There are 10 men's teams worldwide competing currently under the aegis of the City Football Group. Only three have won their nation's first division under CFG management. Only one has done it at their first attempt. Mumbai City FC.
Last Saturday, Mumbai sealed the ISL trophy, beating ATK Mohun Bagan 2-1 in the final. A week prior to that, they won the League Shield on the last day of the league stage, beating the same opposition 2-0, winning it on head-to-head against them. They did it all playing attacking, passing football... the kind CFG have wanted associated with them ever since they hired Pep Guardiola to helm their flagship project at Manchester City.
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CFG's interest in Mumbai wasn't an accident. The group's India CEO Damian Willoughby says they had been looking at potential investment in the Indian market for quite a while. "Over the last several years, we have spent a lot of years in India, we spent a lot of time understanding the league, the football ecosystem. That led us to the investment in Mumbai City. The process began when we analysed what we had acquired and invested into. Clearly, we felt that there was a need or a requirement for a change in terms of coaching philosophy and vision in terms of the way the team played."
Mumbai City had been known for their solid, if unspectacular, football but in the Guardiola-era that didn't quite cut it for the CFG.
Enter, Sergio Lobera.
"The starting point in the foundation of the success is the alignment between Sergio's vision of the way the game should be played and that of CFG," says Willoughby. "His [is] a beautiful football ethos."
Lobera has repeatedly emphasised just how "aligned" he and his bosses are. From his very first meeting with Ferran Soriano (CEO, CFG) in Manchester, he knew this was something that would work really well. "I knew [immediately] that we were on the same page," says Lobera.
Willougbhy says they started work on the team the moment Sergio signed on. It started with them working together to identify and get the players Lobera wanted. Ensuring the transfers of Mourtada Fall, Hugo Boumous, Ahmed Jahouh, and Mandar Rao Desai from Lobera's former club, FC Goa, was the first thing they got right. Then came Adam Le Fondre, Bartholomew Ogbeche and a whole bunch of players from India and outside. In total Mumbai lined up for the season with 17 new players.
Mumbai City's class of 2020-21 bore little resemblance to that of 2019-20.
It was the same on the pitch. The shirts were a lighter hue of blue, the football a (much) deeper shade of attacking.
By the end of it all, they had scored the most goals (39 in 23), made the most passes (11050) and had the most fun. They played the way they wanted to, never reactionary, always controlling the tempo and setting the tone of the match. Even in those matches where he went anti-Lobera (especially the two final matches vs Bagan), where he ceded possession and asked his players to sit back, you rarely got the feeling that the ball was doing anything but what Lobera wanted it to do.
It had been a big task -- adjusting to new ownership, coaching a brand new squad in a brand of football not all of them may have been comfortable with, managing the kind of expectations that came with the CFG brandl and the kind of players that he had signed up.
And from day one, Lobera has insisted that they were here to win. No reverse psychology, no fear of jinxing, no false modesty. CFG had hired him because he was the best, and he was going to damn well show why.
"I am very happy when people speak about how we are the favourites, about how we need to win the league," says Lobera. "Because it means everyone thinks we have a better team than them. It's good for us. I love this as a coach. I want to respect my players and always my favourite team is my team!"
"Maybe sometimes it's a good strategy to put pressure on another side [denying statements that they are favourites], but we want this pressure. We play well under pressure."
The last fortnight is proof that those aren't just empty words.
Which is not to say it was easy. Far from it.
"It was very challenging to live in the bubble for more than five months. It was my biggest challenge. There's a lot of time to spend off the pitch, [but none to escape football]," says Lobera. "It's not easy to be ready at every moment. But I am lucky, because of the profile of the persons I have been working with, it's amazing. We are a family on and off the pitch."
Working with CFG was a big boost during this time for Lobera -- they especially helped his team with psychologists, managing their mental health expertly through the tough five months in the bubble. They also helped Lobera plan out his training schedules, work out technical kinks, and get over the rare low points in the season. "It helps so much because the CFG are football people," he says. "It's not necessary to waste time and explain what we need for our performance. They have so much knowledge, so much experience with clubs in similar conditions." As much as they have helped, though, these titles weren't about CFG. It was about the coach.
In the days leading up to the final, captain and goalkeeper Amrinder Singh had spoken about how hard he had found this pass-out-of-the-back philosophy when he had been playing under Albert Roca at Bengaluru FC five years ago. In contrast, he found the transition to Lobera-ball from Mumbai's conservative football under their previous managers much smoother.
Rowllin Borges talks about how much he loved the freedom to attack he received and how much he's improved his game in the final third.
All that's down to Lobera and his staff. There is, after all, a reason the Goa quartet (later quintet, with Jackichand Singh joining the squad from Jamshedpur) gave up Champions League football this year for starting from scratch at a new club.
Lobera attributes his success to that biggest challenge of his, the bio-bubble. If everyone's trapped together, and can't escape football, might as well embrace it. "As a coach, I wanted to take advantage of this. I have my players 24x7," he grins. "It's possible to do a lot of meetings compared to when it's [the normal] 2 hours training and getting back home". And so, he and his staff spent more time than ever with his players, talking to them, cajoling them, addressing their fears and training them. There was a lot of video analysis, a proper feedback system in place, and the players embraced it.
Lobera's number two, Jesus Tato, was tasked with taking care of the set-pieces. He did a fantastic job of playing to the squad's strengths in dead ball situations. You could see it on the pitch -- some were elaborate, some simple, but mostly all effective. They scored more than half their goals from set-pieces.
Lobera credits all this to "the profile, the personality" of the players. "It's not only about [having] good players, or very good first Xi, it's about the group and the positive mentality of players coming off the bench.
"Accepting the decisions from the coach is not always easy, everyone has their own individual targets, but my responsibility is the collective target -- and trying to manage the balance between the two is not easy."
Take for example Bart Ogbeche. Superstar and talisman at NorthEast United and Kerala Blasters in the last two seasons, he spent most games coming off the bench. It couldn't have been easy. That Ogbeche still repeatedly spoke of how close the group was, the "brotherhood" was, that it was he who scored the decisive goal in the last match of the league stage and set up the winner in the final, tells its own story.
CFG aren't done yet. This inaugural success will help them even more in their future plans -- "putting in place a robust football organisation that enables the club to identify, nurture and develop talented young players," as Willoughby puts it. "We believe there's a lot of talent in Mumbai, Maharashtra, and clearly across India. We want to invest in developing recreational programs, youth teams, an academy, a reserve team that can help us create a pathway that will help players that come into our club."
For now, though, it's time to celebrate. "With my family here, and soon after I take a plane to Spain, with my other family there," laughs Lobera. "We deserve this, for all that we have done. So now let me take some rest, and enjoy."