FootBiz newsletter #13: Klopp, INEOS and Man City's new sporting director?

Apologies, if I may, for the length of Tuesday’s newsletter.

As soon as the tribunal verdict landed at 2:18pm BST on Monday, I was pounding the phones trying to work out what on earth to make of it and found myself wrapped up in a world of claim and counter-claim.

By the time I went to bed about 16 hours later, I felt like I was living inside the verdict PDF, with legalese all around me and a booming voice coming from an unknown source saying “that challenge has failed… that challenge has failed” on repeat.

Since then, a story that began as “CITY WON” and then became “both sides won on some things” then, in turn, became “City’s general counsel sent a letter to the rest of the clubs insisting they did actually win and that the Premier League was misleading everyone.”

So much for things cooling down.

Where we go now is obviously of interest to many. The Premier League called an emergency meeting next Thursday but we understand that no votes will be happening.

The retired judges have also been asked to go into further detail and clarify precisely what they meant in their judgement (175 pages is, apparently, not enough for some people) and whether the APT rules are void and have been since 2021 - as City claim - or that they are not void and just need a little patching up and refining, which is the legal advice that the Premier League has received.

Matt has written a fascinating piece for tomorrow morning on the voting blocs inside the Premier League, and how the shifting fault lines will affect this process. That is only for premium subscribers, so if you haven’t yet upgraded then click the button below. I know it is annoying to ask every time, but it is the only way to grow and starts at just £3.99

And for a primer, here is his piece from last week about the internal politics of the Premier League owners.

As far as any ambitions that the Premier League might have for quickly fixing their rulebook - which has, let’s remember, been exposed twice recently - City are known to be strident in their view that no quick fixes will be rushed through. No patch-up jobs. No tweaks. No concessions on shareholder loans. No end in sight, seemingly.

So on that cheery note, what else have we got in store today?

Table of Contents

• “They take forever”

• The end of the Txiki boys

• Pep talk

• City’s successor(s)?

• How Villa do it

• Klopp’s new role

• M&A Murmurs

“They take forever”

Erik Ten Hag always appeared destined to survive this week's meeting of Manchester United's executive committee in London, not least as the manager had been given permission to take a brief holiday, and the Dutchman's stay of execution could continue for some time according to those familiar with the club's new leadership.

United prevaricated for over two weeks at the end of last season before deciding to retain Ten Hag, which came as no surprise to one source who has worked with the club's new co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his right-hand man Sir Dave Brailsford at cycling team, INEOS Grenadiers.

"They are very ruthless, but take forever to make a decision," the source said.

"Every possible permutation is studied, analysed and examined, and when you think they're close to reaching a decision they look at it again from another angle. The process is always very thorough, but never quick."

Ratcliffe, Brailsford and Joel Glazer all attended this week's meeting, along with sporting director Dan Ashworth, technical director Jason Wilcox and chief executive Omar Berrada, but while United's performances under Ten Hag this summer were discussed the summit was not a referendum on his future.

The end of the Txiki boys

If you had to designate any Manchester City news as seismic Manchester City news this week, then for me it is nothing to do with shareholder loans and inflated sponsorship deals, but the departure of Txiki Begiristain as director of football.

Yes, yes, Manchester City have sprayed the league with an endless firehose of petrostate money and it’s hard to remove the effect of that from the equation, but Begiristain has been one of the best football execs on the planet. Both things can be true.

As Barcelona sporting director, he plucked Pep Guardiola from the second-team bench and insisted he was promoted - birthing one of the greatest club teams to ever play the game - and then was lured to Manchester (in part, to hire Pep once again) to build an ambitious project to make them best team in the world. Which he did.

Bearing in mind Manchester City were in the third tier of English football not too long ago, it was not a foregone conclusion that Txiki could turn money into success. Plenty of teams haven’t, just look on the other side of town.

City Football Group execs are constantly getting hired by other teams and it is fair to wonder what part they have actually played in City’s success, but Txiki truly is the footballing architect of what they have put together. Pep is responsible for the execution but the strategy and the vision starts above him. You also wouldn’t have Pep without Txiki.

With that in mind, the first question is… what next?

There is an interesting detail in the story above from (the impeccable) David Ornstein that City have already agreed a deal for his replacement and that he will join “in early 2025” to learn on the job from Begiristain until the end of the season.

After that, there will be no shortage of demand for Txiki but options could include the presidency at Barcelona, should he wish to go in that direction, or perhaps waiting for Pep to choose a new direction. Either way, he will be taking a sabbatical as he did between his last two jobs from 2010-2012.

Pep talk

If I’m honest, the first thing I thought when I heard the news was that the chances of Guardiola leaving City just increased 📈 

We already knew his contract is up at the end of the season and hasn’t been renewed. We already knew City were facing potential relegation, points deductions, fines and whatever other sanctions. We already knew that the Guardiola ‘cycle’ (as the Spanish love to call it) could be coming to an end.

With England slapping an interim tag on Lee Carsley, there has been a feeling (and some reporting) that the FA were willing to wait for Pep’s City decision.

