It's been posted on here in different edits but here is a version for this thread.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... hting.html
Their incoming City manager Manuel Pellegrini, Soriano tells us, will be asked to win five trophies in as many years. No pressure, then.
Off the field, meanwhile, Soriano believes City can and will catch neighbours Manchester United to become England’s most financially powerful club.
If Soriano and his colleagues are still feeling the disappointment of a poor Barclays Premier League title defence and a numbing FA Cup final defeat to Wigan, it doesn’t show.
One man, after all, has already paid the price for that and City’s controversial decision to sack manager Roberto Mancini seems an appropriate place to start.
‘It’s always hard as nobody wants to change a manager but we all want to play good football and we all want to win,’ said Soriano.
‘Roberto Mancini did very good for the club. He changed the mentality to that of a winning club and that is very hard. We thank him.
‘But we are now looking for several things. We are looking to play good football and to win and I said that in the right order. If you play good football you will win. We want to play better.
‘You can win one year playing not so good football and being lucky and having two extraordinary players but that’s not sustainable. You can’t go to the market every year and buy the most expensive players. That’s not to say we won’t be signing expensive players. We will.
‘But the objective — the vision — is to have a team where at least half of the players will be home grown City players.
‘What we want is a football concept so that the basic way we play is shared by the whole organisation. From young teams all the way to the first team. We are asking the new manager to have close collaboration with the youth football and to work together to achieve this.
‘Teams that have won consistently in the past have a core of players that are home grown. I have seen it to the extreme in Barcelona and you have seen it at [Manchester]United.’
Throughout the 45 minutes spent with journalists this week, Soriano was careful not to denigrate Mancini. The thanks he offered the Italian appeared to be genuine. Nevertheless, it appears that problems with Mancini’s abrasive style of management were felt not just in the dressing room but all the way to the top of City’s chain of command.
‘You know, what we want is not the image of unity,’ said Soriano.
‘We want the actual unity. Everybody has his personality and his style and there are some cultural issues here. We were not very worried about [Mancini’s] public criticism. If somebody wants to criticise, it is their problem. What we do want to say is that none of the criticisms out there were, in my mind, real.
‘Our management team off the pitch is among the best in Europe so there is no real reason for criticism of anyone. Now we want a manager who knows about football, but we want somebody who knows about man-management.
‘It is impossible for us to win, win the Champions League in the end, if we don’t have a group that behaves like a family. We want a family where there are no such criticisms, where everybody respects everybody, and to do this you need to be a senior coach.
‘Our group of players are diverse but they are also very mature people. I have seen the players behave. If they work with a senior manager, they can do great things.’
Viewed in black and white, Soriano’s comments on Mancini’s style appear damning. They were, however, delivered with more subtlety than that and were as much a take on what City feel they need from managers in the future as they were a criticism of what they have had in the immediate past.
Nevertheless, the City powerbrokers — chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and sporting director Txiki Begiristain are a key part of the process — will not wish to see their new coach grappling with players as Mancini did with Mario Balotelli during training last season.
‘I knew from the first minute I saw those photos that there was nothing to worry about,’ reflected Soriano. ‘But, yes, I was worried about the image we were giving to the world.
‘I think Mancini is a champion, a winner. To change the mentality of the club was great.
‘Other areas were different and more challenging and to the new manager we are asking this: We know we have very good players, very mature players, so if they are in an environment where there are fewer tensions they will be able to deliver more on pitch.
‘I think [stories of tensions] have been a bit exaggerated. I have seen dressing rooms with tensions before. So we are not too worried about this and it’s not the reason why we decided to change the manager.
‘Having said that, with the new manager we are asking him that the dressing room has as much harmony as possible, knowing that total harmony is impossible.’
The last time City visited New York, three years ago, they were a club running off the endless, unpredictable energy of Soriano’s predecessor Garry Cook. Soriano is a different character, more reserved.
Other things will soon be different, too. Pellegrini, for example, will arrive under no illusions about the structure of the club’s football set-up. The South American will look after short-term results and performances while Begiristain will work to the longer-term and, crucially, have the decisive say in the acquisition of players.
This, as we know, is not the English way. It is not, for example, the way it has been at two of England’s most successful clubs, Manchester United and Arsenal.
