The Indian Super League (ISL) side, Mumbai City FC (MCFC) have introduced a new club crest ahead of the 2023–24 season, a significant 10th season in the club’s history. At a ceremony in Mumbai, the new logo was revealed to the team’s fans, players, and the Indian football community.
The very first MCFC emblem, which embodied the city’s essential ideals as well as its modernism and spirit of innovation, served as the model for the badge. The new crest reinforces Mumbai City FC’s merger with City Football Group (CFG) and physically links the Mumbai-based team with the circle crests of Manchester City, New York City, Melbourne City and other sister teams throughout the CFG family.
Mumbai City FC’s new emblem was created after a comprehensive interaction with the club’s followers about the club’s identifying markings and marketing features. Throughout the brainstorming process, fans chose to include the following crucial components that reflect the identity of Mumbai and the club:
- The Bandra-Worli Sea Link is a contemporary architectural marvel that exemplifies Mumbai City FC’s devotion to the city’s citizens and modern attitude.
- The Mumbai train network, which continues to be a crucial component of the crest, is the city’s lifeblood, transporting millions of Mumbaikars daily throughout its immense length in a percussive cadence.
- The Arabian Sea, which surrounds Mumbai’s coastline, plays a significant role in the city’s identity and is still featured on the club’s emblem.
- On both sides of the outer ring of the logo, two tenacious Fortresses, a tribute to the club’s original emblem and a remnant of Mumbai’s past, stand boldly, representing the city’s unyielding will and resolve.
- The new MCFC logo shall act as the team’s official badge of identification, marking the club’s transition into the future.
The freshly designed PUMA Mumbai City 2023–24 home jersey, the first in the club’s fresh era to include the new crest, was presented as well during the occasion. Ranbir Kapoor and members of the Mumbai City FC First Team donned the new uniform, which was created by the sportswear company PUMA India in the team’s signature blue colour.
Roel de Vries, City Football Group Chief Operating Officer, said, “At City Football Group, we have always put our fans and our communities at the centre of everything we do. Changing the crest of a football club is a big step that we would only take in alignment with fan support. Mumbai City FC’s new crest has captured what matters most to our local supporters. We believe that with this step forward, Mumbai City will continue to strengthen its ties with the city of Mumbai while continuing to grow on and off the pitch.”
Kandarp Chandra, Mumbai City FC CEO, said, “It gives me great pleasure to ring in the next chapter in the great history of Mumbai City FC with the launch of our new crest. At Mumbai City, we have always strived to build an institution that the Mumbaikars can relate to and one they can be proud of. While we continue to work hard to bring success on the pitch for the fans, we needed to involve our supporters in a landmark decision such as this one. Our new crest reaffirms our commitment to preserving Mumbai City’s identity albeit with a modern outlook, as well as aligning ourselves visually within the City Football Group family.”
Furthermore, SportsMint Media also got an opportunity of speaking exclusively to Roel de Vries, in which we asked him, “Following the new logo, what’s next in the pipeline for Mumbai City FC in terms of global development and catering to fans?”
“So, first Mumbai City FC needs to grow first in Mumbai, because it will be nice to have fans, but even if we have international fans, I guess, they would be people from Mumbai who live in different parts of the world. The biggest opportunity is to create a football club in Mumbai, very local, that to me is the most important part in terms of Mumbai City within City Football Group, some is already happening. We have a coach that was the coach of our club in Australia. He’s now the coach here, he’s doing a really good job and maybe he can become a coach in one of our other clubs and keep growing, we have the same for some of the players. So, that is already happening, the previous coach, also got a bigger job after this one. So Mumbai in the City Football Group is already starting but it’s very early.
“The big opportunity is to develop young talent out of India, young players. But this takes time. I always use this example from Manchester that our current owners invested about 12 years ago in Manchester, and when they came in, they started building a training facility. That was finished about 10 years ago. So, 10 years ago was the first, really big investment into the development of young players. And today, actually last season or the season before, there was one player in Manchester City, first team, Phil Foden who actually came to the academy and made it to the first team. Now, of course, many other players went to many other teams and many other places in the world. But it takes time because you need to build the infrastructure, you need to build facilities, get all the right people and that’s why I am super positive about Mumbai, but we need to be a little bit patient.
“So what do we need to do next? First, we want to get the first team to a good level which we are now. Then we need to start investing in our facilities, which we still need to do and then we need to focus on youth. We already have a lot of focus on the youth but we need to push this further and then slowly this will start to work, but it might be another five or ten years. I don’t know if you will ever see a player from here in Manchester City’s first team, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. You don’t know, the level is so high. What I can say is that we will invest to try and get players to go to Europe or to go to Australia or to get an opportunity somewhere else.”