New York City FC has entered a brave new world and plenty of eyes are watching.
The club's majority owner is the City Football Group (CFG). It owns Manchester City among others and, from the moment the Yankee Stadium-based club was established in 2013, its relationship to the mother ship and, in particular, its Premier League club, has raised questions. Would NYCFC be a feeder team? A dumping ground for castoffs? Was the investment by CFG a way to skirt financial fair play (FFP) rules?
There has never been any doubt about links between the two clubs but, for the first three years of NYCFC's existence, the flow of players and resources was primarily in one direction: From Manchester to New York.