For Li Mu, he had no reason to refuse Davidson's gift to him.
Moreover, he would not feel too responsible for accepting this gift. At most, he would promise Davidson to let HSBC Holdings be the lead underwriter for the future IPO of Makino Technology. However, if Davidson could not meet his requirements, he would still not give him any face.
As for the Manchester City Football Club, it was actually just a stepping stone for Davidson. He would accept this stepping stone with a smile. If he did not perform well after entering the door, he would still kick him out.
Davidson naturally knew this truth.
Although HSBC Holdings was very strong, it was still slightly inferior in the US stock market. Under normal circumstances, it was still not enough to get the qualifications to be the lead underwriter for the IPO of Makino Technology. Now Li Mu could give him this opportunity for the sake of the Manchester City Football Club. However, if he did not perform well, the Manchester City Football Club would be considered to be in vain.
Davidson immediately took out the club's equity transfer contract. The transferor of the shares was a financial company of the Goldberg family in Manchester, and the transferee of the shares was Li Mu himself.
The terms of the contract were very simple. The transferor was willing to unconditionally transfer 100% of the shares of Manchester City to the transferee. The contract only needed to be signed by both parties to take effect.
After reading the contract in a minute, Li Mu signed his name on the signature with the pen that Davidson handed over.
Davidson also signed his name and then exchanged the contract with Li Mu. He said with a smile, "Mr. Li, congratulations on becoming the only owner of the Manchester City Football Club."
Li Mu took the contract and said with a smile, "I'm at a loss on how to manage a football club now. I don't know how to start now."
Davidson laughed and said, "If you don't have money, it does take a lot of energy to run a football club well. But if you have money, it's a lot less worrisome. You can learn from Abramovich. First, give the team enough salary, bonuses and benefits, and then take out a sum of money to invest in the club. Let the club buy players everywhere to replenish fresh blood, and then wait to watch the next game. Generally speaking, as long as the money is in place, the club's ranking in the league will rise."
Li Mu thought for a moment and nodded gently.
He agreed with Davidson's suggestion. Whether as a club owner or a business owner, there were only two kinds of help he could provide to his men. It was either technical help or financial help. He basically had zero football skills, so he could provide financial help.
At this stage, he did not have the energy to manage the football club. He did not even have the energy to find a suitable professional manager and head coach for the football club. But there was one thing he could do, and that was to inject a huge sum of money into the Manchester City Football Club to buy good players.
Makino Technology continued to be profitable, Taobao and Taobao Logistics had long been profitable, and the independent agent of Miracle MU was still the cash cow in the Hua Xia game market. With money came the right to be humane. Li Mu could take out hundreds of millions of pounds from his personal assets at any time and throw it into the English Premier League.
Moreover, for Li Mu, it was not that he did not have any advantages in the field of football. He had a very unique advantage, an advantage that surpassed that of anyone in the world of football today.
This unique advantage was that he was well aware of who would become the stars of tomorrow in the world of football in the future.
The more recent ones, such as Rooney, Iniesta, Modric, Fàbregas, Ribéry, and Robben, were world-class players who would later become famous. At this stage, they were still under the age of 20. Their level was enough, but they had never had the chance to show themselves, which meant that their current value was almost very low.
And in the future, there was also Lewandowski, Neymar, Bale, and Ozil, the next generation of superstars born in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As long as the time was right, it was possible to get these people into his youth training camp for only a few million pounds. They would start from the youth training camp, then play in the second team, and could represent the first team at the age of seventeen or eighteen.
At the same time, Messi was now a seeded player in La Liga Barcelona. It was probably impossible to buy him now, but Ronaldo should not have joined Manchester United at this stage. It was even possible that he had just started to talk about a transfer with Manchester United, so it was not impossible to poach him.
If these players were bought at the best time, the transfer fee alone would be profitable.
As for the Hua Xia player, Dong Fangzhuo, Li Mu must snatch him from the hands of Manchester United and let him start his Premier League journey at Manchester City. He must try his best not to let the player repeat his mistakes.
At this pace, the Manchester City Football Club's first and second teams would have to leave at least one position for Hua Xia players in the future, and the youth training camp would have to provide at least six positions. Li Mu wanted more Hua Xia athletes to go abroad and hone themselves in high-intensity, high-level leagues, instead of sticking out their bellies and taking high salaries to mingle in domestic clubs.