Who wouldn’t? If Guardiola walks away from City next June then he will have his pick of any coaching job on earth.

Of course, he might just extend his contract and stay at City.

But you can’t convince me the chances of him being in his final season at City didn’t go up with Txiki’s departure. It’s on Pep now.

City’s successor(s)?

Piecing together Ornstein’s report that City have already secured their next director of football and that the only name being reported is Sporting CP’s Hugo Viana, I am operating with the working assumption that the former Newcastle midfielder will be taking over.

Is he good? Hard to say based on the balance of the work he’s done in Lisbon but he did do one thing really well… he hired Ruben Amorim as coach.

Amorim is considered one of the best young coaches in the world for his work at Braga and now Sporting, and has since attracted Premier League interest. Chelsea looked at him (and his eye-popping €20m release clause) but thought better of it while Liverpool were linked with him before landing on Arne Slot.

Given City hired Txiki with the specific vision of him bringing Pep along too as a package deal, would it be crazy to hypothesise that Viana and Amorim could be the future that the City top brass has already chosen? Even if we have to wait a little while for it?

How Villa do it

When Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris took over Aston Villa in 2018, you would have laughed if they’d said they would be beating Bayern in a few years.

And yet here we are, a few years later and an ambitious club keen to get back on top has taken itself from the Championship to the Champions League.

Rob Draper dug into ‘the three gets’ and how Villa have done it - only for premium subscribers.

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Klopp’s new role

An interesting new direction for Jurgen Klopp as he swaps his baseball cap for a suit and tie… although probably not in practice.

Klopp was announced as global head of soccer for Red Bull on Wednesday. The Austrian group has a number of clubs (RB Leipzig, RB Salzburg, New York RB & RB Bragantino) it outright owns plus a number of others (Leeds United is one, another is mentioned further down in today’s M&A Murmurs) over whom Klopp will provide strategic guidance in a role held from 2012-2020 by another former Liverpool boss, Gerard Houllier.

The most notable detail found in reporting on Klopp’s new journey, which starts in January, is that he has an exit clause to allow him to take over the German national team should the opportunity arise.

With many people who know Klopp thinking that the Mannschaft is the only job left that he really wants to do, it makes all the sense in the world for Klopp to leave himself that path open.

It does, however, mean that Julian Nagelsmann has the constant pressure of one of the world’s elite coaches waiting in the wings. And that the DFB easily have the best coaching situation, present and future, of any national team.

M&A Murmurs

The Arnault family (55%) and Red Bull (15%) have taken control of Paris FC.

Bernard Arnault, with an estimated net worth of nearly $200bn, is investing via a holding company that he jointly owns with his sons, and in doing so knocks out a group of American and Bahraini investors. Club president Pierre Ferracci retains 30% of the team and will stay for now.

While the location and talent base made it an attractive project for the previous investors, the club lost a fair amount of money in Ligue 2, couldn’t get promoted and shareholders were subject to multiple capital calls over the last couple of years.

Thus, pocketing a return on their money and letting France’s richest man have a crack at bankrolling them into Ligue 1 makes a lot of sense.

With them sitting top of the second tier as we type, you’d hope there were promotion bonuses included in the deal.

Where now for John Textor after his Everton deal fell through?

Well, there is less urgency to sell his Crystal Palace stake in a timeline sense, given he is no longer up against the clock of Premier League regulations. He is, however, still keen to offload his stake and gain control of another English club.

While we know he would prefer a Premier League side, it might be worth monitoring news in the Championship where we hear he has made checks on Watford’s situation.

That said, there is no shortage of other clubs in the Championship looking for new investors if Textor's interest in Watford does not materialise into a bid, and the American does appear to enjoy shopping around. Cardiff and Plymouth are both actively searching for minority investors, but the Welsh club need to refinance existing loans of around £30m.

Wolves chairman Jeff Shi appears to have won an internal battle as he revealed that the club is in talks over selling a minority stake to investors.

While the club was known to have been the subject of sales discussions, the official line has always been that they were not on the market.

Indeed, part of the reason behind this was that the subsidiary Fosun Sports had no great desire to sell while parent company Fosun, a Chinese conglomerate with a staggering breadth of investments, was more open to cashing in on a valuation that would likely fetch them around £400m.

Any number close to that would represent a significant uplift on the £45m they paid for the club in 2016, though losses have really stacked up with an operating loss of over £100m on revenues of £169m in their accounts for 2022/23 - one of the worst figures of any Premier League club in that accounting period.

The club has made an operating profit just once since Fosun took over, but the fact that Shi has publicly revealed only a minority investment is on the cards suggests that Fosun will be staying in charge at Wolves and he has got his way.

RedBird Capital have denied reports in an Italian newspaper that they are looking to sell AC Milan.

"The reporting by La Repubblica about selling a stake in AC Milan is a complete fabrication. It is wholly untrue."

The Milan owners, who also own Toulouse in Ligue 1 and stakes in Fenway Sports Group and IPL franchise the Rajasthan Royals, were reported as owing another chunk of their seller financing to Elliott next year, precipitating the now-denied sales discussions.