Greater Manchester Football Club (GMFC) is a new club in the region who you might not have heard about yet. But they are hoping to become the third most-recognised club in Manchester – and the most inclusive in Britain.
The club’s goals are ambitious at first glance, but Mohammed Harron – CEO and founder of the club – is optimistic they can hit their targets.
Being inclusive, Mohammed says, “isn’t hard; it’s natural.”
“It takes much more effort to create divide and animosity than it does to be inclusive,” he tells us.
GMFC may have only launched in 2018, but the core message of inclusivity is already apparent across their men’s and women’s team – with over 50 players representing 30 different nationalities at the club.
The mission of the club is primarily built on making the game accessible for everyone who wants to play, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation or economic circumstance.
Mohammed is particularly concerned with the way in which football has moved away from it’s working class roots.
“Its a game you first played on the street or in gardens and parks and that is where your love for the game started,” he explains.
“If you were good there were always clubs that would help and develop young talent and if you were better still you were picked up by bigger clubs.
“In more recent times though, football has become all about the business and the vast finances that go with it.”
Mohammed believes it’s much harder for children and teenagers to be accepted into special academies because some families may not have the money to afford the fees, travel and equipment that is needed.
Ultimately, he thinks the luck has become more important than ‘raw talent’.
The CEO hopes that by focusing on the ability of players during recruitment, GMFC can be competitive while also “fielding a naturally inclusive team.”
— Armstrong Projects Northwest Football Awards (@NWFAwards) October 15, 2020
The club have recently been nominated for the ‘Kick It Out Promoting Inclusion Award’ at the Pitching In North West Football Awards, sitting alongside the likes of Manchester United and Everton on the shortlist.
While Mohammed is excited to be have been shortlisted, particularly as a Mancunian and a Manchester United fan, he knows that this nomination is only a “small step on a very long journey”.
On a weekly basis clubs across the world have been supporting the Black Lives Matter movement by taking the knee or displaying anti-racism messaging on their shirts, but Mohammed is concerned that “the initial will and determination to do something to fundamentally change the game is starting to fade” and there is little evidence that anything has really changed.
There might be something in that. A recent report released by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS) in July 2020 pointed out that there was a continued lack of diversity in the boards and management structures of football clubs.
The report, ‘Impact of COVID-19 on DCMS sectors’, reads: “The fact that no Premier League club and virtually no English Football League club has a black owner, chair or chief executive, is a fundamental inequality at the heart of the game.”
The Premier League itself admitted, after initially refusing to release their diversity figures, that only 12% of their staff were from BAME backgrounds, which is much lower than the 30% proportion of players who make up the game from BAME backgrounds.
The report also emphasised that more still needs to be done to tackle homophobia in the game, to “understand what barriers stand in the way of gay footballers, and how much of the responsibility lies with clubs and how much with fans”.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGhVpaXjQeB/
Exactly 30 years ago, footballer Justin Fashanu hit the headlines as the first professional player to come out as gay. His story is a reminder of why inclusion in sport is so important & why we are committed to making sport everyone’s game. Rest in power. https://t.co/ieJWUNG86Hpic.twitter.com/n7CfcRuiNk
Further, the committee recommends the government that “men’s elite sports are not further prioritised at the expense of the women’s game”, in regards to the way in which women’s football was “disproportionately affected” in the initial months of the pandemic.
Despite widespread discrimination in the game and unequal representation, Mohammed believes that those who may feel maginalised in the sport must not “fall into the trap of being angry or resentful in return to those that marginalise you.”
“Beat hatred through love and overcome discrimination by being a living, breathing example of someone who treats everyone with love, honour and respect,” he says.
“Greater Manchester FC is a club for everyone and anyone.”
“Thats the way it should be. The way it needs to be.”
welcomes anyone who wants to play for the club or volunteer their time to get involved.
You can found out more about the club on their website and stay tuned for videos on their Youtube channel for match highlights and interviews from players and staff.
Pep Guardiola hints at when Manchester City fans can expect to see their latest arrival
Danny Jones
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has given supporters a rough timeline as to when they can expect to see their new signing, or at least their latest arrival, make his first appearance.
The Blues wrapped up the January transfer window with four major signings: their new attacking number seven, Omar Marmoush (who has already bagged a hattrick on his home debut) promising defensive duo, Abdukodir Khusanov and Brazilian Vitor Reis, as well as their ‘mini-Rodri’, Nico Gonzalez.
However, the club has had another late arrival who was technically signed back at the start of last year but who has spent for the last 12 months or so loaned back to his previous parent club, River Plate in Argentina, waiting to make the move over to the Etihad Stadium – and now he’s here in Manchester.
Speaking on his touchdown in 0161, Pep said Claudio Echeverri won’t be thrown into first-team action straight away but did give a rough estimate as to when City fans could expect him to get involved. You can see him discussing the integration plan in his post-match press conference following the Spurs win.
