Khaldoon Al Mubarak on City Charges and $10bn Empire
Manchester City’s chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak is still waiting, like the rest of football, for the verdict that could redefine an era. The 115 Premier League charges that hang over the club – alleged breaches of financial rules across a nine-year spell from 2009 to 2018, plus accusations of failing to cooperate with the league’s investigation – remain unresolved, despite an independent commission hearing taking place 18 months ago.
City have denied any wrongdoing throughout. The case has dragged on long enough to become part of the backdrop to every trophy lift, every title race, every conversation about their dominance. Yet from the boardroom, there is a clear message: the club will have its say, just not yet.
“Let me be as consistent as I've always been -- until we have a ruling, I can't say much,” Khaldoon told the club’s media channels.
The line is familiar, almost rehearsed, but the next part carried a sharper edge. “Once we have a ruling, believe me, we're going to have a wonderful sit down together and I'll say everything I've wanted to say for the last three years.”
That is the tension at the heart of Manchester City right now. On the pitch, they have built a modern superpower. Off it, they wait in a kind of legal limbo.
Since the 2008 takeover by their Abu Dhabi-based owners, City have stacked the honours in a way English football has rarely seen: eight Premier League titles, a Champions League, four FA Cups and seven League Cups. The transformation has been relentless, season after season, to the point where their success now frames the entire competitive landscape of the league.
Success of that scale has a hard, financial edge. The club’s valuation has soared, and Khaldoon made clear that City are no longer just a project – they are an asset of enormous weight within the City Football Group portfolio.
“Sheikh Mansour, when he looks at this club, he sees it as a long-term investment,” Khaldoon said, before putting a number on it. If the group went to market today? “If you're going to sell all this today in the market, you wouldn't sell it for less than 10 billion dollars minimum.”
It was a rare public valuation from the chairman and a pointed one. City are not being groomed for sale, he insisted, but for further expansion.
“Of course, His Highness has no intention of selling this business. There's only intention to keep growing this because the view here is this will only grow and this is a beautiful business to own.”
He framed it not just as an investment, but as a position at the summit of a global industry that refuses to shrink, even as attention spans splinter and entertainment choices multiply.
“It's football and it's entertainment. In the world we're in today, while the world changes and people's attention goes to different things, sport stays -- and football within sports is the pinnacle.
“And Manchester City and this group, within the football world, is a pinnacle. These sorts of jewels, you don't sell.”
So City wait: champions on the pitch, defendants in the hearing room, a $10 billion football empire that insists it has nothing to hide and everything to say – once the verdict finally lands.
