Man City chief explains 'project' used to beat rivals to Haaland transfer

15 January 2023 , 08:00

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Erling Haaland was unveiled by City in June after being convinced of the club's long-term project, according to Omar Berrada.

One of the more compelling scenes in Deadline Day: Football’s Transfer Window , the documentary series released by Sky today, arrives midway through the opening episode when the cameras are allowed to film a snippet of a meeting at Manchester City.

Several of the club’s key strategists, including chief footballing operations officer Omar Berrada, are involved and some of the data tools that the club uses can be seen.

First there is a transaction tracker shown on screen, looking at the global spend during last summer’s window. The analyst speaking, who is not named, tells the meeting that the market is bouncing back towards what would have been seen pre-pandemic.

By the end of it, Premier League clubs alone had spent more than £2bn.

A chart detailing the City Football Group’s club-by-club spend at that stage of the window is displayed as another voice, who is unnamed and not shown on screen, provides context around the umbrella of clubs’ overall strategy.

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"I get the impression our clubs are getting better at squad planning, understanding who their targets are ahead of the window and beating their competitors to the punch," he says.

This meeting happens at an undefined point in a window when Erling Haaland arrives from Borussia Dortmund in a deal worth £51.2m, though the overall financial outlay is much higher because the Norway striker is on a salary eclipsed only by PSG’s Kylian Mbappe and Cristiano Ronaldo at Al-Nassr.

Berrada then sets out how City, aside from acknowledging the importance of the striker’s father having played for the club between 2000 and 2003, won the race to bring him to East Manchester.

"A player like Haaland really could have chosen any top team in Europe. Almost all the top teams were interested in his signature,” he says to camera.

"For us it was about understanding what motivates him. When you boil it down to its essence, he wanted a football project. We spent a lot of time explaining the football project.

"He's a strong character and the decision was taken by him but clearly the fact that his father had played for Man City, there was an affinity.”

Japhet Tanganga also features prominently in the documetary.

The documentary, from the makers of the All or Nothing: Juventus series, spreads its wings far beyond the Premier League. Japhet Tanganga’s will-he-won’t-he leave Tottenham for Serie A is detailed but so is Fabian Ruiz’s refusal to sign a new contract at Napoli as he aims to secure a move away before ending up at Paris Saint-Germain.

Junior Adamu, the Red Bull Salzburg forward, gets as much screen time in the opening episode as Steve Parish, the Crystal Palace chairman who reflects on the need to look at the human side of a deal, and West Ham co-chairman David Sullivan as he explains why his club “sometimes has the money, sometimes doesn’t have the money” to sign players.

Interspersed with clips from Sky Sports News’ reporting of transfers, there are also some interesting glimpses into how agents interact with their players. Family members, such as Tanganga’s father and Ruiz’s mother, pop up as they discuss what is best for their son’s futures with representatives.

It is unlikely to make any supporter think very differently about how the transfer window works and the focus, for obvious reasons, is on the big names but there is more than enough from the glimpses behind the curtain to understand how precarious the whole market can be, why moves sometimes break down amid reminders of the obscene amount of money being spent.

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"The transfer market has almost become a competition in itself," Berrada says. "What you don't realise is the sheer amount of pressure you deal with. Yes, there's an element of the transaction - the salary, the fee, the commission.

"But you're dealing with people, people who have dreams, fears and who may have influences within their own entourage. You have to really try and understand who you are speaking to. When you understand that you have a better sense of how to negotiate.”

Alan Smith