Neel Shelat opens a new series on how multi-club groups operate in terms of transfers flows by assessing one of the biggest, and certainly the one with the most successful flagship club, City Football Group
The City Football Group (CFG) is by far the biggest multi-club ownership group in world football. Their history as an MCG started in 2013 with the foundation of New York City FC. They have gone on to expand to five continents by acquiring stakes in as many as 12 clubs all around the world over the last decade or so.
The flagship club of the group, Manchester City, have of course been incredibly successful in this period, but others have had varying fortunes. The likes of Melbourne City and Mumbai City have established themselves as consistent title contenders in their respective leagues, but others including Troyes and Lommel find themselves languishing well outside their domestic top-flights.
The management of clubs in MCGs is an incredibly interesting topic that certainly deserves in-depth analysis, but in this series, we will be taking a look at transfer trends and pathways between such clubs. Given CFG’s vast reach, there obviously is quite a lot to dig into for their case study.
(Before we begin, some notes on the data collection and tagging for this series:
- MCGs are defined as clubs with a common owner. So, clubs in which MCG owners have minority stakes have been included, but clubs who only have partnerships have been excluded.
- Transfers between clubs have only been counted if completed in the period that they are/were in the same MCG.
- Loans that were later converted to permanent transfers have only been classified as permanent transfers.
- Similarly, free transfers have been classified as permanent transfers
- Unless explicitly excluded, transfers between second/youth teams have been included.)
Ladder Pathway
The ladder pathway should be quite self-explanatory: it refers to ‘upwards’ moves in an MCG to a club at a higher tier. In theory, this is the main pathway that hierarchical MCGs should be looking to utilise since multi-club ownership can offer a competitive edge in this respect.
City Football Group certainly have a lot of prospects to use this approach. Their 12 clubs are playing at incredibly different levels in a global context, as evidenced by TransferLab’s Club Strength+ Global Rankings.
| Club | MCG Ranking | Club Strength+ Global Ranking | Global Rankings Tier |
| Manchester City | 1st | 2nd | 1 |
| Girona | 2nd | 58th | 1 |
| Bahia | 3rd | 135th | 2 |
| Palermo | 4th | 185th | 2 |
| New York City | 5th | 219th | 3 |
| Troyes | 6th | 407th | 3 |
| Yokohama F. Marinos | 7th | 494th | 4 |
| Lommel | 8th | 510th | 4 |
| Melbourne City | 9th | 673rd | 5 |
| Montevideo City Torque* | 10th | ~1,000th | 7 |
| Mumbai City | 11th | 1,089th | 7 |
| Shenzhen Peng City | 12th | 1,684th | 9 |
(*Montevideo City Torque are not yet ranked on TransferLab as they only won promotion to the Uruguayan top flight at the end of last season. So, their ranking is an estimate based on the relegated teams they are replacing.)
However, CFG have hardly used this pathway so far. Manchester City’s current squad is a testament to that fact as it includes only one player signed from a fellow CFG club. The most recent transfer window was an equally telling sign as City did not look to any CFG clubs but instead spent well over €200 million on signings from elsewhere in their hour of need.
In fact, Manchester City have only signed eight players from four CFG clubs: Girona, New York City, Troyes and Melbourne City. Just two of them have gone on to make appearances for City’s senior team, namely Frank Lampard (in a controversial move that was technically a season-long loan from New York City) and Savinho, who was bought from Troyes last summer.
The Brazilian winger’s CFG journey has been quite interesting. He was signed by Troyes for a club-record €6.5m in 2022 and immediately loaned out to PSV Eindhoven. After a season in the Netherlands, he was sent on another loan to fellow CFG club Girona, for whom his performances were good enough to earn a promotion to the top of the ladder. Manchester City signed him last summer for €25m – over twice more than Troyes’ club-record sale and yet only half of his Transfermarkt value. All this while, he never actually made a single appearance for the French club.
While much has been made of how such transfers affect the lower clubs on the ladder (and rightly so too), it has to be said that these moves worked out very well for CFG from a purely business-oriented perspective. For just close to a seven-figure sum, they were able to acquire and develop a top-class prospect who is now ready for the highest level of world football. A single club’s chances of replicating this would be far slimmer without the likes of Troyes and Girona, and if the player naturally developed this way, he would cost the elite-level club a whole lot more.
With that in mind, it is perhaps surprising that CFG have only managed to promote one player through their ranks into the Manchester City first-team squad. As we will go on to explore, though, that is not entirely for a lack of trying. While they have tried to sign and develop other talents similarly, the odds of a player reaching the required level to cut it at one of the world’s very best clubs (with a specific style of play at that) are always quite low. However, what is possibly more surprising is that CFG have not looked to replicate this approach at the lower steps in their ladder.
The one exception to this is Valentín Castellanos, who went from Uruguay to New York and was eventually sold to Europe after a loan at Girona. Torque signed him from Universidad de Chile in 2017, initially on loan and then permanently for €150,000 a year later. They then loaned him across to NYCFC, who made his move permanent in 2019. After three full seasons in Major League Soccer, the Argentine forward was sent to Girona on loan in the summer of 2022. He scored 14 goals in 2022/23 and attracted a good deal of attention from other major European clubs, ultimately sealing a €15m transfer to Lazio.
Castellanos is very close to being the exemplar of the ladder pathway. He gradually climbed from one of the lowest rungs and came very close to the summit, which he might even have reached if his departure from MLS came sooner. Since revenue generation from player trading isn’t one of CFG’s chief objectives, they might have been happier if the Argentine striker developed enough to reach Manchester City. (This reason is also quite possibly why CFG have not tried to directly replicate this approach for clubs other than Manchester City). Either way, many other MCGs can surely look to replicate this model.
