The Sheikh Who Conquered Soccer and Coddles Warlords

[Passages]

The Emirati vice president is best known as the owner of a top English soccer team. Behind the scenes, he has been described as the “handler” guiding his country’s secret foreign wars.

By Declan Walsh and Tariq Panja

Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi, Kenya and Port Sudan, and Tariq Panja from London.

June 29, 2025
Updated 6:50 a.m. ET

Weeks before Sudan flamed into a calamitous civil war, one of the richest men in the Middle East, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, welcomed an architect of the chaos to his sumptuous Persian Gulf palace.

The sheikh, a younger brother to the powerful ruler of the United Arab Emirates, is recognized in the West as a collector of superyachts and racehorses, and is perhaps best known as the owner of Manchester City, the hugely successful English soccer team. Last year, his team in New York won approval to build a $780 million soccer stadium in Queens, the first in the city.

Yet there he was, in February 2023, openly entertaining a notorious commander from the deserts of western Sudan — someone who had seized power in a coup, built a fortune on illicit gold and was accused of widespread atrocities.

The two men knew each other well. Sheikh Mansour had hosted the Sudanese commander, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, two years earlier at an arms fair in the Emirates, where they toured exhibits of rockets and drones.
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