This would be a really bad move 

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/manchester-united-in-talks-to-buy-central-coast-mariners-and-move-them-20210412-p57ijh.html

Manchester United in talks to buy Central Coast Mariners, and move them

By Dominic Bossi

April 13, 2021 — 6.00amSaveShareNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size4View all comments

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One of the most popular teams in world football is looking to establish a franchise club in the A-League with Manchester United having entered into talks to purchase the licence of Central Coast Mariners and relocate the club to Sydney.The 20-time English champions have held lengthy discussions with Mariners owner Mike Charlesworth in the UK about buying the licence of Central Coast and turning the club into a sister club of the Red Devils.A deal is yet to be done but sources with knowledge of the discussions suggest Manchester United are willing to come to the rescue of the cash-strapped Mariners. That could come at the expense of the club’s affiliation with the Central Coast region and be rebranded.The proposed takeover could see the Mariners uprooted from their spiritual home on the Central Coast and relocated to Sydney’s northern suburbs, with games likely to be at North Sydney or Brookvale.

Any transfer of club licence, rebranding and relocation of teams must be signed off by Football Australia after gaining the approval of the majority of A-League clubs, but it’s understood several are already supportive of the prospect of the Red Devils entering the competition hoping it will increase the interest and investment in the league.United’s discussions with the Mariners flags their intentions to follow in the footsteps of their cross-town rivals, Manchester City, and build a global network of affiliated clubs, particularly within range of the lucrative Asian football market.City expanded their network of feeder and sister clubs with the purchase of Melbourne Heart in 2014, rebranding the A-League club as Melbourne City and incorporating it into the City Football Group global network.

City paid more than $11 million for an 80 per-cent stake in Melbourne Heart in 2014 before buying the remaining 20 per-cent for $2.25 million. A price tag for the licence of the Mariners is yet to be agreed upon with United but any fee would be but a drop in the ocean for one of the wealthiest sporting brands in the world

Owned by the wealthy American Glazer family, Manchester United’s revenue was $905 million last year and the club was listed as the tenth most valuable sporting team in the world by Forbes in 2020, said to be worth more than $5 billion. In the last summer transfer window, the club’s net expenditure on players was $101 million. Of all football clubs, they have the third largest social media following with just shy of 150 million.Despite the gulf in stature between the two clubs, the Mariners have a longstanding close tie with Manchester United's inner sanctum. The Red Devils' assistant coach, Mike Phelan, was appointed sporting director of Central Coast in late 2018.United is arguably the most well-supported overseas team among Australian football fans. They attracted a sell-out crowd of more than 83,000 when they came to Sydney in 2013 to play the A-League All Stars at ANZ Stadium. Fourteen years earlier, the Red Devils drew a combined attendance of 148,000 when they played Australia in two exhibition games at the MCG and Stadium Australia.

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The cash-strapped Mariners have consistently struggled financially and have been in a desperate hunt for investment in recent years. That search was accelerated in August when Charlesworth announced his intention to cut all ties with the club by selling his entire stake, and did not rule out enticing investors with commercial property and a training base in Tuggerah that is affiliated with the Mariners but privately owned by him.The Herald and Age sought comment from Charlesworth and Football Australia on Monday.Charlesworth has previously held sale talks with Singapore-based consortium First11 Capital, which included former young Socceroos Zac Anderson and Kaz Patafta, as well as Sydney businessman Abdul Helou. Neither parties managed to strike a deal with Charlesworth.
ertisement

This a joke?

Wouldn't just kill the club, would kill the league.

Conversation

Sydney United..nope already taken....lets see..... North Sydney United  (worked for Macedonia)

Hahahahahah Not bad.

Would be a terrible idea.

Would much rather they start from scratch at North Sydney and promote a rivalry with CCM than completely kill and disenfranchise an existing supporter base.
You'd be lucky to count on one hand how many Coasties fans would follow the team down to Manly or North Sydney and support a team playing in a Manchester red.

Hate when articles like this come out as it really doesn't give the Gosford market confidence to support and back the club when there's talk of relocation.

