Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak sent out a deliberate message as he addressed supporters at the end of the season.
Every year Khaldoon Al Mubarak sits down for one interview about Manchester City and no more. The club chairman has been giving his annual interview to the same interviewer, making his summer address a part of the club’s calendar.
It is a rare chance to hear the views of the City hierarchy, although at the same time, unlike an interview with external media, there is absolutely nothing that goes out without Al Mubarak wanting it to go out. His words are always worth noting, but so too is the very fact that they are being presented.
The theme of this year’s address is stability and growth. Al Mubarak baulks at the suggestion a club that has won 20 trophies in 10 years under Pep Guardiola has peaked, promises they have found the best possible successor and pledges more commitment and investment from owner Sheikh Mansour.
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Nobody had even been thinking that Mansour might sell up, and yet here is the chairman on the one time each year he goes on the record to state that there is no chance of it. The show, under Mansour and Enzo Maresca, will absolutely go on.
There is even a retelling of the dynamic between Al Mubarak and Guardiola with the serial-winning coach likened to the boy who cried wolf as fans are told how he resigned ‘100 times’ in ten years. Each time, of course, Al Mubarak was the one to guide him to the right decision just as this time the City chairman knew that it was time for him to go.
It certainly feels a little rose-tinted, and Guardiola is no longer here to offer any more balance to the story, but then maybe that is the point. Fans are understandably worried about how the club can move on from the most successful coach in their history as they struggle to appoint Maresca and key players publicly flirt with a move away.
In that vacuum, Al Mubarak has stepped up to tell supporters that not only are the hierarchy here to oversee what comes next but they always were during the Guardiola era having more of an influence than has perhaps been recognised. The manager will be missed, yet everything is under control.
Of course, as you would expect with a skilled negotiator who is trusted by the United Arab Emirates to speak on their behalf around the world, none of this is explicit. There will be people who haven’t got this far in the article before rushing to the comments to scream ‘MUEN’ into the corners of the internet, outraged at the idea that there could be more to Al Mubarak’s message than meets the eye.
But it is a very deliberate interview, as they are every year, that deserves to be deconstructed with the same care and attention that it was put together with. Whether City fans needed to hear it or not, Al Mubarak has made a conscious effort to reassure them over who is running their club and what they should expect to come.
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