Neel Shelat‘s investigation into multi-club group pathways continues, with an assessment of hierarchical groups such as those created by INEOS or Black Knight
So far in our Multi-Club Group Pathways series, we have scrutinised the operations of the two most well-known MCGs – City Football Group and Red Bull. Many others have followed their lead in recent years, with some looking to replicate their model and others trying to do things differently. As a result, three major types of MCG models have emerged: hierarchical groups, sisterly groups and hybrid groups that combine elements of both.
In this piece, we will explore some of the most prominent hierarchical MCGs to see how and how well they are using their internal pathways.
(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 Pathways
For this piece, we have identified 16 hierarchical MCGs – active and defunct. Using TransferLab’s Club Strength+ Global Rankings, we can list their clubs in hierarchical order:
- AS Monaco and Cercle Brugge
- Black Knight Football Club (Bournemouth, FC Lorient, Hibernian FC and Auckland City)
- BlueCo (Chelsea and RC Strasbourg)
- Bologna FC and CF Montréal
- Brighton & Hove Albion and Union Saint-Gilloise
- Brentford and FC Midtjylland
- CD Feirense and Remo Stars
- FC Midtjylland and CD Mafra
- INEOS (Manchester United, OGC Nice, Lausanne-Sport)
- King Power (Leicester City and OH Leuven)
- Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (Arsenal and Colorado Rapids)
- Nottingham Forest, Olympiacos and Rio Ave
- Qatar Sports Investments (Paris Saint-Germain and Braga)
- Sport Republic (Southampton, Göztepe and Valenciennes)
- United World Group (Sheffield United, Beerschot, Châteauroux, Al Hilal United, Kerala United)
- V Sports (Aston Villa, Vitória SC, Real Unión)
While there are a couple of big jumps in here, the vast majority of these MCGs have quite a clear ladder pathway to follow. Most of them also have clubs in leagues with a reputation for young talent development, so they can easily develop the pathway if they so desire.
However, across these 16 MCGs, only 25 permanent upward transfers have been made to date. Of course, the relative nascence of most of these groups goes some way to explaining why that figure is so low. However, two groups alone – Evangelos Marinakis-owned Nottingham Forest, Olympiacos and Rio Ave, and Kunle Soname-owned CD Feirense and Remo Stars – are responsible for about half of these transfers.
Both of those groups have not necessarily used the ladder pathway to strengthen the top club’s squad. For example, all six players to have moved from Olympiacos to Nottingham Forest went on free transfers, two of them did not feature for the English club at all, and only one crossed 50 appearances. Soname’s group have mostly used their pathway to give Nigerian youngsters from Remo Stars a chance to develop in Europe, as all but one of their transfers have involved 18-year-olds. Of them, only two went on to appear for Feirense’s senior team.
That is not to say that such moves cannot be successful, of course. As we saw with Red Bull in particular, the ladder pathway has a great deal of potential be it to strengthen the higher-ranked team, develop players and/or sell them on for bigger fees. Among our list of hierarchical MCGs, Black Knight are showing the most promise in terms of replicating that kind of approach.
They made a big move just as they entered the business with Dango Ouattara’s €22.5 million transfer from Lorient to Bournemouth in January 2023. It is safe to say that has gone well as the Burkinabé international has acquitted himself very nicely in the English Premier League. His Transfermarkt value has doubled over the last two years.
Despite Lorient’s relegation to Ligue 2, Black Knight have shown themselves capable of further developing this pathway. Earlier this year, Eli Junior Kroupi followed Ouattara’s path with a €13m transfer, though he will see out the season on loan in France. He is a highly-rated talent who certainly was not short of interest from other clubs, but a move to England gives Black Knight a chance to earn a bigger fee for him if he decides to move on in the future.
That was very much the case for Brighton & Hove Albion and Union Saint-Gilloise. The Seagulls surely signed Deniz Undav to strengthen their squad after he was absolutely ripping the Belgian Pro League apart, but things never quite clicked for the German forward in England. Nevertheless, Brighton were able to negotiate a €26.7m sale to Stuttgart having brought Undav in for a fee of just €7m.
FC Midtjylland have a bit of experience with such transfers too. Most notably, they sold Frank Onyeka for an eight-digit fee to Brentford back when the two clubs had common ownership. The Nigerian international has gone on to make over 120 appearances for the Bees and is still on their books, though he is spending the current season out on loan in Augsburg. Now, FCM have a different role in their MCG as the higher-ranked club ahead of Portuguese second-tier side CD Mafra. Young Senegalese defender Ousmane Diao left Mafra for Denmark last year and has attracted a good deal of attention from elsewhere since.
Dan Ndoye could well have been another player on this list had Nice done things differently after signing him from Lausanne. He left France for Basel in 2022 and went on to earn a €14m transfer to Bologna just a season later.
Feeder Pathways
As we saw in the case of City Football Group, the hierarchical MCG model naturally creates feeder pathways besides the ladder pathway. While feeder routes can be used to do some creative transfer accounting in certain cases, the most straightforward use for them is to send out young players to clubs where they can get consistent playing time at the senior level. The MCGs we have identified for this piece seem to have developed this approach a great deal more.
