NEW YORK. Manchester City Football Club have announced that they have purchased Major League Soccer for an undisclosed sum. This comes days after it was revealed that the Premier League club owned by Sheikh Mansour will co-own MLS’s 20th franchise, New York City FC, which will begin play in 2015. And according to Man City, the decision to buy the whole league arose from their desire to eliminate its tight salary cap.“We’re very excited about the NYCFC project and so we’ve wasted no time in working towards building the team,” Man City CEO Ferran Soriano told reporters. “But then we found out about this ‘salary cap’ that is already prohibiting us from signing all the players we want and giving them all the money we want to give them. So we asked our partners at the New York Yankees what it was and they had no idea either. I mean, it’s a nonsense phrase like ‘football bat’ or ‘Champions League winner Roberto Mancini.’ So we decided to just buy the whole league and now it’s gone.”Though Man City and the New York Yankees have both been accused of spending their way to success in their respective leagues without salary caps, MLS prohibits teams from going over a $2.95 million limit. Up to three Designated Player slots can be used per team, where the maximum single-player budget of $368,750 can be exceed without counting against the cap. But now those rules are no more, clearing the path for NYCFC, who recently named former Man City midfielder and U.S. national team captain Claudio Reyna the club’s first director of football, to bring in as many marquee players that limitless funding can buy.Not content to stop there, Soriano also announced another key change now that Man City are in charge of the entire league.“From now on the league will be called Manchester United Smell Like Stink,” Soriano added, completely serious. “If anyone abbreviates it, they will be sued. Also, the new commissioner is former Man City player Joey Barton. We look forward to this new and exciting chapter in the league’s history.”
