The Abu Dhabi derby - Manchester City vs Al Ain is a contest between royal brothers

Many brothers share a love of the same sport, even for the same football team.

If you are from the House of Al Nahyan, however, your means to pursue those passions are far greater than most.

The U.S. city of Atlanta will witness that tonight (Sunday there, early Monday UK time) when it hosts Manchester City vs Al Ain in a Club World Cup group match, pitting not just two brothers against one another for 90 minutes but the president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against its deputy president.

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The founding father of the Gulf nation, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, had 30 children with multiple wives but the six full brothers born from his third spouse are the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven states that make up the country, and hold many of the senior roles in the UAE’s government.

These are known as Bani Fatima (the sons of Fatima), and it is Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan who is best known in the sports world for his purchase of Manchester City in 2008 via Abu Dhabi United Group.

He is vice-president of the UAE, deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, and was appointed minister of the UAE’s presidential court in July 2022.

The person who handed him that title? His elder brother, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan — known as MBZ. He is the president of the UAE, ruler of its capital, also called Abu Dhabi, and president of Al Ain, who play in the city of that name in the latter emirate.

City have been transformed under Sheikh Mansour (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)

Al Ain are very much, like the levers of power in the UAE, a family affair.

MBZ has been their president since 1979, with another of the brothers, Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed, serving as chairman. His father provided financial assistance and land for Al Ain’s first headquarters, before his son Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan delivered a new stadium.

During MBZ’s 46-year presidency, Al Ain became the first club in the UAE to adopt professional status across multiple sports. They are the most successful club in the UAE, with 14 Pro League championships, seven President’s Cups (their FA Cup equivalent) and two Asian Champions League titles — the most of any club from their nation.

Their second continental triumph, in May 2024, was overseen by former Argentina striker Hernan Crespo. It qualified them for this newly-expanded FIFA tournament in the U.S. and saw the team hosted by the president at the Qasr Al Bahr palace in Abu Dhabi to celebrate.

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Two of the other brothers, Sheikh Hazza and Sheikh Hamdan, were in attendance but Sheikh Mansour was not, although he was at a reception this May to congratulate the presidential camel-racing team on their successful season.

It will be big brother versus little brother at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium this evening, but there is another sub-plot in the sponsors that the teams associate with.

Al Ain lost heavily to Juventus in their opening game of this Club World Cup (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

At the start of the month, Al Ain announced Emirates as an official partner and official airline of the club, to coincide with the Club World Cup, and they will wear the company’s logo on their training jerseys from next season.

That company is owned by the government of Dubai, another of the seven emirates, through its investment arm, the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

Manchester City have been sponsored by Etihad — wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, through its sovereign wealth fund ADQ — since 2009 and have refused to wear Emirates sleeve patches in the FA Cup since 2015 due to the two airlines being direct rivals.

The family’s involvement in sport is extensive but the majority of the teams in the UAE Pro League are presided over by descendants of the Al Maktoums (Dubai) and Al Nahyans (Abu Dhabi), who are linked through the generations of marriages and political alliances that form the structure of the nation’s ruling class.

The president of Shabab Al Ahli, the dominant team at the moment, having won two of the past three league titles, is Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai. MBZ’s son Sheikh Theyab bin Zayed Al Nahyan founded Al Wahda in 2013, and is club president. They finished third this season, four points above his father’s Al Ain.

The president of Al Wasl, Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is MBZ’s half-brother. Al Wasl finished fourth when the domestic campaign ended last month.

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City’s owner Sheikh Mansour is president of his own team in the UAE. Indeed, his investment in Al Jazira was his first foray into the sport. Their stadium is named after MBZ. On the rare occasion that Sheikh Mansour attended a match against his half-brother’s team, Al Wada, one person who was there jokes that the security presence was so large it almost outnumbered the regular fans in the ground.

Al Jazira is the club that Football Leaks alleged in 2018 were paying Roberto Mancini a second wage while he was manager at City to help the Premier League side stay within financial fair play limits. Mancini and City have always denied any wrongdoing.

Despite the familial links, City Football Group’s (CFG) portfolio of 13 clubs across the world does not contain Al Jazira or Al Ain. They have remained distinct, though CFG do tend to only add teams who can strategically enhance their player-recruitment ladder.