‘That is right,’ agreed Soriano. ‘But is that because of the organisation or the personalities of those two managers?
‘You could argue that in England the two managers that you talk about have been successful. But let’s look at all the managers. I think its arguable.
‘Our relationship is not a relationship of one man reporting to the other, it’s collaboration. It’s impossible for Txiki to develop a squad and a concept of football that’s not in line with what the manager wants, so they will work together on this. But at the same time we want someone working at the club who will govern the essence of what we do.
‘We are not changing the culture of the club. I know that Roberto Mancini complained about [Begiristain’s predecessor] Brian Marwood but I saw them working together. The difference in role between football director and the manager is that the director of football has, and has to have, a long-term view.
‘So what we are asking him to do is build a squad, but also football concepts, and a way of working that will last for the next 10 years. We want to play good football, beautiful football. We want a good show.
‘The manager has a shorter span. We are asking the manager to win this season, next season and every Sunday.
‘I have seen this working very well in Barcelona. The style of play will run through the club but when it goes to the first team, the manager can make as many changes as he wants. Normally what shouldn’t happen is that he will make radical changes, such as playing lots of long balls etc.
‘We are not telling the manager how to do his job, we are just providing for the manager technically skilled players who are talented enough to play this kind of beautiful football. He can then do that as he wants.’
“Guardiola is very young. We speak to him weekly”
Soriano is clearly preoccupied with stability and rightly so. His definition of the term is interesting, though. During our interview, he talked of coaches working in ‘cycles’ of three or four years and it is clear he feels one man cannot reasonably be expected to be function well beyond two of these.
Isn’t there a danger, though, that another change of coach at the Etihad Stadium in, hypothetically, the next two seasons would threaten City’s progress in the long-term? Nobody, after all, wants to rotate coaches like Chelsea have.
‘I think it is totally unfair to compare,’ Soriano countered. ‘I don’t know how Chelsea operates, that’s their problem. But our behaviour and our approach to management has, I think, been appropriate.
‘Three years in football is a long time. In football, teams have cycles and you can have managers who go through several cycles and managers who go through one cycle. Obviously, we want the next manager to stay for a number of years, but I think it would not be wise to speculate.
‘Maybe a manager can do one or two cycles, but people get tired. Players need another way, another excitement, and managers also want to move. It’s normal.’
Soriano didn’t talk directly about Pellegrini. That appointment is yet to be rubber-stamped. He admitted, though, that his former Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola will in all likelihood head to England in years to come and it is clear he remains a possible City manager of the future.
‘Pep is very young,’ reflected Soriano. ‘After Germany he probably will come to England to coach somewhere. Pep and Txiki speak regularly, maybe weekly, so that would have been an easy one. But we are now convinced that we will bring a manager who will be what we are looking for.’
Pellegrini’s task will certainly be clear and progress in the Champions League a prerequisite. ‘It’s the real measure and this real measure we failed last season,’ said Soriano.
Here in America this week, City have once again been attempting to imbed themselves further in the global football consciousness. They are continuing to build their brand. They will have a team in the MLS in two years and they plan to make the Etihad Stadium bigger back home in Manchester.
At times, though, they seem as far behind United as ever, such is their neighbours’ vast commercial influence. Soriano, though, believes the landscape will change.
‘United have been very successful in the past but we are catching up,’ he argued. ‘When I started in another club [Barcelona]in 2003 our revenue was £123million and United was £251m. After three years our revenue was higher than United. Our revenues will increase. Certainly it can be done. However, it all starts on the pitch.’
Certainly, City must win games next season, lots of games. In replacing a coach of Mancini’s pedigree and record, Pellegrini will have much to prove.
‘If we can win in the 93rd minute on the last day, that is fine,’ Soriano smiled. ‘But I’d rather prefer winning with a bit more time and to do this we have to be consistent in delivering good football. Let me say something positive about United here — this is what they did this season.
‘You could be more or less impressed about how they played but you have seen their performance in the Premier League and it has been consistent. Actually our team has played some very good football. You have seen some good games when we were very satisfied, like winning at Old Trafford.
‘The challenge is it has to be more consistent. What cannot happen is that the performance changes so much from one game to the next. You never knew what you were going to see. It cannot be like that.’
