Whitecaps prepare for soccer royalty

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Europe's best soccer clubs - including its newest star, Manchester City - arrive in North America to scrap with Major League Soccer teams, promoting the sport's biggest brand names and bolstering the rise of the game on this continent.

The World Football Challenge begins Wednesday night as perennial Premiership champion Manchester United plays the New England Revolution. FA Cup winner Manchester City, backed by the vast oil wealth of Abu Dhabi's Sheik Mansour, squares off against the tournament's lone Canadian representative, the Vancouver Whitecaps, on Monday.

The struggling expansion Whitecaps managed to wrangle a game against City in large part because of Vancouver's chief executive officer, Paul Barber. He was previously executive director of the Premiership's Tottenham Hotspur and is an old friend of Garry Cook, who runs City.

The ante is a big one for Vancouver. The estimated cost to lay down grass to temporarily replace the artificial turf at Empire Field to host City is $200,000 - more than the salary of most Whitecaps players. The payment to City, one published estimate suggested, is upwards of $1-million per game played in North America - which will cost the Whitecaps because most of the tickets for Monday's match were offered free to season ticket holders, a thank you for their strong support.

For ambitious Vancouver, even as it sits dead last in MLS, it is about the longer-term goal to make itself a big name.

Compared with the real top tier of the sport, Vancouver's investment is a penny ante.

For the likes of Man U and City, the cost of doing business can be wildly extravagant. City was a long-time also-ran in British soccer. In the late 1990s, it became the first European club that had a major European trophy to its name to be relegated to a third-tier division. City hacked back but again was near relegation from the Premiership in 2006-07.

In summer 2008, Sheik Mansour swept in - and the goal was to be "bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United." (Real, along with rival FC Barcelona, are also in the World Football Challenge.)

Spending aggressively, City rose from 10th in its first season under Sheik Mansour's ownership to fifth and then to third in 2010-11. It qualified City for the UEFA Champions League for the first time and, separately, the club won the FA Cup, its first in more than 40 years.

The cost has been enormous. Sheik Mansour has spent almost $1-billion since buying the club, according to a report last week by Bloomberg News. Still, he can afford it: Tiny Abu Dhabi controls about 7 per cent of the world's oil reserves.

Soccer is a global strategy to diversify Abu Dhabi's wealth. Sheik Mansour's half-brother Sheik Khalifa is emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the most powerful. The state airline, Etihad Airways, already sponsored City and this week announced a much bigger 10-year deal, with the strategy for City and Etihad to "build their respective profiles … in shared target markets such as India, China and the United States."

"City's the richest club in the world," Barber said. "They can go wherever they want to go. [This visit]says a lot about how far North American soccer has come."

It's about business for City, but also the pitch. The Premiership starts next month and City brings an all-star roster to North America, including the likes of Spain's David Silva. The team will also play Mexico City's Club America and David Beckham's Los Angeles Galaxy.

"It's about building the brand, building relationships with fans in different parts of the world," Barber said. "It's great to have 25-million fans around the world but it's not so great if they're not spending money with the club. The best way is to put yourself in front of them."

City's biggest star, the Argentine striker and captain Carlos Tevez, is not on the trip. Tevez, who wants to leave City, is playing for his country at the Copa America (though he was benched for Monday night's crucial win over Costa Rica). City acquired the prolific scorer two years ago for a reported transfer fee of around $60-million from Manchester United and wants a similar amount to let him go. The transfer figure is more than double the cost of the entire rosters of MLS's top teams, the Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls.

Toronto FC, which has previously hosted international friendlies against teams such as Aston Villa, is not in the World Football Challenge. The city does host one tournament match: Juventus FC plays Sporting Clube de Portugal at BMO Field on Saturday, July 23.