It's not about sportswashing

(Amber Matsumoto/Yahoo Sports illustration)Only a few minutes after he began laying out his vision for how to grow Manchester City into a global brand, marketing executive David Pullan noticed two strangers in the back of the room eavesdropping on his job interview.

Those were Sheikh Mansour’s trusted advisers, Pullan later learned. The second-most famous club in Manchester, the club that hadn’t won anything of significance in 32 years, was about to be sold to a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi.

For Pullan, taking over as City’s chief marketing officer in late 2008 was akin to joining Amazon when it sold only books or Starbucks before it expanded outside Seattle. A lot of work needed…