City Football Group, the emerging empire of the Emirates in international football
The City Football Group (CFG), the UAE company led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, already has ten football clubs on the international scene following its latest acquisition.
The Emirati group's most recent purchase was from the French Troyes of the French Second Division (Ligue 2), which joins an already long list that includes Manchester City of the English Premier League, one of the most important teams in Europe and the world.
"CFG will be the new majority shareholder of ESTAC (Espérance Sportive Troyes Aube Champagne), after having bought the shares held by the former owner, Daniel Masoni," the French team recently stated in a statement on its website.
Daniel Masoni, who had referred on several occasions to the sale of ESTAC in recent years, "is happy to have been contacted by a group that has a large enough economic to make the club grow significantly," according to the statement. The City Football Group is "a major player in football on the international stage, benefiting from real know-how in the taking over and development of professional football clubs," said Masoni.
CFG runs teams such as Manchester City, New York City FC in the United States, Melbourne City FC in Australia, Yokohama Marinos in Japan, Torque de Montevideo in Uruguay, Girona FC in Spain, Sichuan Jiuniu FC in China, Mumbai City FC in India and Lommel SK in Belgium. Ultimately, Troyes was added as the tenth club on the list.
This expansion is set to continue and further football acquisitions are expected from the Emirates entity, which has recently attracted an investment of $500 million from the US company Silver Lake, demonstrating its business appeal. The value of the Emirate group is now estimated at some $4.8 billion, making it the largest investor in the world of football, according to Forbes magazine.
The arrival of a powerful investment group in clubs of other nationalities often has a double vision. On the one hand, there is the important economic injection that it supposes and that helps the club to progress. But on the other hand, some sectors of fans and the media speculate on how the new management may affect the historical identity of these teams.
In general terms, for example, the experience of the CFG in Manchester City has been more than positive, both on a sporting level (with a great increase in the number of titles achieved by the team and with the arrival of top-level footballers and coaches), and on a business level, with healthy numbers in the institution's coffers.
City Football Group was created in 2013 and has had a meteoric growth thanks to the investments made. The group is based in Abu Dhabi and is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, deputy prime minister and minister of presidential affairs of the United Arab Emirates, who has drawn up plans from the outset that go beyond making profits and buying up great footballers. He has set higher goals, such as the continued development of the clubs, in all areas, both sporting and business, and even social, thanks even to initiatives in the communities of the cities where the acquired teams are located.
"Many people thought that the experience of investing in a club was just spending money to buy the most expensive players ... But what we really care about is giving the Arab and Emirati investor a good image in Britain, Europe and the West. In my opinion, sports investment should not be about buying players, but should focus on the young talent in the academies, the infrastructure and the community service of the club," Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan went on to say, in statements collected by Abu Dhabi Sports.
