Grace Robertson's avatar
Grace Robertson's avatar
Ok, let’s go back to the beginning. Way back.
Back in 1993, Manchester put together a bid to host the Olympic Games in 2000. A key part of this proposal was to build a brand new stadium in the Eastlands area of the city, then best known for a long-since-closed-down coal mine. This was when urban regeneration was in vogue. Obviously Sydney, not Manchester, hosted the 2000 Olympics. But the city decided to go for the significantly less glamorous prize of hosting the 2002 Commonwealth Games, sticking with the concept of a new stadium in Eastlands (though a somewhat smaller one than the behemoth of an Olympic venue). Securing the stadium’s long-term viability was vitally important, so it made sense to everyone when Manchester City agreed to become the stadium’s tenants from the 2003-04 season onwards.
The City of Manchester Stadium, as it was then called, was a big win for the football club. It allowed them to move on from their historic but smaller and ageing Maine Road ground and into one of the more impressive venues in the country without having to pay for it themselves. This was something they could use as a springboard to push on as a football club. This was something that could help bring in investment.
And so the club was bought in 2007 by Thaksin Shinawatra. To call this man “controversial” would be underselling the severity quite a bit. A telecoms magnate who became Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin’s “war on drugs” reportedly led to over 2000 extrajudicial killings. He was removed from office by a military coup in 2006 and, while in exile from Thailand, purchased Man City. Thaksin was looking to invest in the club pretty heavily, but a corruption probe led to his assets being frozen. A year after taking over the club, he got an offer to sell it for double what he paid, and decided to cash out.
This whole affair did not paint the Premier League in a good light. “He passed the Premier League’s ‘fit and proper persons’ test for owners with flying colours”, Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson wrote in The Club, “much to the surprise of organisations like Human Rights Watch, which don’t usually get involved in football but couldn’t ignore the attempted whitewashing of an alleged murderer.
“‘In light of the widespread, serious and systematic human rights abuses perpetrated in Thailand under Mr Thaksin’s leadership’, the organisation wrote to the league’s chief executive Richard Scudamore, ‘we are very concerned that you concluded that he is a “fit and proper person” to purchase Manchester City Football Club.’
“The Premier League’s answer, in effect, was that the fit and proper persons test is designed to smoke out any financial irregularities, not moral bankruptcy. ‘The issues that you raise are of course extremely important’, Scudamore wrote back; ‘so much that they fall to the UK government, the statutory authorities and the European Union to consider and decide upon.’”
All the issues the Premier League find themselves in today over this whole saga date back to failing to take a moral stance in 2007.
Thaksin sold the club to Abu Dhabi United Group. Officially, Abu Dhabi United Group is the investment vehicle of Sheikh Mansour, funded only by his personal wealth. Mansour is the fifth son of Sheikh Zayed, former Emir of Abu Dhabi and the founder of the United Arab Emirates. Mansour himself is the Deputy Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE. Nonetheless, all involved have consistently stated that Man City was bought by Mansour personally and not the state of Abu Dhabi.
Abu Dhabi United Group quickly appointed Khaldoon Al Mubarak as chairman of the football club. Al Mubarak was already chairman of the Abu Dhabi state-owned development fund Mubadala. Al Mubarak had “become Abu Dhabi’s interface with the rest of the world”, claimed Christopher Davidson, scholar of Middle Eastern politics at Durham University, in 2008. “He has the ear of the crown prince and he can step in whenever he is needed.”
The plan, as we know, was to win titles and make City a premier club in European football. Here’s where we start getting into what was written in the decision. I will state that City seem to deny just about everything the panel concluded, but I’ll include their own words and let you make up your own mind about the truth.
“As the contemporaneous documents make clear, and as we were told in evidence, the Club appreciated from the early days of ADUG’s ownership that very significant funds would be required if the steps needed to realise [redacted] ambitions were to be fulfilled. It was recognised that in the short-term those funds would have to come from substantial equity contributions from the Club’s owner ADUG”.
City, infamously, signed Robinho on the summer 2008 deadline day for £32.5 million. They followed this up in January by adding Wayne Bridge, Craig Bellamy, Nigel de Jong and Shay Given for a combined £45.9 million. City finished tenth in the table that season, which was perfectly respectable but clearly nowhere near the scale of ambition at the club. So they spent big again in summer 2009, signing Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and Joleon Lescott for a combined £118.5 million. “In the first season of owning the club”, the panel wrote, ADUG funded City with “over £190 million in equity investment. During the 2009/10 season ADUG provided a further £295 million in equity investment”.
All of this was fine and above board. City were not yet playing European football, and even if they had been, UEFA did not initially have financial constraints. But that all changed in September 2009, when Financial Fair Play was officially approved. “The major objective of the Financial Fair Play concept”, UEFA said at the time, “is to improve the financial fairness in European competitions, as well as the long-term stability of European club football”. UEFA’s stated concerns were centred on the sheer number of football clubs making losses, with real worries we could see more teams imploding like Leeds and Portsmouth, or potentially going bust. But, yes, the idea that clubs can’t spend more than they make was also an attempt to avoid certain teams spending vast sums at the top. Some would argue it was a move by the old money cartel to shut out new entrants. I personally think it’s a bit of both.
Clearly, this posed problems for City, with revenues nowhere close to the biggest clubs. If they wanted to compete, money needed to come in through increased revenues and sponsorships. “One of the ways (but by no means the only way) in which the Club planned to increase its commercial revenues was by seeking high-value sponsorship arrangements in the UAE generally and in [Abu Dhabi] in particular”, according to the panel.