Sounder-down-Under: Melbourne City, NYCFC’s Aussie cousins

Drew Dickson is a Sounders fans who lives in Australia. Here he looks at the NYCFC owners ‘other’ sky blue club, Melbourne City FC

Call it what you want.  Incredible marketing, cheating the transfer market, or just smart business.  Whatever you want to label it as, Mansour bin Zayed Al Nayhan will soon have the entire football world seeing sky blue.

Most clubs have feeder teams in lower divisions, or scouting agreements with other clubs in other leagues, this is just the next step in a global footballing world.

While most readers are aware of the recent addition of New York City FC, it is fair to say that no one outside of Australia’s media reach has heard of Melbourne City FC.

That is right, the City Football Group’s first venture across the pond took them across the world.  Unlike NYCFC, Melbourne City existed in the top flight but under the name Melbourne Heart.

Melbourne Heart was founded in 2009 after a fan vote had decided the name. It competed under than name until 2014 when it was sold. Red and white became sky blue and Heart became City.

Rebranding of a corporation is not unheard of. It wasn’t invented in Australia.

It wasn’t even invented in Seattle although King County in Washington was originally named after William Rufus King, who was Vice-President of the United States when Washington became a state.

It was then rebranded with the same name after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in 1986.

Manchester United was once green and gold.  Columbus Crew just became Crew SC, and of course recently Kansas City Wiz waved their wand for the last time.

Orient have dropped and added the Leyton to denote the part of London they call home. In 1972, Bournemouth became AFC Bournemouth.

However, a complete re-everything is slightly harder to pull off.  But I suppose when you have a great deal of wealth you can do most anything, or at least spend the cash to make sure everyone is happy.

But what happens when a club is rebranded to become a pliable creation of a parent club?

NYCFC fans had been promised  two huge signings at the start of the year, David Villa and Frank Lampard. Both had pre-season training at City facilities, but this is the tale of two cities in all cases.

Lampard wanted to stay in England a while longer and was internally transferred to Manchester City, apparently without Chelsea’s knowledge. Although this was something never mentioned in the transfer deal, it transpires when Lampard’s move to NYCFC was initially announced, the player’s agreement was not with the new club but with the City Football Group, a worldwide company run by owner Sheikh Mansour that owns both clubs and Australia’s Melbourne City.

NYCFC fans were understandably not happy. Pardon the Australianism, but the move made MLS look ‘bush league’.

David Villa thought the idea of beaches, barbecues and deadly animals sounded better than Manchester, so he headed to Melbourne in what had now become a tale of THREE cities.

NYCFC, Melbourne City, and Manchester City all share in being the ‘other team’ in a city that is madly passionate when it comes to sports and who you support, although the name Manchester City actually predates Manchester United.

Being part of a floating roster group allows them to funnel players to give them an edge, versus being a club that has a youth system that you can pick from.

It is only a seven hour flight from New York to Manchester.

However you will need to block out a few days to get to Australia.

Can we expect to see more Americans and Australians become the first players from the ‘New World’ to grace the original blues of Manchester since the injury-plagued time that Claudio Reyna and DeMarcus Beasley spent there, rather than just see the colonial clubs used a dumping ground, as was the case with the likes of Shay Facey, a native Mancunian who was loaned to NYCFC on a season-long loan from Manchester City FC Elite Development Squad?

To make matters more complicated, the City Football Group owners of the ‘three Cities’ acquired  a minority share of Japanese league side Yokohama F. Marinos in May 2014. The ramifications are yet unknown.

Welcome to the World Game.