Manchester City owner buys his 11th football club. This time he’s hunting in Italy. What’s behind this plan?

City Football Group, whose flagship club is Manchester City, is about to acquire its 11th club. The new addition to the group will be the traditional Italian club Palermo, which was struggling financially not long ago and is now trying to climb back up.

The well-known Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan founded City Football Group back in 2013 with Khaldoon Al Mubarak and since then they have grown significantly with several clubs around the world.

To give you an overview, these clubs are: Manchester City (England), Girona (Spain), Troyes (France) Lommel (Belgium), Melbourne City (Australia), Montevideo City Torque (Uruguay), Mumbai City (India), Sichuan Jiuniu (China), New York City (USA) and Yokahama F. Marinos (Japan).

In addition, at the beginning of last year, Club Bolivar (Bolivia), which was founded in 1925, joined their group, this time only as a partner entity.

Palermo Football Club

The Sicilian club founded in 1900 has a great tradition in Italy. In the 2010-11 season, it even reached the final of the Italian Cup, where it lost to Inter, the third final (Coppa Italia) in the club’s history.

However, the team that got stars like Paulo Dybala, Javier Pastore and Edinson Cavani into big football was disbanded on 18 October 2019 due to economic difficulties. The club returned under the name Palermo SSD and started playing in the 4th Italian league.

Last season, already as Palermo FC, the Sicilian side finished third in Serie C and next season they will be playing in the second highest Italian league. It can then be assumed that thanks to the financial possibilities of the City Football Group, the team will stabilise and probably return to Serie A soon.

The server Goal then came up with the information that the owner of Manchester City and 9 other clubs around the world will acquire 80% in the Italian team, which will cost him 12-13 million euros.

And that City Football Group is not done with buying clubs is evident from the interest in the Dutch club NAC Breda. However, according to Goal, the fans have opposed the deal and a wave of discontent has reportedly thwarted the deal.

The future of City Football Group

Similar to the Red Bull project, the City Football Group is looking to create a network of football clubs around the world, which will of course benefit Manchester City in particular.

Given that the group has reached this size in just 9 years, the question is what it will look like in another decade. Indeed, it is realistic that more such groups will emerge in the future, owning many clubs around the world, which will greatly affect the future of the sport itself.

These groups will of course have a great advantage in terms of the scouting that friendly groups will no doubt provide for them. Mutual cooperation between the clubs could also be interesting in the sense that they can, for example, accommodate each other’s players after injuries, similar to the way NHL hockey teams work with their farms.

The transfer sums between these clubs also do not have to be as high as usual, since the City Football Group has no problem in financially ensuring the functioning of any team in the world.

Examples could certainly be given. However, time will tell what this will actually bring…

Source: Goal, Eurosport