So South Melbourne couldn't relocate the club when they wanted to buy the license, the Canberra mob couldn't relocate the club when they wanted to buy the license, but Manchester United CAN relocate the club, to the already overcrowded Sydney market... just sheer stupidity if this is allowed to happen. Don't CCM own their stadium AND their CoE? If that kind of infrastructure is included in the deal, why would you even want to relocate in the first place?

Hahaha PIFA, I heard Man Utd where jumping  in to buy CCM BEFORE South get their grubby little hands on it and become the biggest club in Asia...

HAHA!!!!

This is an important point.
The answer to the question is: no, they don't.
Because there is no club.
Charlesworth owns a license to participate in the A-League  AND  he owns the property personally.
He owns the right to assemble a team and place them in the league.  He achieves this, in the main, with one year contracts.
He can sell the license, with or without the associated property, at any time, as long as a majority of owners approve the sale.

This is the prob what has occurred as we've all seen.
Allowing the competitors having too much of the say, the direction of the sport.
Most times its for their own benefit not for the good of sport in general.
Off topic but similar prob is with Supercars that I'm into - the Race Teams have too much power over the Governing body.
That sport has also been on a decline for some years as well due to mis management despite their new Fox deal done recently.

Ah, okay. For some reason I thought I'd read an article where Charlesworth had said he was willing to package it all together in order to make the sale more attractive. Just read an article saying that they don't own the stadium, as the council doesn't wish to sell it. Regardless, the league needs MORE teams, not uprooting a club and killing off a supporter base. If Manchester United wants a team that badly, let them buy a license and base another team in Sydney, even though I think the last thing the league needs is another team from Sydney in the mix.

Fine but leave them on the coast.

Keeping in mind no one is interested in purchasing the Mariners in their existing form (or the Jets), emotion aside.  A League clubs need alot more investment and that is no secret.
Sporting clubs around the World re-locate and even re-brand, for various reasons so they can re-invent themselves and stay commercially viable and competitive.
So what's the answer?
Heart went from being on life support to being the fat of the land. 

Difference with Heart is they didnt need to relocate as they already were in Melbourne, however this is moving a team into a different area where fans have that emotional attachment too. 

maybe they will just wait a few years like melbourne city then move the club with no consultation with fans

City did due diligence. Many of their small fan base are in the S/E. They need to find more fans. They put out a great brand of Football and they needed to get out of that Northern Melbourne 'City' area to find their identity, in a clinical way, over two seasons. Their women's team have gone already.

For sure. At least Mel Heart weren’t relocated though. Major investment from a giant business like this will only happen if it’s on Man United’s terms.
Gosford United? Sounds better than Nth Sydney United?

Heart/City are in the process of re-locating themselves to the SE Melboure outskirts because they can garner increased support for themselves and move with the times as the Melbourne 'City' market is for Victory to try and win back when they are a decent team again. CFG are prudent enough to have realised they will just stagnate staying in Melbourne's north.
Clubs in absolute struggle street in the financial stakes cannot be knocking back life support especially from hugely successful buyers. There is no common sense in choosing to stay struggling. How will Mariners keep 8-10 of their players at season's end?
How good would it be if a West Ham or Newcastle utd aligned with the Jets? 

Well if interclub trading was allowed we'd be able to garner alot more financial backing.

They better off buying a new team in the NPL system or from scratch and getting into the aleague as a new license that way rather than burning off an existing fan base in the Central Coast.

Even if they are a smaller fan base these fans won't be coming back to the aleague if move the club to Sydney, we need investment into the league and for the sport overall but to the prevail of burning off an existing base will not be the way forward.

By the way does the APL have a say in this surely? 

Is this something to come with Man United given what their rivals in Man City have been doing buying sister clubs around the world?

Absolutely. CCM needs permission from the board. The board (all clubs + the FA) can vote to approve or block the sale. However in the current climate, I doubt a sale to such a big buyer would be blocked. 
If the sale does go through, I reckon it would be more of a license purchase rather than a club purchase. CCM would essentially cease to exist and a new club started in North Sydney. Moving the club wouldn't make sense. The fans wouldn't come along, so may as well have a fresh start.

