Claudio Reyna is sitting in a large leather armchair in the George Steinbrenner III suite at Yankee Stadium. It is one of the more unlikely places the journey of the City Football Group has taken him in recent years.

In 2012, when Ferran Soriano was recruited to be chief executive officer of Manchester City, he called the staff together. He told them that this was a club that would have to do things differently. They could try to be Manchester United, they could hire a great coach, buy great players, win trophies, but that was never going to get them ahead.

'I remember that meeting,' Soriano says. 'I used a sailing analogy. What I said was that we were behind – and we still are. The number of fans, the number of shirts we sell. We are the fastest growing club, but still behind.

Scroll down for video

Manchester City's ambition has taken them to where they are now - challenging for trophies

'So I said to them, if you sail competitively, then you know that when you are first, all you have to do is watch what the second boat does. If you do the same, and you are sharing the same wind, you will win. We were not the first boat: we maybe weren't even the second, perhaps third or fourth.

'So we had to do things differently, and hope they don't notice us. We had to take risks, take a different route, try to innovate. Being the second boat means trial and error. We will make mistakes, but we must kill those mistakes quickly.

'We must hope that whoever is ahead isn't paying attention or doesn't think our ideas are good, even if they are. But of all the things we have done differently, the creation of the City Football Group with the sister clubs was our strongest idea. That one had most power; but also most risk.'

Claudio Reyna was recruited by Manchester City in 2012 and has widened the club's reach

The second boat. It sounds considerably more sophisticated than Sir Alex Ferguson's description of City as just the noisy neighbours. Yet when the Manchester clubs meet at Old Trafford on Saturday, the clash of corporate cultures is as distinctive as their playing styles.

Soriano was right. City cannot take on United, or any of the established elite, using the playing field alone, because the playing field is not level. They have to be radical. They have to find another wind, a different energy. And four years on, here it is. New York City, where Reyna is Sporting Director, are top of the MLS; Melbourne City were A League semi-finalists last season; Manchester City reached the last four of the Champions League and now have Pep Guardiola as manager.

There is a mission statement, a long-term business plan that represents the holy grail of where the City Football Group are heading. It projects a non-specified date in the future at which point Manchester City are European champions, Melbourne City the champions of Asia and New York City win the MLS Cup once again. It is no longer as fanciful as once imagined.

So Reyna watches his baseball from the Steinbrenner suite – named in honour of a legendary owner, who died in 2010 – because the New York Yankees are New York City's partners. The Yankees own 20 per cent of the club, City play their home games at Yankee Stadium and the pairing has helped weave what was basically a start-up into the fabric of the five boroughs.

City have stolen a march. As soccer continues to grow across the Atlantic, it seems logical that one of Europe's elite clubs, jostling to crack this new market, would join forces with the most iconic brand name in American sport. Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona maybe. Yet none did. 'Maybe they were intimidated,' said Reyna. 'After all, it's the Yankees.'

City's chief executive Ferran Soriano is responsible for making the club a worldwide force

But one man was not. Marty Edelman is a New York counsel for the firm Paul Hastings specialising in real estate and corporate mergers and acquisitions. He was already, through his connections with Sheikh Mansour, a director of Manchester City.

Having just completed the takeover of the Miami Dolphins NFL franchise for a friend, he was now instructed to help build a soccer club in New York for City. 'He said, "you know football", I said "with respect, Your Highness, it's a different football", he told me it would be fine,' Edelman explains. His next problem was deeper, more existential. It could have stopped the project in its tracks.

Edelman is in the 30th floor office, freshly returned from gum surgery. He is nursing an ice pack that he holds occasionally to his jaw. He was given nitrous oxide in the treatment room, but several hours later it would appear the drugs don't work. It's not holding him back, though.

Edelman is of an age that would be classed too old to be chairman of the Football Association, but he looks younger than most England managers by the time the job is done with them. You can see how this was the guy who wasn't cowed dealing with the Yankees.

'For all its multi-cultural edge, each culture in New York has some degree of suspicion about the others,' he explains. 'So when we were forming New York City it went straight past Manchester City to 'who are these guys in charge?' And all the misinformation people have about the Middle East got funnelled into those reports. But we could say, "Look at what we do in Manchester. That's not been designed for here. That's what we do already". So they were a little disarmed. And the fact that I'm a New Yorker, and I'm Jewish and I was part of this group – that said something else, too.

