The city’s management knows exactly where to look. Companies affiliated with Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, in turn, have signed on as City sponsors. The national carrier Etihad Airways will soon see its name embossed on City blue shirts. The stadium where they play their home games will also soon be renamed the company. Etisalat, a telecommunications company majority owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, as well as several other companies also participate.
The deals helped finance the team’s sudden rise — City won the Premier League on the final day of the 2012 season, and then two more years later — but they didn’t cover all of the spending. team, and that caught the attention of the football world. financial managers. In 2014, Manchester City and another Gulf-backed club with big ambitions, Qatar-owned Paris St.-Germain, agreed to a settlement with UEFA after it was found to be in breach of rules. financial regulation of the governing body.
A multi-million-dollar fine was imposed, an acceptable outcome for City, but the lead investigator in the case was so enraged by the settlement that he quit his job in the date it was published. Meanwhile, City have been on the right track in spending: on players, coaches and lawyers.
In 2018, months after signing Manchester City’s newest star, Guardiola, won the first of his four league titles at the club, German news magazine Der Spiegel published a four-part series which it said exposed the foundations underpinning the City’s rise.
Citing numerous leaked documents and emails, Der Spiegel churns out one revelation after another. In an articleit reported that one of City’s former managers is said to have been paid more than his annual salary – nearly $2 million – for a four-day consulting contract with another football team , a team based in Abu Dhabi and also owned by Sheikh Mansour. in otherit said that Etihad, Man City’s main sponsor, paid only a fraction of the supposedly valuable sponsorship deal. £67.5 million ($81 million) per season. The article states that most of the money is paid by other entities related to the owner of the City or the government of the United Arab Emirates
“We are not shown the partner add-on if it is taken outside the club,” City’s chief financial officer, Andrew Widdowson, wrote in a leaked email. Manchester City have repeatedly declined to comment on the leaked content because it was “obtained illegally”.
