City Football Group (CFG), the company which owns Manchester City and a host of other teams around the world, and Girona Football Group (GFG), an agency led by Pere Guardiola, the brother of City's manager Pep, have purchased an equal majority stake in top-tier Spanish club Girona, reports, www.sportspromedia.com/.
Negotiations over the deal began in 2016, and both parties have acquired a 44.3 per cent share in the newly promoted La Liga outfit, while the remaining shares will owned by a fans' association.
The Catalan club are the sixth team to be added to CFG's soccer portfolio, which also includes Major League Soccer's (MLS) New York City, Australian side Melbourne City, Japan's Yokohama F Marinos and Uruguayan outfit Atletico Torque.
Four-time English champions Manchester City already had close ties with Girona, having loaned them five players earlier this summer.
Ferran Soriano, chief executive of CFG, said: "The history of the Girona FC reflects its enormous ambition. With calmness, great determination and humility, the team achieved promotion to La Liga which, without a doubt, is an incredible achievement.
"At Girona FC and at the City Football Group, we are united with the ambition to stay long and achieve many successes in La Liga, but also share the same way of doing common things and aspirations. For us it was very attractive to invest in the future of Girona. We will listen, we will learn and we will do everything possible to support the club and its fans in order to achieve the long-term sustainability that we want so much."
Source: tribalfootball.com