MUMBAI: After “looking at India” for nearly two years now, City Football Group, the holding company that owns Manchester City, will invest in an Indian club this year, CFG chief executive Ferran Soriano has confirmed.
Aside from the Premier League title holders, CFG also owns parts of clubs in the United States, Australia, Japan, Spain, Uruguay and China.
The group bought a share in Chinese team Sichuan Jiuniu just two weeks ago, and Soriano says they are now set to invest in India, Sky Sports reports.
Sky quoted Soriano as stating: “We have some interest in some markets and countries where there is a genuine football passion and opportunities, like China, but also India, so there might be other opportunities in Asia.
“With all these developments, we have to be patient. We’ve been looking at India for nearly two years now. I’d say this year we’ll end up doing an investment in India.”
While football website Goal reports that CFG have had advanced talks with Indian Super League outfit Mumbai City FC, if one is to take the two-year time frame mentioned by Soriano, then included in the mix are ISL’s Kolkata franchise ATK and the Tata Steel owned Jamshedpur FC.
Last season, Soriano was invited by Tata Steel to attend the ISL game between JFC and Mumbai City FC. Soriano had first spoken about an Indian club tie-up then.
For the record, Tata Steel is already in a partnership for grassroots football development with Atletico Madrid, which incidentally was formerly a minority stakeholder in ATK. For the first three season of ISL, ATK was known as Atlético de Kolkata.
As regards Mumbai City FC, SportzPower can reveal that Gary Worthington, head of Player Recruitment at Manchester City, was among a group of CFG officials who were in India for the first home game of Mumbai City this season, and that talks were indeed held.
CFG was created in 2013 when New York City FC was purchased, becoming the second team under their ownership after Manchester City.
Investments in five other clubs have been made over the past six years, and Soriano believes there will be more to come.
Sky further quotes him as having said: “As we see it now, there is a natural pace of growth that we will follow that takes us to more than seven teams, but not 100 teams.
“I cannot see 10 years ahead but the group might have two or three teams more. Is this going to change in five years and we’re going to have more? Maybe, [but] I don’t know that.
“But to complete the vision that we had six years ago, I think we will have maybe two or three clubs more.”
While on the subject of mergers and acquisitions, it is worth noting that CFG is a holding company that runs football clubs under the ownership of Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). It is part-owned by Chinese firms China Media Capital and CITIC Capital.
As for Mumbai City FC, it is majority owned by Hindi film star Ranbir Kapoor and also lists as minority stakeholder Bimal Parekh, who is a well known chartered accountant and film producer.
On a related note, ATK is owned by Kolkata Games and Sports Pvt Ltd, which lists Sanjiv Goenka as majority stakeholder with former Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly, businessmen Harshavardhan Neotia, and Utsav Parekh individually having minority stakes.