Developmental Loans
Dmitry Rybolovlev-owned AS Monaco and Cercle Brugge have utilised the developmental loan pathway more than everyone else. To date, the Ligue 1 side have loaned 31 players to the Belgian club, all but one of whom has been aged 23 or younger. After the completion of the loan, there are several routes the player can go down. Seven of these 31 went on to make their moves permanent, including currency 24-year-old Lithuanian right back Edgaras Utkus. Few have managed to return to Monaco and break into the first team, but current #1 Rados?aw Majecki was one of them. The majority ultimately left the club, either after one or two more loans or by immediately sealing a transfer. Strahinja Pavlovi? (for €7m to RB Salzburg), Irvin Cardona (for €1.5m to Brest) and Lyle Foster (for €1.2m to Vitória SC) are all on that list.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome of these moves, the very presence of such an established developmental loan pathway gives the MCG an edge over single clubs at a similar level when it comes to attracting young talents. A prime example of that is Paris Brunner, a highly-rated Borussia Dortmund youth player who left the German side for Monaco last summer. Speaking about the move, he said, “Monaco showed me a clear, sporting path, how they want to plan with me and develop me”, whereas, “BVB’s plan included the U19 Youth League and the U23s as well as occasional training with the first-team.”
Brighton & Hove Albion have enjoyed some success this way. They certainly are much more selective in terms of the players they send to Union Saint-Gilloise, so their success rate is naturally higher. The Seagulls have fared best when sending new signings out to Belgium for a season before integrating them into their first-team squad, as both Kaoru Mitoma and Simon Adingra went down that route.
Aston Villa are another English club using the developmental loans pathway, although they have interestingly not sent anyone out to Vitória SC to date. Instead, all five of their intra-MCG loanees have gone to Real Unión in the Spanish third tier this term, including four teenagers and four Englishmen.
INEOS have also adopted such an approach with Nice and Lausanne. They have sent 11 under-23 players on loan from France to Switzerland, with the list including now-Nice regular Evann Guessand and well-rated Romanian talent Rare? Ilie.
Although they are very much in their formative years as an MCG, BlueCo have used developmental loans as a part of their heavily youth-focused strategy. Both of their teams have not only been by far the youngest in their respective leagues this season, but they are also the two youngest teams in Europe’s top five leagues. They loaned Ângelo from Chelsea to Strasbourg in 2023/24 and sent three others – namely ?or?e Petrovi?, Caleb Wiley and Andrey Santos – that way ahead of this season.
FC Midtjylland have also loaned out a few youngsters to CD Mafra, but a good chunk of their moves have been permanent transfers for under-21 players, including Danish youngsters. That way, they get some more continuity in their development as they can stay at the lower-ranked club longer. That brings us to the other major application of the feeder pathway.
Other Patterns
At times when a club find themselves with a surplus of young talents – especially if they have a very strong youth academy – having a lower-ranked partner in a hierarchial MCG can prove mutually beneficial. Paris Saint-Germain are a great example of this as they have a pretty famous list of academy graduates who have gone on to star elsewhere. With SC Braga now in QSI’s portfolio, they seem to be keen to hedge their bets a little more by directing some of their youngsters to Portugal. Ismaël Gharbi notably made such a move this summer, while Cher Ndour joined him on loan.
In other cases, the objective of transfers from the higher-ranked club to the lower-ranked club can simply be to strengthen the latter’s squad, especially with more experienced campaigners. The Montréal Impact/CF Montréal have received numerous such players from Bologna over the years, including Lassi Lappalainen, Saphir Taïder, Gabriele Corbo and Matteo Mancuso – who all went on to spend multiple seasons as a first-team regular in Canada.
Olympiacos have similarly benefitted from having Nottingham Forest in their MCG as they have received some standout names from England, especially on loan. Gustavo Scarpa, Hwang Ui-jo, Josh Bowler and David Carmo are a few of the players who have gone down that route. Black Knight have also looked to strengthen their clubs by sending some loanees across from Bournemouth, as Romain Faivre, Emiliano Marcondes and Alex Paulsen have gone to Lorient, Hibs and Auckland City respectively.
Unexplored Potential
While most of the MCGs we have analysed in this piece seem to have found good uses for their feeder pathways, the ladder pathway can evidently be developed much better in many cases. A few have been relatively inactive on the whole, likely for different reasons.
Arsenal’s reluctance to do much business with the Colorado Rapids is quite possibly down to the significant gulf in their competitive level, although there might be a bit of potential in the developmental loans pathway to a league that is increasingly developing a reputation for being a hub of international youth development.
King Power have arguably not made the most of Belgian Pro League regulars OH Leuven, so they can certainly take a page or two out of Brighton’s book. The same can be said of United World Group as well.
A good chunk of the MCGs we identified are no more than a couple of years old, so it will be interesting to see how they develop such pathways in the coming years. Most notably, Manchester United’s incorporation into INEOS’ group, Aston Villa’s partnership with Vitória SC and QSI’s management of their two clubs could well make an impact at the highest level of world football. It is also entirely possible that player trading pathways are not the most significant drivers for the creation of these MCGs, with investment opportunities, access to different commercial markets, or simply the opportunity to access undervalued assets being more relative incentives (out of which, trading pathways may yet grow).
Stats courtesy Transfermarkt, FotMob and Fbref
Header image copyright IMAGO / Sports Press Photo / Richard Callis