City have always strongly denied any state involvement in the ownership and control of the club, though The Athletic revealed in March that the mysterious “Person X” who facilitated sponsorship payments to them in one of the deals being investigated by the Premier League was, at the time, a key aide of MBZ.

Jaber Mohamed worked as general director of the Crown Prince’s Court (CPC), an Abu Dhabi government body that runs the public affairs of the then crown prince, MBZ. City did not respond to requests for comment at the time and have always denied any wrongdoing in relation to the Premier League’s investigation.

But has Sheikh Mansour’s purchase of City 17 years ago created or changed how football is viewed in the UAE and its position within the culture?

Those who have gone to live and coach in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the nation’s two major cities, say there is a much more global football presence these days but that a burgeoning grassroots culture is difficult to achieve, and attendances at matches can be in the hundreds or low thousands.

Al Ain recorded a crowd of 17,126 against Al Ahli in November (Neville Hopwood/Getty Images)

This is partly due to demographics. The UAE’s population is over 10million but consists of almost 90 per cent expatriates. Locals comprise a small minority of just over one million. Al Ain is the fourth-biggest city in the UAE and has the highest proportion of Emiratis living there of anywhere in the country, but cricket remains a far more popular sport with the Asian diaspora.

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As an illustration of crowd sizes, Al Ain won a league award for the best average attendance over three rounds during the 2022 season by drawing 1,707 fans per game. However, in this season’s Champions League, they have had between 6,000 to 24,000 supporters in the stands.

The UAE Pro League has been able to compete with Saudi Arabia in the Champions League but it has not yet invested large sums in attracting big foreign players. Their strategy is the reverse of Saudi in that the focus has been on building the infrastructure and professionalising the league first.

Al Ain have the biggest attendances and the largest fan culture. The city is an hour and a half from the two main destinations, making it relatively remote and giving it a larger catchment area. Some Al Ain fans will also attend other clubs’ games, too, which doesn’t often happen elsewhere. The club have two stadiums, another for training and another five facilities they can use.

The love of football is shared by MBZ who, according to one person familiar with the matter at the Pro League, even has access to a dedicated broadcast of the club’s academy games.

City Football Group also has a community programme that stretches across the UAE so they have that recognition and brand visibility.

There has been investment from Pro League sides in growing the game: each has an academy and there are rules designed to ensure young local players are given a platform. Clubs are only allowed to include five foreign signings in the overall squad and can only register up to five ‘resident’ players — not Emirati nationals living in the UAE — with a maximum total of eight permitted in their matchday 23 and a combined total of six allowed on the pitch at one time.

Most of its teams started as social clubs. They were there to cater for the community and most have teams in other sports besides football that compete under the same banner. Many of the clubs are focused on giving back to the community but it is the major European sides who flock to Dubai, a bigger tourist destination than Abu Dhabi, to set up training camps for kids.

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Tom Byer, who played an important role in reshaping Japan’s grassroots programme over two decades ago, believes all the money and coaches in the world cannot grow a country into a talent factory. It has to be more organic.

“I’ve been to Dubai recently. It’s a very interesting place, but it’s easy to see it’s below the level of Japan, Korea,” he says. “My whole thing is that football starts off with culture. It’s the head start that the kids get so the football world has convinced everyone to believe that a country needs more coaches, more curriculums, more billion-dollar facilities.

“They have to understand it is about pre-team. It starts at home, before organised football comes into it. You can have hotbeds of development but not with the formula.

“It’s very well organised. Kids come for free and they bus them in and they have infrastructure. It probably needs better coaching, but for quality coaching to be impactful, you have to have kids who can benefit from it. Skill acquisition happens very young.”

At senior level, after a 5-0 defeat to Juventus of Italy in their first game of the tournament on Wednesday, head coach Vladimir Ivic is looking to see how his Al Ain team can improve when they face City.

“We are here, and knew that we play against them months ago (after the group-phase draw in December),” he says. “We knew the group were preparing game by game. It is a pleasure to play against such a big club. We want to see where we are and how we compare ourselves to a team like City and Juventus. To show ourselves in the best way.”

The coach was also asked if he has had contact with MBZ before this game between the royal siblings.

“No, no,” he said.

(Top image: Ozan Kose/ AFP via Getty Images)

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