The mention was only brief but there’s still plenty of reason for Man City fans to be excited by the late January signing.
“Yeah, he [Claudio Echeverri] is going to start to train and mainly will be for the end of the season, maybe the [Club] World Cup and as soon as possible [that] he arrives he can adapt quick for the future.”
As mentioned, the 19-year-old Argentinian attacking midfielder from Resistencia officially put pen to paper with CFG back in January 2024 and was quickly dubbed ‘the next Messi’.
Now, although the football world is often quick to jump the gun with these things and he isn’t the first and certainly won’t be last to be slapped with this premature title, he’s done more to back up these claims since then than he has rubbish them.
Starring at the 2025 Under-20 South American Championships, netting six goals in nine games to finish the tournament as the second highest scorer thanks to notable braces against Brazil and Uruguay as the young Argentine’s finished as runners up.
He also notched 48 senior appearances for River Plate thus far, netting four goals and grabbing eight assists in that time, not to mention having already captained his national team at the 2023 Under 17s World Cup, where he scored another five.
Safe to say there’s plenty of talent to be tapped in this lad.
Once again, Echeverri won’t go straight into the senior set-up for a little while yet, barring a major injury crisis, but he’ll be a more than exciting addition to the City Football Academy and for future first-team lineups for years to come.
Who knows, maybe he’ll be included in an FA Cup matchday squad? Nevertheless, you can expect him to not just come of the bench but hopefully show what he can do at the Club World Cup this summer.
City‘s first fixture as reigning champions of the competition will be against Moroccan side Wydad AC on 18 June 2025.
You can watch Echeverri’s first full interview as a Man City player down below:
The new Man City signing is excited to be finally be part of the club 13 months on from agreeing his contract.
‘Nothing is eternal’: Is Pep Guardiola hinting at the end of Manchester City’s supremacy?
Danny Jones
Pep Guardiola looks to have suggested that more than a decade of Manchester City’s supremacy and Premier League dominance at the very least might be coming to an end.
Speaking in his post-match press interviews after City were knocked out of the Champions League by serial European Cup winners Real Madrid, Guardiola cut a somewhat more deflated figure than usual following the 3-1 defeat.
A Kylian Mbappe hattrick which was closed out within an hour of play was enough to stretch the aggregate score to 6-3 over the two legs and Madrid doubling their lead across the tie proved yet again why, not unlike City domestically over the last decade, they’re the kings of the continental competition.
In contrast, however, Pep seemed to accept the loss much more easily than perhaps we’ve seen in the past and rather than appearing familiarly frustrated or defiant in the press conference; instead, he seemed rather reflective, responding to one reporter: “Nothing is eternal”.
🗣️ "Nothing is eternal" – Pep Guardiola.
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Insisting that they have to decide whether a significant rebuild is needed to keep competing at the very top level consistently as they have done since the 54-year-old arrived back in 2016, he argued that it is only with that they’ll be able to determine what comes next.
As for the result itself, he made no bones about Carlo Ancelotti’s side having “deserved it”, stating simply that “the best team won” and that fans and players alike have to “accept the reality: they were better.”
Having been a familiar foe for Pep long before he arrived in Manchester, both at Barcelona and Bayern Munich – not to mention City having faced Los Blancos a dozen times before Tuesday night since 2012 – there have been less surprising outcomes for supporters to come to terms with.
“With time, the club and everyone is going to accept what it is but for now we have 30/40 games for the Premier League next season to try and be here [in the Champions League] and to improve. Nothing is eternal”, said the Catalan coaching genius.
On the other hand, he also went on to add that it was merely a reflection on the night itself and not what his team have achieved in recent years.
He went on to remark that “when we were playing outstanding it hurt more” to be knocked out of the UCL when he felt they deserved to stay in it, but still insisted: “We have been unbelievable and we have to try step by step to get better from today.” Tonight just wasn’t the night.
Who knows? Perhaps it was just some more melodrama from a manager with an undeniable flare for pageantry and playing into/in the face of narratives when he doesn’t come out on top – which hasn’t happened all that often until their dip in form this season.
Plus, there’s certainly still plenty for him and the fans to be positive about; not only has the arrival of their ‘Egyptian Prince’ and the media’s Mo Salah successor, Omar Marmoush, got plenty of people excited – especially after that first-half hattrick against Newcastle – but so too have the other January signings.
In fact, for all of his downplaying in this particular presser (which you can hear in full HERE), it felt like there were only upsides after their victory over Newcastle, even going so far as to dub new signing Nico Gonzalez a ‘mini-Rodri‘.
You can watch the highlights from the game down below:
Pep is right, nothing is eternal – but sometimes you just come up against talents like Mbappe and there’s very little anyone can do about it.
Kate Jackson -
23rd October 2020 
