‘The ultimate goal was not to build the City Football Academy – it was to make that vision for youth development a reality. The cornerstone of the future is a vision for youth development and sustainability.’

‘We had an all-staff meeting on Monday where I highlighted three big organisations – in mobile phones, video rentals and photography – that soon got knocked off their perch by taking their eye off the ball and stopped focusing on what is important.

Cole Palmer has followed Foden’s lead and is now fully integrated into Guardiola’s squad. At least one Premier League club asked to take the tricky forward on loan this term but were met with a firm no. 

Whittaker has only ever lost two fights at middleweight in the UFC and both of them were to his heated rival Israel Adesanya. He believes he can win the third – he just needs to keep running up victories in the meantime to get a title shot.

Both are arrivistes. The story behind the inexorable rise of Brand Beckham, an empire now spanning fashion and beauty, sport and electric cars, not to mention the couple’s choreographed image rights, is well-known.

The quartet – Gavin Bazunu, Sam Edozie, Romeo Lavia and Juan Larios – did not have a single top flight appearance between them but the quality emanating from Jason Wilcox’s youth set-up at City is such that they are increasingly being recognised as the gold standard. 

And clearly worth paying for – Southampton also saw a £15m bid for striker Liam Delap rejected. Almost a third of a record-breaking transfer window, totalling revenues of around £170m, came from selling academy products. 

People may not be arrested for showing the first signs of non-heterosexual behaviour, though who knows how the authorities might use the hi-tech surveillance system I was shown in the Nasa-like command centre that will monitor the eight World Cup stadiums?

Yet one only needs to be in Qatar a short time to understand the symmetry between this wealth-obsessed outpost and the Beckhams (and make no mistake, Pkv games Victoria is as in thrall to this homophobic emirate as her husband).

It has been nearly seven months since the former UFC middleweight champion lost to rival Israel Adesanya in a very close fight – and the 31-year-old Aussie is excited to step back in the Octagon and remind the world why he’s the No.1 contender.

But what, then, of Gary Neville, another of his former Manchester United cohorts, who was also revealed this week to have leapt into bed with the Qataris by signing a deal to be a World Cup pundit on its state-run sports channel?

Beside them London’s Docklands — now 50 per cent Qatari owned — would look like a Lego model. Almost all the 3 million population — some 90 per cent of whom are poor migrant workers — live in and around the capital, and the emirate is growing at an astonishing rate, eyed suspiciously by Saudi Arabia, the only country with which Qatar shares a border.

Certainly the idea of having up to seven academy graduates on a pitch during a Premier League game seemed far-fetched at best. Yet on Saturday, Southampton arrive at the Etihad Stadium having spent more than £40million on four of City’s kids in one summer.

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That, at least, is the view of Dr Nasser Mohamed, 35, a Qatari national who came out after ‘defecting’ to the United States, and this week published an open letter urging Beckham to speak out on this issue.

Soon his wife, Victoria, will join him, lending her presence to a prestigious fashion competition for talented young Arab designers, chaired by her friend Sheikha Al- Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the sister of Qatar’s ruling emir.

This, remember, was an otherwise sophisticated teacher who shapes the thinking of young Qataris; and the mother of five children. Her nauseating and deeply confused outburst reinforced the message from human rights groups: that gay football fans should steer clear of this World Cup, despite signals emanating from the emir’s palace that, for the tournament at least, there will be a degree of tolerance.

‘God has differentiated us from animals. God has created us as men and women. This only happens because people have been sexually abused (as children) and this has made them afraid of people of their own gender.’

Converted in traditional Arab style from a huddle of fishermen’s houses, it will instal sound systems and gaming consoles in the players’ rooms, and this week, at the FA’s request, a swimming pool was hastily being dug.)

Unlikely as it seems, the avowedly metrosexual Becks — who has declared his pride in being called a ‘gay icon’ — struck up a rapport with the abaya-clad Qatari spice chef and this week he returned for another PR shoot.