This is what's wrong with the franchise system.
Private owners want the license.
The license is a right to play in a closed league.
As I have said many times, there is no club.  It's an illusion.
Someone said why Man U would want to burn it's supporters on the Central Coast.
Well, why would they give a damn about that?
The license is the valuable bit.  10,000 supporters would mean nothing to them.
Also, at this point, the land currently associated with the Mariners, is actually owned separately by Charlesworth.
He can sell the license to Man U, and he then has a separate parcel of land to do what he wants with, it's a win win for him.
Don't ever forget, in the current model, clubs do not exist.  It's an illusion.

Most of the land is basically useless except as sporting fields - though there is a plot where they could build there own stadium. There is no real reason to move to North Sydney. North Sydney is crap for football. Brookvale is falling to pieces. Central Coast Council are strapped for cash. Make an offer for the club, Stadium and Centre of Excellence and invest in the club and it could work.

I can't imagine SFC (less than 10kms away from NSO) , MAC and WSW would want Manchester United taking their supporters. Yes it would grow the pie - but who would benefit from it if they relocated. Only Manchester United. 

I suspect while Manchester United may well be talking to the APL the story has more to do with an upcoming media deal and a lot less about the Mariners.

Mixed feelings on this one. Would hate to see the team leave the Coast ..... Marvin will have to grow horns. 

bettega with you on most points.
Even though I support AL for the good of our game in general rightly or wrongly I'm so against this Franchise model !!
Forgetting bringing up P/R that is my passion behind our game first and foremost are you supporters happy to see whenever a Franchise owner is wanting out another invester to come along like MU and talk of relocating the Clubs.....I get it when/if a Club goes into Liquidation but this is not the case re Charlesworths Club.
This is what we real Football supporters are on about !
I can see MU pushing the relocation no doubt about it, their brand will bring along lots more supporters being Sydney based compared to Gosford when talking numbers.
So how many more times will this similar situation occur in the future, despite the short comings that has occured CCM/Gosfords work over 15yrs up in smoke, joke.
I suppose todays world is getting more and more plastic, par for the course.
 

Invest in Manly United instead 

APL has expressed a desire for quick expansion, so I can't see the need for relocating existing licenses. Charlesworth must be pushing it. I don't think Macarthur or Western Sydney would lose many supporters to a newly created North Sydney/Northern beaches side. Sydney may lose some, but my understanding is that most of SFCs supporters are from the south side of the harbour or inner west. People from the northern beaches rarely venture across the harbour bridge, just look at Manly in the NRL.

Charlesworth tried to chase north Sydney team's around 6 years ago, it failed miserable, crowds were tiny in North Sydney, and it alienated alot of supporters.

Very hard to see a northern Sydney team working.   Logically a move for, say, Brisbane Roar would would be a better move, but obviously MU want to do a City and create a team in their brand image and couldn't do that with a team as well established as the Roar.  

I really don't see how MU can make this work. Three teams in Melbourne, three in Sydney already. Hard to see a fourth team working in either city.

Maybe if they were prepared to build a stadium in Sydney's north and spend seriously on the team with profile players.  Maybe.  I still can't see it BUT I guess Northern Spirit did work for a while, so maybe that's what they are looking at.

Impossible to see them being interested in taking on the Mariners as is.  They are a small regional club and always will be.

Given Brisbane's population growth, a bespoke stadium and a second Brisbane team would surely be an option.

Central Coast Mariners CEO dismisses Manchester United takeover report

Well what else would he say?  

I would say this story has more to do with distracting media attention away from FA’s huge new sponsorship with Commonwealth Bank.
As to who would want to dampen that story I can only speculate.

My first thought also, very interesting timing.

It is a sorry state of affairs if the APL is trying to keep the FA out of the tiny news window allotted to Football.

Why do you think that the APL are behind this story?

"huge"  huh.  So  how  much  is it ?

Millions.....you don’t need to know the details.

So  in  other words,  you  don't know

won't happen the club is owned by greedy yanks that are milking the club which is more than 500 mil pounds in debt

 Its has nothing to do with growing the A-League or football in Australia. This about Man U growing its brand into Asia. And  for brand awareness, Sydney is for more recognizable and marketable than Gosford.  If it goes through there will no Mariners identity beyond the letters "CCM" on the back neckline of the players red shirts.

