Scally has already been sold to Borussia Monchengladbach for $2 million, a fee that could rise up to $7 million. He’ll move to Germany on January 1. Another academy product, 20-year-old James Sands, has become a regular starter for New York’s first team.

Like most MLS teams, NYCFC are hoping the success of a youthful group of Americans in Europe, including Adams, Reyna, Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic, Juventus’ Weston McKennie and Bayern Munich’s Chris Richards, as well as the success of Vancouver Whitecaps’  Canada international Alphonso Davies at Bayern, will lead to a sharp increase in valuations for young MLS players.

For a team in a market so flush with talent, it could become a new revenue stream. CFG also has a head-start over other European teams in scouting the up-and-coming players rising through the ranks in the States.

“What the ceiling is… honestly, I don’t know,” says Lee. “I think there’s just such a huge potential in a city this size, with the amount of kids that play soccer here. The market potential for players in New York is massive.”

New York has also become a proving ground for coaches within CFG. When Jason Kreis was fired following the club’s disappointing 2015 debut season, CFG moved Patrick Vieira to NYCFC from his job in charge of Manchester City’s reserve side. After two and a half seasons, he left to take over Nice in France’s top division. Guardiola’s long-time assistant, Domenec Torrent, took over but left following last season. So CFG brought in another coach with whom it was familiar: Ronny Deila, a title winner with Scottish giants Celtic and Norway’s Stromgodset.

This turnover in the coaching staff and lack of continuity may have limited NYCFC’s growth from season to season, but their continued regular-season success also shows the benefit of CFG’s institutional knowledge and ability to hire quality managers.

Even though they’re yet to win a trophy, NYCFC’s sporting operation is respected by executives at other MLS teams. Several pointed to the strength of the CFG scouting network relative to New York’s independent MLS rivals as a significant advantage, albeit while noting that the club don’t have as clear a sporting identity as local rivals, and fellow cog in a global sporting conglomerate, New York Red Bulls. This was a view echoed by sources within the Red Bull group, which sees itself as distinct from CFG because its franchises are defined by a very particular way of playing football.

Of course, just how fast NYCFC can grow and just how much CFG can get out of their New York team are limited by MLS’s strict budget and roster rules. The salary budget, limit on the number of international players and other, more complex rules governing MLS don’t put NYCFC at a disadvantage relative to their domestic competition (all MLS teams play under the same rules, after all), but do mean they can’t field a team full of players such as Herrera, for instance. A team full of marquee names like Villa or Lampard is also out of the question. That’s a factor in capping how much CFG can profit from New York at the box office, via corporate sponsorships and in the transfer ledger.

That’s a bit of a point of frustration for Soriano. He sits on the MLS product strategy committee — a group of owners who play a leading role in determining, among other things, how much teams are allowed to spend on their rosters and how they’re allowed to spend those sums. According to a source, Soriano has over the years consistently pushed other members of the committee to deregulate MLS and bring it more in line with the rest of the footballing world.

“He’ll say, ‘What we’re doing now will not achieve the aims we are setting out’,” says one MLS source. “He has a very good feel when things are limited in scope. He has the ability to say, ‘We won’t be competitive with these salaries; we need to spend more’. He has this overarching view. He has a progressive voice, but he’s also practical. He sees the correlation between spending more and generating more revenue. … He’ll say, ‘No, this is the way, because this is the way it’s done everywhere (else)’.”

NYCFC could stand to make a bit more money and be a lot more relevant. For all of their solid work on the sporting side, the club have yet to make many serious inroads in New York’s sporting consciousness.

Excluding the COVID-19-affected 2020 season that was mostly played without fans, average attendance at home games decreased year-over-year for NYCFC on three of four occasions. Despite finishing with a club-record 64 points, the club averaged an all-time low 21,107 fans per match in 2019. NYCFC are a long way from being the driving force behind their stated mission of building the city of New York “into one of the soccer capitals of the world.”

Of course, CFG might not be too distressed by any of this.

MLS has seen team prices skyrocket over the last decade and CFG can point to the $325 million expansion fee that David Tepper, also the owner of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, was charged after he was awarded a franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina late last year.

The group is bullish on NYCFC’s prospects. A decade of losses while they rent Yankee Stadium, the $100 million franchise fee and $500 million to build their own ground might mean CFG is $800 million in the red in New York before it starts to make any money. But once that new home is built, using money borrowed while interest rates are at record lows, CFG will have the only soccer-specific stadium and MLS franchise in the five boroughs of America’s biggest, richest city.

