http://www.theguardian.com/football/blo ... CMP=twt_gu
Manchester City’s plan marries on-field success with off-field vision
State of the art City Football Academy is another big part to aid club’s aim of dominating domestically and on the continent
Jamie Jackson
Manchester City’s motto is Superbia in proelia. Yet as the club, formed in 1880 as St Mark’s, mature under Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nayan’s City Football Group, the Pride in Battle axiom might be followed by a another maxim: only trophies matter.
This is how one high-ranking executive characterised to the Guardian the overriding philosophy for City as the former “noisy neighbours” move forward from the early years – when being noticed was what mattered – to focus solely on success and global domination.
Saturday’s visit of Tottenham Hotspur comes in a big week for Mansour’s project. On Wednesday, Manuel Pellegrini’s squad assembled for the first time at the club’s new bespoke, state‑of-the-art £100m-plus City Football Academy. A day later, Manchester City Women broke Arsenal’s three‑year domination of the Super League Continental Cup in a 1-0 win that was reward for the club’s serious investment in the women’s game. Saturday is about keeping Chelsea, who lead the Premier League by five points, in sight before Tuesday’s must-win Champions League game at CSKA Moscow.
Claiming the European Cup is a central part of City’s strategy for the next half-decade, while Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, his chairman, and Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, have laid out their blueprint in five-year cycles.
Mansour bought City in summer 2008. The trophy haul until summer 2013 was one Premier League and one FA Cup, with Champions League football being achieved for the first time. During this “Welcome to Manchester” period the volatile Carlos Tevez, Roberto Mancini and Mario Balotelli were the poster boys for the upstarts across town from Manchester United, whose then manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, compared City to the mob next door who have started making a racket. By the beginning of last season Tevez, Mancini and Balotelli had departed. In place as manager was the genteel Pellegrini, whose ambivalent attitude to the media is a sign he would rather be working with his squad than answering questions about them.
By the close of Pellegrini’s debut campaign he won the Premier League title and Capital One Cup, the same yield as José Mourinho in his first year at Chelsea. The second title in three seasons was nearly as exhilarating as City’s final-day triumph in 2011-12 yet the media coverage was muted. While this may, in part, have been a corollary of the focus on Liverpool coming close to breaking a 24-year championship drought, it was noted at the highest level of the club with a shrug.
City’s fourth league crown marked mission accomplished for the opening part of the executive’s second five-year plan. A major part of this is the CFA and the hope of developing a constant stream of homegrown youngsters who are ready for the first team.
Although Brian Marwood, as academy director, heads the CFA operation, reporting directly to Soriano, it is Patrick Vieira, the elite development manager, who could one day replace Pellegrini. If Vieira does become the No1 it may not be as his immediate successor. City’s ideal candidate is Pep Guardiola, as recent revelations in a book of the Spaniard’s first season at Bayern Munich confirmed. Unlike when Mancini led City to the title two years ago a clue to the succession plan may be seen in Pellegrini not being instantly offered a new contract. The Chilean is approaching the midway point of a three-year deal and will be close to 64 when this ends in the summer of 2016.
Mubarak and Soriano could have other reasons for not extending Pellegrini’s contract. Mancini’s subsequent crash-and-burn may be causing caution. Yet as Guardiola is only 43 and a former supremely successful coach of Barcelona, the club City view as the ideal model, the Spaniard appears by far the best choice.
The timescale offered for the CFA to begin a rich harvest of young elite players by Txiki Begiristain, the director of football (like Soriano, formerly at Barcelona), is two or three years. By then there is confidence that some of those who are performing at the CFA’s new 7,000-seat facility will regularly make the jump to the first team.
What City want to achieve is a permanent place among the elite. A first European Cup is the ambition for the next half-decade, with at least four semi-finals during this timescale the benchmark. The club also want to retain the Premier League, joining United and Chelsea in that feat. As with Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s and United in the 1990s and noughties, City are serious about dominating domestically and on the continent. Being noisy neighbours is for the immature. There are far grander prizes to be claimed than local bragging rights over United.
Part of the attraction of replacing Mancini with Pellegrini was the lack of off-message incidents and headlines the Chilean creates. So, too, the offloading of Balotelli and Tevez: two players whose characters made controlling the new City message near-impossible.
The on-field ambition is married to an off-field vision. Last year Abu Dhabi was accused of using “City to launder the reputation of the country” by Human Rights Watch, which claimed Mansour’s homeland is a “black hole” for human rights, but the club continue to establish themselves as the hub of their community, having begun building the area’s first sixth-form college and donating £3m towards local leisure facilities.
This ethos is summed up by Mubarak, Mansour’s man on the ground. “The club has made no secret of the fact that winning championships is at the heart of its strategy,” he said in City’s most recent annual report. “However, we are also seeking to create teams that play creative, entertaining football, and at the same time to continue to build a socially responsible and commercially successful off-field operation to harness the opportunities generated by our on-pitch performance.
“That is the model for a successful and sustainable football club and it is one we continue to pursue in all aspects of our operations. Rapidly expanding our global presence remains a priority.”
While this last comment refers to City’s growing portfolio of clubs that includes a majority stake in New York City FC and Melbourne City FC plus a minority interest in Japan’s Yokohoma F Marinos, the jewel in the crown is the CFA. A two-year build has resulted in a centre that can claim to be the world’s premier facility – in any sport. Once completed, which should be in November, Vincent Kompany and his squad, City Women, the junior teams and various staff will enjoy a site with 16 full-sized fields, a Fifa regulation indoor pitch, a stadium and a superb training, medical and operational complex.
Pellegrini said: “It is the best facility in the world. We have all what you need to work in every sense. I am sure it is a very big step for this club to continue growing every day as they want.”
Of the women’s triumph he said: “This club wants to improve every day in every different area, in women, professional football, in young players. The best way to test if you are really improving is winning titles.”
Work has also begun on expanding the Etihad Stadium to a 60,000-seat arena. Mubarak said: “We are already seeing results from investment in our academy in recent years. The development of homegrown youth talent into first-team players – a stated aim at the time of the club’s acquisition – remains an achievable ambition in the years ahead.”
One person who worked on construction of the CFA site, part of the larger Etihad Campus, describes it “as out of this world”.
This is a fair evaluation of City’s ambition.
by shortagain » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:33 am 