The reason why the so-called first-tier domestic players in later generations could get high salaries in the clubs was entirely due to the protection of domestic players by the domestic football association. The number of foreign players in each team of the Chinese Super League had long been limited to 4 + 1, which meant that four non-Asian foreign players and one Asian foreign player could only play at most 3 + 1. That was to say, during the game, there could only be a maximum of four foreign players in a football team of 11 players. Later, this number was changed to three.
The tightening of the number of foreign players in the team led to various teams having to compete for Hua Xia's local players who were not strong enough but had extremely high salaries. These players were also protected by the policy and were at ease in the club. For them, it did not matter if they could not catch up with the foreign players in the team, as long as they were not overtaken by other teams' local players. Because when the team played, there must be eight local players present.
Although the Bundesliga, Serie A and even La Liga also had restrictions on foreign players, the key was that the local players worked hard and did not rely too much on foreign players at all, unlike many domestic teams, where the entire team's scoring point always depended on foreign players.
Looking at the Chinese Super League's goalscorers list every season, at least 16 or 17 of the top 20 were foreign players.
This led to the local players who were cultivated in the club living like princes and princesses. They had long been accustomed to relying on foreign players to score goals and win.
Once the local players cultivated in such an environment were called up by the national team, it was equivalent to a group of musicians who specialized in accompaniment coming together to participate in a band competition. However, these musicians usually came from instrumental accompaniment, and no one could sing well.
Therefore, when these 20 or so people came together, they realized that they came to participate in the band competition, but there was no one in the team who could sing.
How could such a team make great progress in the world? It would be a blessing if they did not regress.
However, if he could bring out the truly talented players in the country and let them get away from the decadent environment of dawdling and hone themselves in a high-level league like the English Premier League, even if he could hone three players, it would be able to greatly improve the strength of the team when they were called up by the national team.
Thinking of this, Li Mu opened his mouth and asked Davidson, "By the way, the English Premier League clubs should not have restrictions on foreign players, right?"
"No." Davidson shook his head and said, "As long as they can get a work permit, it doesn't matter if the whole team is foreign players."
"Work permit …" As soon as Li Mu heard the word, he immediately thought of it. There were indeed some domestic players who had a chance to be signed by the English Premier League teams, but they were ultimately aborted because the work permit problem could not be solved.
Therefore, Li Mu asked Davidson, "If I want to bring more Hua Xia players to the English Premier League in the future, who should I look for to solve the work permit problem?"
The British work permit was very troublesome, especially the English Premier League work permit. It had very high requirements for the target of the signing. Not only did it require the other party to have more than 75% of the appearance rate in the national team, but it also required the national team's FIFA ranking to be in the top 70 in the world. As a result, many Asian players did not have a chance in the English Premier League.
And in his impression, this policy was gradually tightened and became stricter.
Davidson blurted out almost without thinking, "There is another channel for the English Premier League work permit that does not need to consider hard targets. I can help you solve this. Don't worry."
Li Mu breathed a sigh of relief and said with a smile, "Then I'll have to trouble you to solve the work permit problem of the Hua Xia players in the future."
Davidson nodded and said, "If you are going to introduce Hua Xia players to Manchester City in the future, just tell me directly. I'll communicate with the government, but the number can't be too high. Otherwise, the media will keep staring and it will be hard to explain."
Li Mu said, "My goal is not high. Manchester City's first and second teams each have a Hua Xia player in the beginning, and then think of a way according to the actual situation in the middle and later stages."
Davidson smiled and said, "If your goal is to bring Hua Xia players to the English Premier League to train, then you can loan the players to other European leagues first, and then apply for a work permit through arbitration. I can also help you solve this. Believe me, I still have some strength in Europe, and loaning the players to other European leagues is also a kind of training for the players. After all, the European league is more professional than the Hua Xia league."
Li Mu smiled and said, "Of course I believe that."
Davidson added, "By the way, do you know that Manchester City already has a Hua Xia player?"
"Is that so?" Li Mu was a little stunned and could not remember for a moment. He did not have a deep impression of the five major leagues before 2008, so he could not remember for a while which Hua Xia player was playing for Manchester City in the English Premier League at this time.
Davidson picked up a thick folder from his hand, flipped through it for a while, and handed it to Li Mu and said, "Look, this is him, Sun Ji Hai."
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