“We accept it’s not a great investment over five years. But if you’re looking at 15 years?” a CFG source says. “That’s really smart and the funny thing about football is it will be there in 50 years.”

Dr Stefan Szymanski, professor of sport management at the University of Michigan and co-author of Soccernomics, the best-selling football finance book of all time, is sceptical, however.

“Forbes values NYCFC at $385 million,” Syzmanski tells The Athletic. “If you put $100 million into the NASDAQ in 2012 it would be worth $300 million now, without any of the losses NYCFC has made, which must be about $100 million. Could they sell NYCFC for $400 million?”

Five years into this experiment, NYCFC have shown glimpses of their value, but the real gains are still yet to be realised. A move into a new stadium later this decade — and the benefits that might come from the US co-hosting the 2026 World Cup — could begin to truly fulfil Soriano’s vision of a potentially game-changing American market.

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“We’re all obsessed with short-term investment. But there are ones which are 20 to 50 years and maybe longer…”

Asked if he ever thinks it might be better just to run one club, Soriano said: “No, this is the adventure, this is what we’re about. We don’t want 100 clubs. Ten is a good number. It could be 12 or 15, but we want to be the best football organisation in the world.

“We’re long-termers. We want to achieve that today and in 10 years. If you want to be the best football organisation in the world, can you afford to not be in China? You can’t, like any business in the world. So those are positions that make perfect sense.”

They do make sense. But when will they start to make cents?

After six years of losses, including a £195 million deficit in the 2010-11 season which saw Yaya Toure, Mario Balotelli, David Silva and plenty more arrive at the Etihad, Manchester City have been making small profits since 2015. COVID-19 will scupper that, of course. CFG cannot be blamed for that, though, and has continued to show the kind of confidence you would expect from a company backed by people who talk about 50-year “investment horizons”.

Manchester City had a net spend of just under £50 million in the summer transfer window and the group also bought two more clubs, Lommel in Belgium and France’s Troyes, albeit at what one source described as “pandemic prices”.

The underlying point is that the flagship store is, in normal trading conditions, washing its own face. As were Girona during their two recent seasons in La Liga. The new stores, however, in Melbourne, Mumbai, New York and Sichuan are still in expansion mode.

Melbourne’s turnover has almost doubled in five years, NYCFC’s has tripled, while the others are yet to move the needle. Their deficits are dragging the group’s overall results into the red — a combined £330 million for the six years to June 2019 — but City’s contribution to CFG’s revenue has fallen every year from 100 per cent in 2014 to 85 per cent last year.

The positive underlying direction of travel is encouraging for CFG’s accountants and should keep MLS, UEFA and any other spending regulator off its clubs’ backs for the foreseeable future, but it is not what gets CFG’s executives excited. If you ask them when all these punts will really pay off, including the original one in Manchester, they will say they already have and will continue to do so long after half the companies on the stock market have disappeared.

They point to the two sales of stakes in CFG. The first came in 2015, when China Media Capital and the CITIC group paid $400 million (£298 million) for 13 per cent of CFG. And the second came last November, when US-based private equity firm Silver Lake shelled out $500 million (£373 million) for 10 per cent, which diluted Sheikh Mansour’s stake to 77 per cent.

Silver Lake’s investment implied a value of $4.8 billion (£3.6 billion) for CFG, not bad for a group whose most valuable asset, Manchester City, is valued by Forbes at $2.7 billion (£2 billion). As one senior CFG source puts it: “There’s your return, there it is. We can replicate that with all the other clubs and it won’t even take that long.

“We’re all obsessed with short-term investment these days. But there are medium-term profiles and long-term ones, which are 20 to 50 years and maybe longer.”

Dr Szymanski, though, says: “Research shows investments in football have dramatically underperformed financial markets. To claim things will be different this time requires an explanation about what has changed. The fact that investors in clubs are wealthy individuals with money to burn rather than pension funds suggests football — and sport, in general — remains a vanity investment project.

“There’s certainly a case to make that the Sheikh acquired Manchester City at a good moment — the club’s valuation has risen a lot since 2008. But since 2008, the club has reported pre-tax losses of £695 million. If you add the acquisition cost, they’ve put in around £1 billion for an asset valued at £2 billion. If you’d put £1 billion into the NASDAQ in 2008, your investment would have been worth £5.7 billion by the end of 2019. There are subtleties you could add, but the basic picture is clear.

