Chelsea was technically not a state club even if Roman got rich off Putin but that kind of ownership wasn't healthy either. It's one thing to level the playing field but what Chelsea did was first level the playing field and then build a giant skyscraper on top of it
A scary number of people on here are too young to remember but no one called City's takeover state ownership at the time. Sheikh Mansour bought the club and it wasn't until 3 or 4 years later, probably with the Qatar purchase of PSG that people started referring to City as the same thing.
Go back to 2008 and all the coverage is about the individual Sheikh Mansour, there was no sense that the UAE state had bought a football team.
Chelsea was technically not a state club even if Roman got rich off Putin but that kind of ownership wasn't healthy either. It's one thing to level the playing field but what Chelsea did was first level the playing field and then build a giant skyscraper on top of it
A scary number of people on here are too young to remember but no one called City's takeover state ownership at the time. Sheikh Mansour bought the club and it wasn't until 3 or 4 years later, probably with the Qatar purchase of PSG that people started referring to City as the same thing.
Go back to 2008 and all the coverage is about the individual Sheikh Mansour, there was no sense that the UAE state had bought a football team.