Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners may find it easier to win in the stock market than on the soccer pitch.
On the day the English club secured the 12 million-pound ($19.8 million) purchase of midfielder Gareth Barry in June, owner Sheikh Mansour bin ZayedAl Nahyan was pocketing more than 100 times that sum selling shares in U.K. bank Barclays Plc.
Now, after shelling out 95 million pounds this off-season - - more than Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool combined -- on players including strikers Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor, the sheikh who bought the team last year will see if his club can emulate his financial success. City, which kicks off its Premier League season against Blackburn Rovers tomorrow, hasn’t won the English championship in four decades.
“Having money to buy the players is one thing, putting them in a team is another,” said Graham Taylor, who coached the England national team between 1990 and 1993, said in an interview. “If you have money, people say it’s easy, but it will be an achievement to make a winning team.”
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has pumped more than $1 billion into Chelsea since his 2003 takeover, bringing the west London team its first league titles in half a century and turning it into one of Europe’s most powerful teams.
Sheikh Mansour followed up his 210 million-pound acquisition of City in September 2008 by beating Abramovich to the U.K. record transfer of Brazilian international striker Robinho for 32.5 million pounds, hours after the takeover was complete.
Away from soccer, he bought 1.3 billion shares in Barclays a month later to help the 300-year-old bank avoid a government bailout. That bet bought his company, PCP Gulf Invest 1 Ltd., a 73 percent profit, or 1.46 billion pounds, when the stock was sold seven months later, according to Bloomberg data.
‘Different World’
“It’s all been fantastic what they’ve done,” Mike Summerbee, who played in City’s second and last championship winning team, in 1968, said in an interview. “It’s a different world.”
When rival Manchester United won Europe’s Champions League, domestic F.A. Cup and league title in 1999, City was scraping its way out of English soccer’s third tier. The team ended up tenth in the 20-team Premier League last season, the first under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour, as United swept to its 11th Premier League title.
This time around, coach Mark Hughes has spent the offseason adding established performers to his roster by being able to outbid rivals and offering to double the wages of stars who command as much as 140,000 pounds a week.
$4.9 Billion
City followed up its acquisition of English national team midfielder Barry by coming up with the 25 million pounds needed to beat Manchester United’s efforts to retain Tevez. The Argentine national team striker had become a favorite during a two-year loan at Old Trafford, with fans chanting “Sign him up” whenever he took to the field.
Sheikh Mansour, 39, is the half-brother of Abu Dhabi ruler Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and has estimated wealth of $4.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine this year.
At the time of the takeover, Sulaiman Al-Fahim, a spokesman for the owner, said City would become “the biggest club in the world, bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United.” The owner then acknowledged teams aren’t built in a day.
“We are ambitious for the club, like you, but not unreasonably so and we understand it takes time to build a team capable of sustaining a presence in the top four of the Premier League and winning European honors,” Sheikh Mansour said in an open letter to supporters. The top four teams in the English league can gain access to the Champions League, which can add millions in revenue.
Foreign Control
Manchester City is one of 10 foreign-controlled teams in England’s top league, whose matches are broadcast to more than 230 countries around the world. The government-owned Abu Dhabi Media Company last month won the rights to show English soccer in the Middle East, where soccer is the most watched sport and where City will play an exhibition match in November.
Sheikh Mansour made a break with local custom when he said his investment in City was made in a “private capacity” and not on behalf of the state, said Christopher Davidson, a professor at Durham University in northeast England and author of “Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond.” Until then, he was little known outside his home country.
“This would work to raise Sheikh Mansour’s profile within the family, within the country and internationally too,” Davidson said in an interview. “What he has done over the last few years is establish himself on the international stage as a big hitter and major member of the royal family.”
Fans Content
Fans said they’d be content to end the 33-year run without a trophy and silence ridicule from Manchester United rivals, who display a large banner dedicated to City’s barren spell.
The sign draped over a section of Old Trafford’s Stretford End is updated every February as another year passes since City’s League Cup triumph over Newcastle. In that time United has won 27 major titles.
“For City to finish in the top four will be seen as a major achievement,” said Gary James, a former official historian at Manchester City, who was born the same year his team last won the league title. “Just to be able to challenge would be great at the moment.”
(Source: Bloomberg)
