Like Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City has been aiming for victory in the Champions League since the club became the property of Gulf investors in 2008. The Cityzens can achieve this on Saturday against Inter Milan in the final.
Everyone deserves a second chance and Manchester City will try to take theirs. After losing the very first Champions League final in its history in 2021 against Chelsea (0-1), the Mancunian club faces Inter Milan on Saturday June 10 at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul to designate the winner of the 2023 edition of the C1. In this final, the Cityzens are the big favorites and winning would confirm a project started seven years ago with the arrival of Pep Guardiola in Manchester.
At City, the ambition to win the Champions League has driven every decision since 2008, when the club came under the umbrella of the Abu Dhabi United Group, a fund managed by Sheikh Mansour, a member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates. United. Four years before the arrival of the Qataris at Paris Saint-Germain, that of these first investors from the Gulf turned the footballing landscape of the continent upside down with millions of euros.
Manchester City could have disappeared from the European scene after being fined ten million euros in 2020 for not collaborating with UEFA in the framework of financial fair play. Before that, the English club took longer than PSG to win in C1, because the Cityzens had to fight in particular in the Premier League to qualify there. After reaching the semi-finals of the competition in 2016, the club bosses signed Pep Guardiola the following summer. Who else than the best trainer on the market to conquer Europe?
A very different model from that of PSG
His first season was a failure: City did not win any titles, were eliminated by Kylian Mbappé’s AS Monaco in the round of 16 of the C1 and finished 3rd in the Premier League. “In my situation, in a big club, I am fired. For sure”, said at the time Guardiola, who finally retained his coaching position. In the years that followed, the Spaniard never ceased to talk about his gratitude to his leaders, who agreed to give him time.
The tendency in the big European clubs is indeed to change quickly as soon as the mechanics stop. PSG, which recently dismissed Christophe Galtier after just one season in charge of the first team, is the most striking example of this. But at Manchester City, the method applied is different because so is the decision-making process.
Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, the president of PSG, is a businessman and former sportsman, who embodies the Qatari model where “the leaders have always had a great proximity to the sports field”, explains Raphaël Le Magoariec, a researcher specializing in sports policies in the Gulf States. In Paris, successive sporting directors and technicians have always been dependent on decisions from Doha.
At Manchester City, the process is different. The club is chaired by Khaldoon Al-Mubarak, also a businessman but who has no sports background. “He is the equivalent of a Prime Minister within the emirate and has a set of portfolios”, describes Le Magoariec. In charge of the Mubadala investment fund, Al-Mubarak is more of a financier, who “acts behind the scenes and leaves the athlete’s prerogative to the technicians”.
The second hat-trick in the history of English football?
Since 2012, Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain, respectively executive director and sporting director of Manchester City, have been at the helm of the English club. With Guardiola, whom they both knew at Barcelona, they managed to build a long-term project, which could reach its peak this season: the club have already won the Premier League and the FA Cup and could achieve the second hat-trick in the history of English football by winning the C1, after Manchester United in 1999.
In recent years, Manchester City have won the Premier League five times in the last six seasons. What also strengthen the position of the Spanish coach, because the Premier League offers a “strong sporting foundation for the project developed by Guardiola, while the basic foundation on the PSG side is weak, because the club is only judged on its results in the Champions League.explains Raphaël Le Magoariec.
A foundation that allowed Guardiola to survive in particular the 2019-2020 season, when the club was eliminated to everyone’s surprise in C1 by Olympique Lyonnais. City then finished 2nd in the Premier League and won the English League Cup. “I have no words to describe my gratitude to the club“, assured Guardiola at a press conference in December, while admitting to wanting to win the Champions League, which he has not won since 2011 with FC Barcelona.
“My time here won’t be complete if we don’t win it“, advanced the Spaniard. “Here, I was given a second chance and I will try to make it.”, launched the coach in May 2017 after his first failed season with the Cityzens. Seven years after his arrival and two years after a first final lost against Chelsea, the City project is finally on the way to success.