So Sydney FC should be in the frame them. Why move a club to an oval 10 mins away from Allianz?  

SFC is not for sale.  

Everything is at a price

Yep. And the price for the cash strapped mariners is probably a fair bit lower.

FWIW it sounds like a terrible idea. Surely they'd look at Melbourne City with a fair amount of trepidation in terms of how much success they can have at building the brand with a sister club. At least city play out of a high quality rectangular stadium. NSO would be a disaster. 

One deal akin to Aaron Mooy's move to China would say that Manchester City are well ahead in the deal. Its a no brainer that they want to come.

Very true.  Maybe the move to the APL ownership of e league, will bring more interest from these larger groups.

The whole Premier League start up in the early 90's was all about ownership of their "property". Now that the ownership side of things is resolved here, it is only a matter of time that the big clubs will come to the party.

Did CFG receive anything for that? I thought he was signed for Brighton after being on loan.

Surely any transfer commission pales in significance to the money spent propping up Melb. City.

Not sure if they had any on-sell clauses in their sale to Huddersfield, but the original deal saw the Mooy transfer fee basically double the initial investment of CFG into Heart.  

https://www.news.com.au/sport/football/epl/premier-league-transfer-news-aaron-mooy-completes-move-to-huddersfield-town/news-story/f25cdd29f316dd3df16e447653e087e4

Money talks though, look how much publicity it has generated in the news outlets today?

As others mentioned Man United will want a team in a large market like Sydney or Melbourne so they can be closer to the Asian market, and with Man City owning Melb City it just leads Man United into the Sydney market for what prevail who knows but it also doesn't stop them in creating a new team on its own either.
It would be some brave men at APL and Football Australia to say no to their money and corporate appeal it would bring to the sport here.

Curious times.

I can see Manu investing - just makes no sense with the Mariners. They want a satellite feeder club - they can do that at Gosford. Take the best talent from Australia and feed them through their system. Man Utd and Man City will dominate the league and will only attract more money. All the best players and youth will go through their academies for the connection to England. They don't have to be in Sydney for that 

Why not start a new club. NSO Oval is 10 kms from Allianz and is an Oval. If they don't go there where do they go. Brookvale's crumbling stadium with poor transport links? About the only place that makes sense is Chatswood Oval which is quite narrow and use the Bowling club on the other side of the line as the training area. They would then need to arrange for the relocation of Northern Districts cricket, Gordon rugby Union and Chatswood Bowling Club.

Why not Canberra United? Build the Civic Stadium, rent it to the NRL and Rugby as appropriate. Reconnect football to the AIS. This pocket money for someone as big as ManU.

I think this could be a smoke screen for something more bigger like buying an license to get into the aleague.

The things will conflict of interest get in the way with APL or would the commercial and financial appeal of Man United’ investment would be too good to refuse?

Man U would have to pay A LOT more for Sydney FC.  And SFC's owner is very rich, we know how they are-refuse to sell it out of spite to another rich owner, unless it was the deal of a life time

Won’t happen but at least it gets us in the media. 

Yeah peacock said it’s bullshit. Mods close the thread 

bad idea. 

Man United should invest in the Wollongong Wolves instead. 

They wear the same colours, dont they?

Rugari is talking shit. This came out tonighr

https://amp.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/it-would-be-exciting-wouldn-t-it-fa-open-to-man-u-s-mariners-buyout-20210413-p57is2.html?__twitter_impression=true

with all this money around can't they just issue some new "licenses"

That's a good point.
Although I"m guessing the likes of Man Utd will only want to buy into Sydney.

I just don’t see how another club in Sydney would work. 

