So I saw a white crow once. It was there, looking nonchalant on a parapet wall somewhere in New South Wales, Australia. It looked like a crow, it even caw-ed like a crow but my brain couldn't process it. How? Was my mind playing tricks? Was this some sort of a bird that looked like a crow? Were my eyes playing tricks on me? Why aren't people around as fascinated by it? Was this a rare albino?
Where I come from "a white crow flying upside down" was a metaphor for the ultimate fib. Because, well, crows were black (duh) and they don't fly upside down. 33 years of conditioning had led me up to that point where I was gobsmacked. Mind you we were in a picturesque location and everyone else was taking in the beauty of what surrounded us but all I had eyes for was that damned bird in front of me. Pretend crow, my mind said. Can't be real.
I am always reminded of this incident in my life whenever I enocounter an article in the European press about Manchester City that talks about "state ownership" or "sportswashing" or "bottomless pit of money" or "not here for the love of football or for profit" or a narrative about fake commercial revenues. Because it reminds me of my conditioning that didn't allow me to believe what I was seeing.
The narrative that a large part of the world sees is that that of a prince from the middle east, a football fan and a canny businessman, who bought Manchester City in 2008 and built it into a franchise that is known for eye-catching football and has become a global football conglomerate. A textbook case of a longterm plan and impeccable execution. If this was from any other industry (and any other promoter) City's story would be taught in the Ivy league business schools as a massive success story.
I feel that there is a lot to learn from the City model from establishing a great team of executives with a shared vision, investment in long term infrastructure, attracting the right football personnel, ensuring that they connect strongly with the City brand so the club is not a victim to the famous revolving doors that are the transfer windows. My favourite aspect of City's blueprint is the City football academy (CFA). At a time when most big clubs were shirking away from spending money on their academy and just relying on attracting good players from smaller clubs, CFG invested a whopping $300 Mn on their academy. Most successful businesspeople know that quality sourcing is always the secret of any profitable enterprise and City had put that idea in place in football. Within a few years the academy has not just churned out stars like Foden, Delap, Angelino, Garcia etc but has also been a strong source of revenue for the club. This way City has the pick of the top talent in the best football academy in the world and has a steady revenue stream through player sales. So simple and effective that you'd wonder why others didn't replicate City's investments.
But if you were a regular consumer of football news from The Guardian or The New York Times or The Independant or Der Speigel or even the Associated Press, you would have a very different perspective of Manchester City. You are rather bound to think that it's a "Sportswashing project", it's "state-owned" by one of the "worst human rights abusing nations in the world" who can just spend their way to success and no one else can compete against them and worst of all "Sheikh Mansour is really just a rubberstamp he isn't smart enough". Thats what the news media tells you with every article or tweet. But are these allegations aren't grounded in reality? What evidence has been provided for these allegations? Is evidence required at all?
For me, the allegations sound incredibly convoluted and strange. For instance, if PSG and Newcastle United could be bought quite easily by Soverign wealth funds, why would City be bought by an individual as a proxy for a state? And which state is going to buy a club to "Sportswash" their reputation through a hidden ownership structure? I mean the whole purpose is defeated isn't it? The people behind such a crazy plan have to be incredibly dumb, shouldn't they?
The Russia World Cup was clearly a sportswashing project, it aimed to show Russia as a global superpower economy, with Putin strutting front and center and being fawned by admiring media from both home and abroad (lookin at you, Barney Ronay). It was aimed to showcase a very different Russia from the authoritarian state that it was perceived to be and it worked. Because the world began to overlook the invasion of Crimea and the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (just a month before the World Cup a group of independant investigators concluded that Russia was behind the 2014 Malaysia Airlines incident where 298 people died). All these atrocities wiped from public memory. Also wiped out were the ghastly treatment of the LGBT community under Putin's Russia.
So what has Abu Dhabi washed? What image has Abu Dhabi projected in the last 14 years of City ownership? I honestly don't know.
As far as human rights go, lets face it there is a lot of improvement to be done in recognising migrant worker rights across the globe. Workers from Asia and Africa are treated very poorly and I respect organisations like the ILO who are working on ground to improve the situation. UAE is also involved in two wars the one in Libya and the one in Yemen. Both brutal. Both supported and partnered by the US and the UK. I dearly wish for a peaceful and a more equitable world but I also realise that its far from it and unless there is a direct evidence of abuse by Shiekh Mansour (of which there has been no whisper even) how is it even relevant from the perspective of Manchester City?
So back to the white crow, multiple researches have suggested that western world has had a long history of stereotyping of the rest of the world. Generations have been brought up with the notion that people from the middle east are violent, untrustworthy, abusive to women, they've lucked out because of their oil reserves & not hardworking or smart. There is also a habit of seeing the whole region as a homogenous group sharing similar characteristics. Anyone who has travelled there or read about the middle east in any length would know that these stereotypes are far from reality. UAE has been one of the countries which has been a leader in effecting these social changes. For instance with regards to women's rights, the percentage of secondary school education for women stands at 78.8% vs 82% for the UK, Teen pregnancies are 6.5/1000 births as compared to 13.4 in the UK. 61% of the government staff are women and the UN gender inequality index ranks UAE at 35 in the world, far higher than most of its regional peers. (None of it relevant as far as City goes but offered to rebut the notion that this is some sort of hell on earth as projected)
In the UK, Sheikh Mansour is less popularly known as the person who bailed out Barclays Bank (which has a 16% market share of the overall banking business in the UK) during the heights of the financial crisis in 2008 and had made a handsome profit on the transaction. This is clearly not a simpleton who has lucked out due to oil and is a proxy for his elder brother (like you would assume if you read anything by Nicholas McGeehan). For Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Manchester City is probably one of the smallest investments he handles and more of a pet project than anything else.
City's financials has most heavily scrutinised by the UEFA given the threat they pose to the cartel clubs and their commercial tie ups as a marquee name with ownership from the middle east is obviously going to be heavily concentrated in the region. Its natural. Plus Man City has become a profitable club over the last 4/5 years and had a lower net transfer spend compared to their regional rivals such as Manchester United.
I am sure that I am selective in the facts that I've shown, that's my bias towards City at work and I am sure that most journalists and rival fans who read it must be shaking your head at the above facts, and that, is your bias at work.
As an outsider to the European echo chamber, I have yet to see a cogent argument with facts and figures about any of the criticism that City regularly face (and may I say intensely face just before a Liverpool game) and most of the coverage appears to reinforce an instrinsic fear/wariness linked to a region, which is why I am convinced that its xenophobia. Maybe these journalists and opposing fans realise it, I am sure some of them do, but I think most of them are like me gawping at that white crow, not being able to process what their eyes can see and trying to find answers in their conditioned minds.
The end. Let me know what you think :-)
(Apologies for any grammatical errors, I haven't had the time to edit)
