Khaldoon Al Mubarak has moved to apologise to fans for Manchester City’s participation in the European Super League.
The football world was briefly turned on its head in April when 12 of Europe’s ‘leading clubs’ announced their intention to break away from UEFA and form their own ‘Super League.’
The proposed tournament would have largely been on an invite-only basis, making the upper echelons of football a ‘closed shop.’
Thankfully, the plans were met with widespread vitriol with supporters, pundits, players and even politicians all uniting in protest against the ESL.
Just three days later and the project was left in tatters, with City being the first club to officially withdraw from the group.
Club figures were quick to issue apologies for the decision and now Al Mubarak has moved to offer his own thoughts.
“I want to start with apologising to the fans,” he said in part two of his end of season interview. “I owe it.
“It was a mistake. I think in hindsight, the decision should have been from the beginning: a decision not to participate in this league.
“I absolutely regret it. The benefit of hindsight is easy right now. I regret it and you can see it: our reluctance.
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“It was very difficult. It was not an easy decision to say ‘yes, no’ and ‘we’re in’ or ‘we’re out.’
“I think you can see in terms of the timing of when we actually did commit, it tells you a lot in terms of how challenging a decision it was and how much we struggled with that decision.
“But you can also see that once we recognise there was a mistake, that’s it. We needed to go out immediately.
“I’m not going to sit here and defend the reason why we did it. What I will do is: I will own it. I took a decision ultimately on this and I take full responsibility, and it was a mistake.”
