Tonight:
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Over the past few years, British business has become used to seeing some of its best-known names fall into foreign hands.
Abbey National, HP Sauce, Rolls-Royce, Land Rover, O2, Jaguar, Reuters, British Steel, Tetleys tea, Heathrow airport - the list of brands and institutions where the UK bosses are no longer in overall charge goes on and on.
Generally, though, apart from those workers who must pay due heed to their new overseas masters, this encroaching globalisation has passed most people by. Not any more.
This week, the step change in power that has been sweeping all before it in the business world has been forcibly highlighted. A group of Arabs, so wealthy that they can literally buy anything they want, have charged into the English Premier League, snaffling Manchester City and, in the same breath, adding Robinho, one of the game's stars.
The declared intention of the Abu Dhabi consortium is to make the Manchester club an international brand, an unstoppable force within the game. Their aim is to win the Premiership and the European Champions League. Just like that.
Other teams have been taken over by Americans and oligarchs. This, though, is different. Manchester City's new owners can call on financial muscle that makes Roman Abramovich look poor — and to reinforce that point they persuaded Robinho to head north when the Russian's club, Chelsea, thought he was theirs.
They say they would like Christiano Ronaldho from the other Manchester club, United — now no longer as mightily wealthy as it thought it was — and after him, there could be Cesc Fabregas from the suddenly impoverished Arsenal and Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard from Liverpool, the fourth member of the so-called “Big Four” clubs that have dominated the English game in recent years but don't seem so big any more.
Liverpool itself may soon go the way of Manchester City — its American proprietors throwing in the towel to entreaties from Dubai. Other clubs may follow suit. Alongside Abu Dhabi and Dubai, there are Qatar and Kuwait. Then there are the state investment funds of Asia, of Singapore and China, the vast energy corporations of Russia, the growing might of the Indian industrial conglomerates.
In the City and on Wall Street, the tectonic plates have been shifting for a while. When Barclays ran into difficulty over its subprime losses, it turned to Qatar for assistance. In the US, Merrill Lynch has had to rely upon the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore and Lehman Brothers may soon be acquired by Korea Development Bank.
Britain, the US and the rest of Western Europe are powerless to resist the onslaught. Economic dominance now resides in the hands of those who produce oil, gas and minerals or those who can call on cheap labour. As for football, they like watching it so they want to own it. It's that simple.
Whether we like it or not does not really matter. As other industries have found, there is precious little we can do about it. The new owners do not owe any allegiance to anyone or anything — if it's not Manchester or Liverpool it could be another city, another town. It doesn't matter — lavish enough money and the big names will come.
It doesn't bother them where the players are from. England? They might care if they could buy the national team, but it's not for sale — so they're not bothered. As for the clubs' academies, they might as well not exist — what is the rationale behind them if you can pick the starriest names off the shelf without so much as denting your pocket?
Actually, that's not quite true — one of the aims of Abu Dhabi is to produce some home-grown players good enough to force themselves into the Manchester City squad. Eventually, they hope, their tiny nation will challenge for the World Cup itself. But of England, there is no mention.
Those at the top of English football no longer appear in charge — it's cash that calls the shots now. Only this week as well, Alan Curbishley has quit West Ham because he no longer had a say in the club's transfers. At Newcastle United, Kevin Keegan is in the same boat.
The authorities wanted to take English football abroad — well, abroad is taking English football. They've talked about wishing to extend the brand internationally — well, that's exactly what Abu Dhabi is doing.
It's too late to do anything about it. At no stage have those in charge ever made any effort to curb the power of money. They wanted TV riches and they got them — now, those too, will be heading elsewhere. They've allowed players' salaries to soar. They've done little to curb the agents' activities. They've watched as the bigger, wealthier clubs have pulled away. Each of the past few seasons have followed pretty much the same pattern of the same four clubs at the top and the weaker, new entrants at the bottom — and they've done nothing about it.
They've even seen their own knockout competition, the FA Cup, utterly devalued. As for club versus country, it is no longer a contest — the club is where the money resides, so it's been winning every time. In America, in the land of free enterprise, they slap restrictions on their major professional sports. They have salary caps and a draft recruitment system. They do their utmost to ensure the field is level. Why? Because they know the lasting value of maintaining the fans' interest.
Because in the end, that is what could wane here. The very real danger is that supporters will lose interest. One of the criticisms levelled at Chelsea was that by creating a side of all the talents, Abramovich was stifling interest in the game. Now that is happening at Manchester City and could occur at Liverpool and elsewhere. In this context, the contract is meaningless — the new investors are so rich they can break any document.
So, one minute, Robinho, Ronaldo and co turn out for Manchester City; the next, they're donning the shirt and the badge of another team because its chairman can pay them more.
Globalisation has been with us for years but for many, finally, this week, it has come home. The world has changed — and we'd better get used to it.
