City Football Group - Financials & Acquisitions

[KevinJRogers]

This story isn't directly about us, but there's an interesting little nugget buried in it:

Gigliani, who’s from Argentina but was raised across the United States and Europe, has spent the last 10 years with City Football Group. He oversaw eight of their international clubs, including all those in the European Union and Latin America. He sat on the board of directors of most of these clubs and worked directly with each club's CEO and sporting director.

Very interesting indeed . . .

St. Louis CITY name Diego Gigliani as president and general manager | MLSSoccer.com

St. Louis CITY SC have added Diego Gigliani to their executive leadership team as the club’s new president and general manager, the expansion club announced Wednesday. Gigliani, who arrives from City Football Group, is slated to join the club in the summer of 2023 once he acquires a work visa.

www.mlssoccer.com

 

[LionNYC]

City Football Group buy İstanbul Başakşehir: Report

It looks like City Football Group will add a 14th club to their ever-growing portfolio of soccer teams: A report from Turkey claims that the group bought a controlling interest in İstanbul Başakşehir Futbol Kulübü of Turkey's Süper Lig. CFG also own Manchester City, New York City FC, Girona FC...

hudsonriverblue.com

 

[mgarbowski]

Trouble in Montevideo.

Montevideo City Torque, el proyecto de City Group que no logra afianzarse en la Primera división del fútbol uruguayo

Los Ciudadanos volvieron a perder la categoría en 2023 y jugarán en Segunda.

www.espn.com.uy

CFG bought the team in 2017, and that season they promoted to Primera, but relegated after just one year (2018). They promoted again in 2019, and finished fourth in 2021, but two years later they are relegated again. Fan quote: "we need to change many things and return to being a football club and not a player trading company."

 

[Gene]

Fan quote: "we need to change many things and return to being a football club and not a player trading company."

If we're CFG's AAA affiliate, I reckon MCT must be AA.

 

[LionNYC]

Big loss at the top

Who is Manchester United's new CEO Omar Berrada? What to know about the soon-to-be ex-Man City executive

The Red Devils land bitter rivals City Football Group's Chief Football Operations Officer

www.cbssports.com

 

[JayH]

Big loss at the top

Who is Manchester United's new CEO Omar Berrada? What to know about the soon-to-be ex-Man City executive

The Red Devils land bitter rivals City Football Group's Chief Football Operations Officer

www.cbssports.com

or big gain depending on your perspective

 

[LionNYC]

Troyes (France) about to be relegated to the third tier in French Football...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1786492729804955914

 

[KevinJRogers]

Troyes (France) about to be relegated to the third tier in French Football...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1786492729804955914

Wow, talk about going backwards. Weren't they up a couple years ago? And now they're dropping to the third tier.

I don't know much about them; is this neglect?

 

[Joe_Cos]

definitely mismanagement by CFG.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1786502179487900157

 

[Gotham Gator]

To be fair to CFG, their record with clubs not named Man City is quite good (see e.g. Girona). This one, however, is not going well at all.

 

[moogoo]

To be fair to CFG, their record with clubs not named Man City is quite good (see e.g. Girona). This one, however, is not going well at all.

many a few of their clubs have won championships in their respective leagues. Troyes seems like an anomaly and something must be going on there.

 

[mgarbowski]

many a few of their clubs have won championships in their respective leagues. Troyes seems like an anomaly and something must be going on there.

Back in February I briefly discussed Troyes in the context of whether NYCFC might or should fire Nick midseason absent a fast start. Troyes changed coaches midseason 3 seasons in a row: 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24. They were relegated after both 2022-23 and 2023-24.
It is not clear to me if Savio was signed to Troyes as a complete fiction, or if he would have eventually played there if they didn't keep getting relegated. Maybe a bit of both. But he was signed and immediately loaned during summer of 2022 after a season when Troyes was not relegated so it does not look good.

 

[gbservis]

many a few of their clubs have won championships in their respective leagues. Troyes seems like an anomaly and something must be going on there.

Even though it seems isolated to Troyes I do think its possible that it's at least temporarily systemic. CFG expanded incredibly quickly. I don't know anything about the details of their organizational structure but it's hard to imagine that they didn't have resource and talent gaps that came along with that level of scaling. They went from running only Man City in 2014 to now owning 11 clubs in 2024.

I also wonder if any of the financial fair play issues faced by Man City and the shifting FFP rules have forced a change to CFGs approach. This is an organization that has reportedly put a lot of thought into how to tip-toe around in the grey areas of the FFP rules to maximize their ability to spend on Man City's roster.

All of this had me thinking about something KevinJRogers said about Ferran Soriano having an MBA from RPI and taking an engineering-type approach to building NYCFC. Kevin's comment at the time mentioned the engineering approach as a reason for optimism for NYCFC but as an engineer it opened a lot of questions for me. What are the organization's objectives and the priority of those objectives? What are the constraints? A large portion of the work on engineering design projects is figuring out where you can make trade-offs in support of achieving your goal within your given constraints. If the primary** goal of the organization is to make MCFC successful while keeping them out of FFP trouble compromises will be made at the sister clubs if they support that goal. I'm sure they want all of their clubs to be successful but at 11 clubs and counting there are going to be more and more compromises and how that plays out is going to very much depend on where each club sits in the hierarchy of the organization and the constraints the organization is working with as a whole.

**we all know the primary goal is sports washing but that's another whole can of worms.

 

[KevinJRogers]

If the primary** goal of the organization is to make MCFC successful while keeping them out of FFP trouble compromises will be made at the sister clubs if they support that goal.

Really good point and a gigantic "if."

Looking at it from an objective, business-oriented standpoint, I don't read the CFG structure as designed to support Manchester City as a primary goal. As I understand the history, Soriano wanted to build a soccer conglomerate while he was at Barcelona and left in large part because he couldn't persuade the organization to go in that direction.

(Side note: I wonder if Joan Laporta now regrets not buying into the vision.)

So, he had it in mind before coming to CFG. Opportunity met vision.

That's not to say there's no possibility of a financial shell game being played. There's clearly a serious investigation going on, and it's taking a hell of a lot longer than similar investigations have taken in the Prem. The authorities might be untangling a very sophisticated web.

But my comment was more about us taking a programmatic approach to building our squad than anything having to do with the business end. My point was more about the shift in strategy to finding young, quick, skilled players and developing them over a period of time rather than buying available talent off the shelf.

 

[FootyLovin]

An entertaining listen on the subject of Middle East purchases of football clubs - World Corrupt podcast.

Season 1 was about the Qatar World Cup. Season 2 covers Saudi Arabia in the beautiful game.