It’s an exhilarating time to be a Manchester City fan, though I am muting my optimism with a selection of the most miserabilist chants ever heard in a football stadium. “We’re not really here”; “Empty seats at home”; and “Spent all my money on drugs and City”. City’s rise has been so rapid that the fans are still very Mancunian, and perhaps less familiar than followers of other big teams. Yet they resemble other fans in their obsessive scrutiny of every aspect of the team, from the pitch, to the training field, to the corporate decisions. The idea that City fans ignore the importance of the club’s ownership in our success – even an “elephant in the room” – is far from the mark.
My own fan story sounds unusual, though I suspect it isn’t. I released a hip-hop 12-inch on Factory in the late 1980s, and became a City supporter under the infectious enthusiasm of A&R man Mike Pickering and co‑founder Rob Gretton. I was in my 20s, which is late to adopt a team, but I was living close to Maine Road, and the team embodied ideals that I appreciated: fun in adversity, jangling nerves and comic timing. By 2002, I was living in the Middle East and feeling homesick. I began to follow City more obsessively, as a bizarre soap opera. This was the era when Stuart Pearce was manager, the owner was Thailand’s fugitive politician Thaksin Shinawatra, and the agent with the most formidable reputation was Richard Dunne’s wife, Helen.
In 2003, Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, followed in 2007 by Alisher Usmanov buying into Arsenal. The two men are political figures in Russia, sanctioned over their links to Vladimir Putin. It is essential to scrutinise powerful billionaires who are using their resources to change life in Britain. If we focus more keenly on Arab princes than we did on Russian oligarchs, at least we are now starting to ask questions. I only object when Gulf Arabs are bundled together as though their ownership model, their strategic aims, their countries, and even the people themselves are interchangeable.
City are owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a key figure in Abu Dhabi, the leading principality in the seven-strong federation, the United Arab Emirates. Mansour is the fifth son of Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi, known as “Mother of the Sheikhs” since her six sons gained ascendancy over Abu Dhabi 20 years ago. Mansour is the chief adviser to his oldest brother, the UAE president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, acting as both his vice-president and deputy prime minister (by convention, the UAE prime minister is the leader of Dubai). In common with other principalities, such as Monaco, Abu Dhabi is an autocracy. The larger UAE federation is a complex power negotiation between multiple aristocratic stakeholders, governed by both a constitution and by clannish conventions. In this highly politicised environment, Mansour has earned a formidable reputation as a politician and business strategist. Abu Dhabi has the third richest state fund in the world but, unlike Qatar’s ownership of Paris Saint-Germain or Saudi Arabia’s holdings in Newcastle, City are not owned by the state.
Given Mansour’s profile in Abu Dhabi, it is reasonable to ask if he has used his leverage to reach sweetheart deals and supercharge City’s rise. Yet no one thinks the City project is about burning money with no regard to profitability: it is that most modern of business propositions, a disruptive start-up. If Manchester City is an example of sportswashing then the image is one of swaggering sports scientists and Harvard MBAs. However, to see evidence of a ruthless or cold business strategy in the football on the pitch is like a Victorian novelist reading a character’s psychology in the weather. It’s a projection. There is an aesthetic difference between, say, Alex Ferguson’s United and Pep Guardiola’s City, but it is style rather than politics, as when the oily sweat of the rockers gave way to the sleek cool of the mods.
City’s management team has been open in their ambition to create a global entertainment product, and global ambitions require faith in a rules-based order. How else can one sell a highly codified sport in multiple markets? If City are found guilty of subverting the rules to supercharge the project, this is cynical – the “cake-and-eat-it” attitude of a corporation emboldened by an army of lawyers. The larger issue is whether you think Disney or Sony is the right model for football, and if the result will be the end of competition in the English leagues. If not, a clear-eyed analysis is the first step to tackling the issues. If the Premier League is turned into a heavily handicapped product like F1 to ensure competitiveness, would anyone bet against a well-run City continuing to win?
Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia have significantly different histories, as well as different visions of their futures. Qatar has not yet shown any interest in football as a sustainable business, and adding value is not the key reason that Saudi Arabia has bought into Newcastle. Saudi Arabia’s embrace of the beautiful sport looks the closest to classic sportswashing, though not directly to disguise political violence at home and abroad. Since its creation, Saudi Arabia’s whole foreign policy has been to spread a dogmatic version of Islam, which has become a problem for the regime and its allies. Football signals a shift to modernisation, without actually liberalising much at all.
Qatar has a different problem. It walks a line between two hostile and powerful states, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and has used football to raise its diplomatic profile. Football acts as an insurance policy for Qatar. Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani probably does love Manchester United. Because Qatar is already using football as a tool of foreign policy, it looks unlikely that Jassim could run United independently, not least because Jassim’s father was the architect of Qatar’s unique third way when he served as the country’s prime minister.
With a fresh round of charges against City, the latest terrace chant, “We’ll cheat when we want to”, is fun to sing, if not big or mature. City might be sanctioned for dishonesty, but fans have seen the club fall faster and harder through poor management and bad football. City’s history shows there never was a golden age of ownership. Sanctions would be a judgment on the leadership team: let’s steer clear of the idea it’s a judgment on countries and their culture.
• Nicholas Blincoe is the author of More Noble Than War: the Story of Football in Israel and Palestine.
