City Football Group

He personally convinced Guardiola to let it inform the club's transfer policy, and it was a cornerstone that became a key unifying moment at City and coincided with the start of their run of five titles in six seasons.

Further to that, Arteta laid out a sizeable portion of the scouting framework for the multi-club City Football Group stable, which is now an 80-page document with detailed instructions on the different roles within Guardiola's team structure and what scouts should look for when identifying players who fit the mould, wherever it came from.

This guy's obsessed.

He's a father figure, now fully mature.

So I ended up going to Southampton Football Club six years ago.

And since then I've spent time at Brighton, wonderful club, City Football Group and most recently London City Lionesses.

We'll talk about three of the four of those in greater detail.

If it's not too personal a question, Sarah, can I ask why you've gone independent now, so to speak, rather than continuing within a club or a governing body environment?

So how different is it operating inside a multi-club group then, rather than being, not an adjunct, but rather than being part of Southampton or Brighton's men's team, if you like?

Well, I'm really lucky to have had lots of experience with being within an MCO because obviously London City with Kineska is part of a group with Olympic Lyon in France and Washington Spirit in the US.

I was at City Football Group and so I spent a lot of time working with teams across Melbourne, New York.

Girona and then also I was at Southampton when Sport Republic bought Southampton and so established or started to establish their MCO with Gostepin, Turkin and Balcien I'll probably say it wrong so I've kind of seen it all and then obviously time at Brighton where they're fully independent with probably the best owner in the Premier League so If you're not Brighton and have such a supportive owner, I do think they're great, Kieran.

And they've revamped the medical department.

Dan Lewington has come in as head of performance from Manchester City or the City Football Group.

Um, they have revamped the gym and procedures and certain players who have been deemed risks have been kept out of action, like Pedro Porro, in a way that perhaps they weren't before.

So this does legitimately need some time-

Yeah.

And I just think it's always cool to, to mention that we're a part of that because like you mentioned, look, it's way more seamless with the Red Bull football group or with the city football group because all their kids look alike, all their sponsorships are the same.

Like you could just kind of move between the systems, right? Like that's how we know Julian Hall and Adrian Mametti, they know where they're going to be playing after they turn 18.

It is not difficult.

to know where they'll go.

We've seen it, obviously, with City Football Group as well.

But it's going to be interesting to see how this happens.

Continuing to, I mean, Uruguay and Korea, two of the recent football hotbeds.

It's so important to us." And then they're, like, training and changing in portacabins out the back, and it's not good enough.

Um, and I think for us, it's so important to be able to say, "Manchester City, City Football Group really cares about women's football, and this is what-- this is how much we care.

We've spent ten million pounds building a training center that's actually overtaken our men's building in terms of, um, performance and service levels." And then when we br- we bring players round, I think if I can get a player in the building from anywhere in the world, they're not gonna walk round our building and be disappointed, because they can see, um, they can see what, you know, what, what we believe w- female athletes should have.

Even small things like our meeting rooms, we have one called Pioneers, 'cause we were the first team in the WSL to go fully professional.

It's so important to us." And then they're, like, training and changing in portakabins out the back, and it's not good enough.

Um, and I think for us, it's so important to be able to say, Manchester City, City Football Group really cares about women's football, and this is what, this is how much we care.

We've spent 10 million pounds building a training center that's actually overtaken our men's building in terms of, um, performance and service levels.

And then when we br- we bring players round, I think if I can get a player in the building from anywhere in the world, they're not gonna walk round our building and be disappointed, because they can see, um, they can see what, you know, what, what we believe w- female athletes should have.