Feeder Pathway
As aforementioned, while Savinho is the only player to rise through CFG’s ranks and reach Manchester City, he is not the only one to have started on such a path. The others who have gone down the same route have simply not reached the top and have instead been diverted to the feeder pathway.
Essentially, the feeder pathway can be understood as an incomplete version of the ladder pathway. While the latter involves a gradual climb that ends at the top, the feeder pathway applies to players who are shuffled between clubs but fail to reach the next step.
Savinho’s case was slightly unusual in the sense that he was signed by one of the lower-ranked clubs in the MCG and immediately pushed upwards. In most cases, though, the initial signing is made by one of the higher-ranked clubs who then look to loan the player up the ranks. For CFG, then, it is natural that Manchester City are the chief source for the feeder pathway.
| Club | Loans | Permanent Signings |
| Girona | 16 | 1 |
| Lommel | 7 | 3 |
| Troyes | 3 | 4 |
| New York City | 3 | 1 |
| Melbourne City | 2 | 0 |
| Montevideo City | 0 | 2 |
| Bahia | 1 | 0 |
| Palermo | 0 | 1 |
Tally of intra-MCG transfers from Manchester City.
The fact that Girona are the clear standouts in this table is easily explained by CFG’s motivations as an MCG. Since they are predominantly concerned with developing players for their flagship team, a big chunk of their loanees from Manchester City have been sent to the second-highest step in their ladder. This is also why the overwhelming majority of them were under the age of 23 at the time of their loan. Even the oldest, Yangel Herrera, was only 24 before becoming the only one to make his switch permanent.
The list of these players includes names like Yan Couto, Pablo Maffeo, Douglas Luiz, Aleix García, Arijanet Muric, Angeliño, and Patrick Roberts. Manchester City’s record with subsequent sales certainly shows room for improvement as Luiz is the only one of those players to have earned them an eight-digit transfer fee (Couto will become the second if/when the obligation to buy clause in his current loan to Borussia Dortmund is triggered). Again, though, they are likely not overly concerned with this given their financial status and overall priorities.
Digging into the rest of the teams, there are some interesting stories to be found. For example, the two loans from Manchester to Melbourne include Anthony Caceres’ 2016 move. This was quite controversial at the time since the English side signed him from A-League club Central Coast Mariners for €320,000 and immediately sent him back to Australia, effectively circumventing league regulations that barred its clubs from paying transfer fees to one another. Not long after, the league’s regulations were amended with a ‘Caceres Clause’.
Among the others, it is interesting to see Lommel as high up as they are given the vast difference between the level of the Belgian second tier and English Premier League. However, some further inspection reveals that no other CFG club has been on the receiving end of intra-MCG transfers than the Limburg-based outfit.
| Club | Loans | Permanent Signings |
| Manchester City | 7 | 3 |
| Troyes | 5 | 1 |
| Montevideo City Torque | 3 | 0 |
| Girona | 2 | 0 |
Tally of intra-MCG transfers to Lommel.
The two defining trends of this pathway to Lommel are that all 21 players to have traversed it were very much on the younger side and that the vast majority of loanees were non-Europeans signed by other CFG clubs. There are various reasons why Belgium is the most favoured landing spot for non-European players, so that is why Lommel receive so many intra-MCG transfers despite playing at a relatively low level.
Sisterly Pathway
While we have analysed CFG as a hierarchical MCG so far in this piece, that does not paint the full picture. In reality, the size of the group naturally leads them to a hybrid model since there are some sisterly relationships between clubs at the lower levels of the ladder. So, these clubs can have their own pathways outside the hierarchical model.
Once again, though, it would seem that CFG are not overly interested in utilising this pathway too much. The only club to have been involved in multiple such intra-MCG transfers are Mumbai City. Experienced English defender Rostyn Griffiths joined them after four years in Melbourne in 2022, and just a few weeks ago, Jorge Ortiz moved over to India after three years in China.
Coaching Pathway
City Football Group were not only one of the trailblazers in terms of international multi-club ownership, but they also were one of the first to try and implement an overarching style of play across their clubs. Their majority-owned top-flight clubs certainly are quite similar tactically, so it should be no surprise that they have developed some coaching pathways.
So far, though, they have not enjoyed too many noteworthy successes. Their highest-profile failure was Patrick Kisnorbo’s move to Troyes. The young Australian coach had grown a good reputation for himself after working in various roles at Melbourne City, including women’s team head coach, men’s team assistant coach and finally men’s team head coach. He was sent over to fight a relegation battle in France but failed pretty spectacularly and could not even steer the side clear of the drop zone in Ligue 2. He was sacked after a year and soon moved back to Melbourne, where he recovered his reputation with the Victory and recently returned to the CFG ecosystem as an assistant coach for Yokohama F. Marinos.
In hindsight, one of the reasons this move did not work out could be that Kisnorbo had to drastically switch his style of play when he went from one of the top teams in Australia…
… to one of the weakest Ligue 1 sides.
Nick Cushing’s move from Manchester City’s women’s team to New York City is a little more difficult to assess because he did play a part in the team’s MLS Cup-winning 2021 season as an assistant coach but did not do quite as well after being promoted to head coach.
Interestingly, the more clear-cut coaching pathway successes CFG have had have involved assistant coaches stepping into a head coach role at a lower-ranked club. Domènec Torrent (Manchester City to New York City) and Des Buckingham (Melbourne City to Mumbai City) are the chief examples of such moves. More sideways moves of this nature such as Jesús Tato (Mumbai City to Shenzhen Peng City) and Liam Manning (New York City to Lommel) have not worked as well, though.
Stats courtesy Transfermarkt and FotMob.
Header image copyright IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire / Gerard Franco