Sydney is so large, Honestly.
You have Sydney fc in the north/west. Their training base going to be built soon at Maquarie/Ryde and their
homeground will be the new Allianz Stadium in the East of Sydney, nowhere near their training base infact;
There are the Wanderers in the West, at Parramatta's Bankwest Stadium;
There are the McArthur fc Bulls playing out in the South/West at Campbelltown Stadium;
There is room at the Northern Beaches/North Sydney region where Man U want the Mariners to move to;
There is the Southern Sydney region which stretches across the StGeorge and Cronulla areas and as Sydney fc do currently, a team can
play out at Netstrata Jubilee or even Shark Park (further South are where the Wollongong Wolves live just outside of Sydney);
These five Sydney areas could have a club each and co-exist and do not tread on anyone elses toes, regardless of the bullshit that the
 clubs go on about in regards to where their boundaries are.
If the APL/FA want Man U to be involved with the A League, they can release a new License in the North or the South and they can exist in the
Sydney market where the business action is.
Then, there is Canberra waiting for entry with that Saudi Oilers consortium backing them. Why on Earth are the APL/FA not rolling out the red carpet
and rolling them all in? They have to think Macro, not micro. This is how TV interest increases.

Interesting times. 
I would love to see a team back on the Gold Coast. 

No to more fucking colony clubs and definitely no to having the glazers involved.

So, if Manchester City have Melbourne City and Manchester United buy Central Coast could this be the start of the fabled European Super League? Could Chelsea buy Melbourne Victory? Bayern Munich buy Adelaide? Ajax buy Brisbane? Juventus buy Western United? AC Milan buy Western Sydney Wanderers?

Could be a nice way for these clubs to step around UEFA....

I heard the Glazers are buying Western United (or maybe its the other way around???) and the stadium out in the sticks will be called "New Trafford" 

Xanthi fc buying into Perth Glory. Yes I get this.

I want Hellas Verona to buy Brisbane Roar just for the apoplexy it would cause our resident racist.

Maybe Panathanakos can buy Western Utd and build them that shovel ready stadium.
I for one would love to see Mariners stay right where they are. In saying that, there have been NO takers for a number of years as Charlesworth has not been able to on sell his license to another corporation. I understand that one main critical point is that the Central Coast region is too far from the business hub of Sydney. Furthermore, that makes it awkward for spoilt business types to operate their interests from the Central Coast region.
All the best convincing them otherwise.
Whats the answer, exist a while longer being poor? How do they keep their players for the coming season? Kuol will be gone after June. They might have to relocate in a business decision.

If Panathanakos bought SMHellas you wouldn’t notice the difference.

This BS story sure has grabbed the headlines and clicks

Not sure who said Central Coast Council don't wan't to sell the stadium? have you seen their books? $115m loss last year... they will sell it to the right buyer..

Somehow they run the stadium at a loss. John Singleton ran it at a profit for years. They take over and it runs at a loss and they screw their anchor tenant.  

Yep it's ripe for a game changing mixed use development, especially with a potential NRL franchise dead in the water.

As a football fan it's a great place to watch a game on a sunny afternoon but from an urban planning point of view it's a disaster for Gosford, totally cutting the CBD from the waterfront.

As part of the Mariners proposal access through to the waterfront is part of their proposal, as is opening the precinct to the public 365 days a year as it was when it was Grahame Park. The Council has stuffed up the other easy access through the Leagues club fields which now include large tidal pools, which rarely fill. When they do and someone drowns you can be sure that area will be completely closed off as well.

Urban planning has no place in Gosford, from the paid parking station taking up the best retail site, to the single lane main street (Mann's street), to the derelict Market place shopping complex that use up a full block in the CBD and is now nothing more than free 2 level car park, Gosford is a town planners nightmare.
On a side note it's not Graham park that cuts the CBD from the water, it's the Leagues Club.

They should move the water.

That would be cheaper.

Charlesworth will package up the club license and COE together, they've been trying to get ownership of teh stadium for over a decade now and the council still won't sell it to them. Having a club with a small but loyal following, less than an hour from the largest city in the country, with a beautiful stadium by the water would tick a lot of boxes for a rich foreign club looking to invest. They don't have to build anything, the bricks and mortar are there and ready to hit the ground running and tap into the aussie football nursery. 

A club that's in it for purely football reasons should snap it up. Develop talent and sell it for big transfer fees. There's little money to be made by merchandising in australia.