The beauty of the Europa League, now occupying the mezzanine storey of Uefa’s expanding hierarchy of midweek competitions, lies in the eye of the beholder. For Liverpool or Ajax, clubs who boast 10 European Cups between them and are far more accustomed in recent years to being in the senior Champions League, participation in this season’s second-tier event can feel grudging.
But for the teams who now get to rub shoulders with them, to visit Anfield and Amsterdam in a major international club competition for the first time, the Europa League is a thrilling endorsement of progress, a proof of upward mobility.
These are the sorts of nights that Brighton & Hove Albion, the admired upstarts of the English Premier League, and Union Saint-Gilloise, the agile climbers of the Belgian leagues, have to look forward to as they on Thursday embark on European campaigns that for both would have seemed far-fetched a very short time ago.
Six years ago, Brighton had only just come up from the Championship, England’s second division. They will host AEK Athens this evening, a landmark for a club who have never before qualified for a Uefa competition, ahead of a series of trips in the group phase to major hubs of the continent: Marseille next month; Ajax in Amsterdam in November; and then Athens.
Union SG, as they are known for short, have risen even more swiftly, up from the second level of the Belgian professional pyramid only in 2021, after almost half a century in the lower tiers. They were immediately competing for the league title.
This will be Union SG’s second successive Europa League adventure, and among the destinations ahead of them if they are to again reach the knockout phase are Liverpool, who they meet at Anfield next month and Toulouse, the French club they host on Thursday.
“Our target is to reach the next stage,” said Alexander Blessin, the Union SG head coach. “And to win every game, even if with Liverpool in the group that’s going to be hard. We have a lot of new players and I want them to enjoy the atmosphere, and write a new story.”
The high turnover of players is part of the ritual for any successful Belgian club, ambition driving the better performers to more prestigious, wealthier leagues. During the summer, Union SG sold key individuals to clubs in France’s Ligue 1, Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s La Liga and to the German Bundesliga, from where Bayer Leverkusen swooped for the Nigerian striker Victor Boniface.
He had performed well for Union SG against Leverkusen in last season’s Europa League; he has scored five times at a rate of a goal a game for his new club already this season. Union SG sold Boniface, 22, for over €20 million, more than three times what they had paid Bodo/Glimt, of Norway, a year earlier.
That, in a nutshell, is what Union SG do so skilfully: they scout talent from far and wide, in many cases painstakingly curating performance data and identifying what they perceive to be the most relevant metrics. On a bigger scale, in the wealthier Premier League, that’s been a key to Brighton’s rise: midfielder Moises Caicedo, scouted in Ecuador, was this summer sold to Chelsea for €116 million, more than four times what Brighton bought him for two-and-a-half years earlier.
The shared methods are no coincidence. Brighton chairman Tony Bloom, a methodical analyst of form and the numbers that explain it, has held a stake in Union SG for five years, a holding he was obliged to reduce so he was no longer the majority owner once Brighton and the Belgian club found themselves in the Europa League at the same time – in order to satisfy Uefa concerns about potential conflict of interest should the clubs meet one another.
The relationship between the clubs has involved some mutually beneficial transfers. Kaoru Mitoma, the Japan winger, was loaned to Union SG for a season ahead of his superb impact for Brighton in 2022/23. And when this summer, Union SG studied the form and the statistics of an Argentinian defender with the capacity to play across the back line and backed him to thrive in Europe, they were tracing very closely a path Brighton had already taken.
Union SG’s new Argentine is one Kevin Mac Allister. He’s the younger brother of Alexis, who joined Brighton direct from Argentinos Juniors in 2019, debuting in England a year later. The older Mac Allister has since won a World Cup and in July moved for over €40 million, yielding another handsome profit for Brighton. His new club are Liverpool, where, all being well, the Mac Allister brothers will face another in the Europa League next month.
Manchester United 1 Brighton 3 - player ratings
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League final:
Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
Infiniti QX80 specs
Engine: twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6
Power: 450hp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: From Dh450,000, Autograph model from Dh510,000
Available: Now
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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Analysis
Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The most expensive investment mistake you will ever make
When is the best time to start saving in a pension? The answer is simple – at the earliest possible moment. The first pound, euro, dollar or dirham you invest is the most valuable, as it has so much longer to grow in value. If you start in your twenties, it could be invested for 40 years or more, which means you have decades for compound interest to work its magic.
“You get growth upon growth upon growth, followed by more growth. The earlier you start the process, the more it will all roll up,” says Chris Davies, chartered financial planner at The Fry Group in Dubai.
This table shows how much you would have in your pension at age 65, depending on when you start and how much you pay in (it assumes your investments grow 7 per cent a year after charges and you have no other savings).
|
Age
|
$250 a month
|
$500 a month
|
$1,000 a month
|
|
25
|
$640,829
|
$1,281,657
|
$2,563,315
|
|
35
|
$303,219
|
$606,439
|
$1,212,877
|
|
45
|
$131,596
|
$263,191
|
$526,382
|
|
55
|
$44,351
|
$88,702
|
$177,403
|
The biog
Fatima Al Darmaki is an Emirati widow with three children
She has received 46 certificates of appreciation and excellence throughout her career
She won the 'ideal mother' category at the Minister of Interior Awards for Excellence
Her favourite food is Harees, a slow-cooked porridge-like dish made from boiled wheat berries mixed with chicken
Tank warfare
Lt Gen Erik Petersen, deputy chief of programs, US Army, has argued it took a “three decade holiday” on modernising tanks.
“There clearly remains a significant armoured heavy ground manoeuvre threat in this world and maintaining a world class armoured force is absolutely vital,” the general said in London last week.
“We are developing next generation capabilities to compete with and deter adversaries to prevent opportunism or miscalculation, and, if necessary, defeat any foe decisively.”
Batti Gul Meter Chalu
Producers: KRTI Productions, T-Series
Director: Sree Narayan Singh
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor, Divyenndu Sharma, Yami Gautam
Rating: 2/5
MATCH INFO
England 241-3 (20 ovs)
Malan 130 no, Morgan 91
New Zealand 165 all out (16.5ovs)
Southee 39, Parkinson 4-47
England win by 76 runs
Series level at 2-2
The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat & Other Stories From the North
Edited and Introduced by Sjón and Ted Hodgkinson
Pushkin Press
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
The specs: McLaren 600LT
Price, base: Dh914,000
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 600hp @ 7,500rpm
Torque: 620Nm @ 5,500rpm
Fuel economy 12.2.L / 100km
Brief scoreline:
Manchester United 2
Rashford 28', Martial 72'
Watford 1
Doucoure 90'
