Khaldoon Al Mubarak

I think you

know what it also is, Majid? I think it's kind of like a dichotomy that works in the best way possible where, you know, we see the situation where, you know, you have Khaldun al-Mubarak telling you that more than like 45 of our investments are international.

And then, you know, we're hearing that Adnok is trying to buy a stake in Dangote's refinery in Africa.

So, you know, when you see this, it's kind of like, you know, The foreigners want to come to the UAE, and the UAE is going to the foreigners.

So, you know, to list a few of them off, you had the Cronkies, who are the owners of Arsenal.

You had Khaldun Al Mubarak, the CEO of Man City.

Joanne Laporta of Barcelona.

John Elkan of Juventus.

After winning both the League Cup and the FA Cup last season, and having pushed Arsenal nearly all the way for the title, it seemed like there was a lot of potential that could be built upon with one or two astute moves in the transfer market.

This was what the chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, said about that in his end of season interview.

If you look at the players from three years ago in terms of a squad, and you look at the squad today, the amount of work that has been done to reconstruct, uh, this group, uh, this team for the future i- in at least four windows is to be seen right now.

We have...

But then it all went a bit quiet on the incomings front.

There were long-established links with Ayub Bouaddi at Lille and Enzo Fernandez at Chelsea, but there seemed to be no movement whatsoever on either of those deals.

In the meantime, City began to sell a lot of players, and it didn't seem to tally up with what the chairman had said earlier in the summer.

In January, we made two very important signings.

Henry writes, "A report from Stefan Role at the German Institute for Security and International Affairs says Gulf States have the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world and use them to gain political influence.

Since 2019, Mubadala..." Remember, Mubadala's the company we talked about way at the beginning here, that the Khaldoon guy runs and MBZ is the chairman of.

Yep.

"Mubadala has held since 2019 an indirect stake in the Israeli company NSO Group, the developer of the Pe- the developer of the Pegasus spyware."

But, uh, imagine.

Um, if I'm Khaldoon Mubarak, the first thing I do is I get on the phone with my boss and I say, "Please find whatever UA, whatever government officials in our government went and did this, and, I don't know, leave him in a room with me and a baseball bat," because this is one of the worst things that could happen.

There's two readings of this, right? This does not help Manchester City.

I think Manchester City are furious that this happened.

I mean, look, there will be some crossover.

I mean, um, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the city chairman, obviously is, is, is, will be heavily involved.

Um, you would have got some of Txiki Begiristain, Ferran Soriano, th- those kind of play people.

Omar Barrada before that, um, would've been involved in the CFG.

So there is that opportunity for development, but really it's about process and then other parts of the group being able to look at what Pep did and go, "Okay, we'll just replicate," which is, you know, without his input.

Um, so yes, he's, he's been a figurehead for so much.

Um, but I think that that off field transition for City particularly, they've still got Khaldoon, who now commands respect in every boardroom in Europe, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, uh, and now Hugo Viana has come in as a sports and director as part of this transition.

They are very smart at making sure they can still be influential in European football and get...