“In the end, I don’t believe this is primarily driven by money but it’s a good strategic investment for a small state vulnerable to much larger neighbours like Iran and Saudi Arabia.”

Roger Bell and John Purcell, co-founders of financial analysis firm Vysyble, go even further.

In a detailed analysis for The Athletic, Bell and Purcell compare CFG’s performance to Manchester United’s, a reasonable benchmark given the clubs’ rivalry and the fact United are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Based on United’s most recent quarterly report, which looked at the three months to the end of September, Bell and Purcell give England’s biggest club an enterprise value of £2.3 billion, more than £1.4 billion less than CFG’s implied value when Silver Lake invested.

Bell and Purcell believe United’s enterprise value has fallen in recent years as the club has reported economic losses — a failure “to cover all of the costs of doing business” — but CFG’s economic losses have been six times as great at nearly £901 million.

“This suggests that Silver Lake has overpaid by some margin,” they say. “But what were they buying into in the first place?”

If it were their money, the Vysyble duo would want far more clarity on CFG’s “governing objective”. Is it to produce a return on investment? Launch franchises all over the globe? Achieve sporting dominance? Create a marketing platform?

“The issue is perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase, ‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there’,” they say.

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Enter… the All Blacks?

So where are CFG going and how will anyone know when they get there?

Bell and Purcell aren’t sure.

“Manchester City have won the Premier League but not dominated Europe,” they say. “The economic performance is six times worse than Manchester United’s. Commercial revenues have stalled. The ‘team in every continent’ model has not, as yet, been imitated and does not appear to be feeding commercial incomes to the extent whereby the returns justify the acquisitions. And the cross-fertilisation of players and any ‘sporting ideal’ criteria are best described as unproven.”

Soriano has been on this path longer than most though, and he will not be deterred. When asked during his Leaders Week session earlier this year why CFG sold stakes to the Chinese and Silver Lake, he said it was not because the group was cashing out but because it needs “strategic partners” to get even bigger. It already lists nine commercial partners, including car manufacturer Nissan and EA Sports, the video game producers, among its backers.

Asked what those investors saw in CFG, Soriano said: “You’ll have to ask them, but I know they believe in our view about sports and entertainment.”

The very basic investment thesis is the world is a place with eight billion people, and the majority of them are middle class — that’s different from 30 years ago — and need to be entertained.

“The business of entertainment will grow and sport is a fundamental part of entertainment and football is the number one sport, no question. So the investment will work,” said Soriano. “In football, they tried to find the best platform and they decided it’s us, and I agree! There might be other good platforms to invest in, a single-club platform, but they decided our model is best, it’s the most appropriate way to invest in the growth in the middle-class population, the growth of entertainment, the growth of sport and the growth of football within sports.”

A senior source at CFG explained it to The Athletic like this: “Pep Guardiola is the perfect manager for us because he’s a thinker, he’s a professor, a researcher. He tries things. It’s almost that Silicon Valley approach where you take academia and you commercialise it. That’s what we did with the City Football Academy and why we’ve recreated it. We wanted a series of faculties around the world.”

What’s next, then?

“Football is going to change dramatically in 10 years,” they explain. “I don’t know that we’re going to have 25 clubs — it’s not about that — but what we will be is the go-to place.

“We’ll be the equivalent of the All Blacks with multiple centres around the world, we’ll be a university of football. I can’t say where we’ll be exactly but we’ll be winning silverware, producing players, producing coaches, in men’s and women’s football, and also setting the environment. That’s what I mean about the All Blacks.”

Whether this means the various City sides around the globe are going to start performing a Haka before games is unclear. But what looks certain is that City Football Group is only going to get bigger, faster, smarter and, for those lined up against it, more frightening.

[Vesper 27,336]

2020-21 English Premier League

Manchester City                      

West Bromwich Albion           

https://socceronline.me/manchester-city-fc-vs-west-bromwich-albion-live/stream-1

https://www.totalsportek.com/stream-page-1/

[Atomiswave 6,072]

City will take the win, not that im gonna watch the match after our shitshow of a performance.

[Milan 17,835]

I have a Christmas wish. Since we have never been in the race, can Liverpool run away with it again? Yes, Klopp is a wanker. But so is Guardiola. And I cannot stand even the thought of Tottenham fighting for it. Liverpool won it last season so the super big fuss already happened and this would be just one of many in their history  

[Laylabelle 9,300]

Urghh no thank you lol. Looking more and more likely though. Spurs won't keep up and no one else looks near capable.