New York City, owned by City Football Group, play at the world famous Yankee Stadium

'But I woke up one day and I thought, 'You know, everybody needs a validator.' I'm a lawyer, I've got a slightly better than mediocre reputation in this town, so I'm a pretty good validator. But I don't have the prominence or celebrity for this team. Who does? And I thought: if you know sports then when you go around the world people know certain teams.

'They know Barcelona, they know Real Madrid, they know Manchester United, they know the Dallas Cowboys – and they know the New York Yankees. George Steinbrenner's two sons, who now own it, one's very active the other is not. So I read up and the one who is not, Hank, is a total soccer nut. So I thought, if I could convince the Yankees to be our partner, not a ceremonial partner but to really invest in the team – then you know what? Nobody is going to dare say anything.'

So that is how Manchester City – not United, or Barcelona, or Real Madrid – came to be in business with a brand that is recognised in parts of the world that have never seen a baseball diamond. It's a New York tale. Edelman knows people who know Randy Levine, the Yankees president, they get in a room with Hank Steinbrenner and, yada, yada, yada, suddenly they're partners.

But here's the thing. New York City is only a plan Soriano had for Barcelona 11 years ago. City's second boat – the one that sails from Manchester to Melbourne to New York and next to China – is capitalising on a breeze meant for the giants of La Liga, where Soriano was formerly vice-president.

'This was my idea, the globalisation of a football club by having teams play in other leagues,' Soriano says. 'It was original in football, but not in other areas of business. There, you are global and local. Say you make shoes and you want a presence in the Australian market. You will end up with a local operation to sell your shoes, promote your shoes and also manufacture them.

Soriano understands it is going to be tough to break Manchester United's global hold

'Yet in football, all the big teams struggle with this. We have a lot of fans, but the level of engagement with them is very small. They're not in Manchester, they're not in England and it is difficult to provide them with something more than just buying shirts or watching the teams on TV. So what if they had their own City team that played every week?

'With Manchester City, with Barcelona, you go to Australia to play a couple of games and get paid for that. You play games in Sydney, say, and you are there for a week. You are on TV, your shirts are sold, then you leave, bye bye, and you might not be there again for five years.

'The opposite strategy is you have a team that plays every week, a local club. That was my thought. In 2005 I wanted to buy the New York franchise for Barcelona, and I couldn't because Barcelona is owned by fans and in 2006 there was an election, and we couldn't explain to the fans we were spending money all this money on a club in New York.

'At Manchester City I was in a completely different environment, at a club that was ready to innovate, with smart owners, and action and no politics. My question was: how can you make Manchester City global? And the answer was: make it global and local.' It was on Soriano's second day that he proposed the idea of New York City.

Barcelona had an office, but no team, in New York ten years ago. Then there was an election, a new administration and cost cutting closed the project. No doubt members of the City Football Group will see it as vindication of their methods, that Barcelona reopened that office last week.

Barcelona is unique due to it being owned by the fans and that has its own particular appeal

Ronaldinho was recruited as the face of Barcelona's launch, ceremonially kicking a ball into a small goal beneath a banner that said 'I heart NY' – except the heart symbol was replaced by Barcelona's club badge. Big deal. Barcelona have set up camp on the 20th floor of an office on Park Avenue. Yet where are they, actually, in New York? Who sees them? Who knows they are here?

New York City is on the 30th floor of a skyscraper on Third. Great views of the Empire State Building and the iconic sky scape. Yet they are not visible, in this tower, not even a plaque in the vast, soulless, reception area.

It is the team that affords the identity, the presence. Crowds average 27,253 this season – the third biggest in the MLS, behind Seattle and Orlando – with roughly 20,000 season ticket holders. Their first MLS game on March 15, 2015, drew a gate of 43,507. The merchandise sold that day remains a record for the competition.

'We made a decision that this wasn't going to be Manchester Lite,' says Edelman. 'We're becoming part of the essence of New York's sporting community. In ten years, soccer will outpace hockey and basketball. Maybe, one day, football.'

The next frontier is China, which presents fresh problems. Again, City are there to do more than sell shirts. An investment company, China Media Capital, have already spent £265m buying a 13 per cent share in the City Football Group. City have been looking at owning a Chinese club for two years.

Frank Lampard (centre) recently joined New York City and has scored 14 goals in 26 games

There are three options: buy an established member of the Super League, buy a smaller, second tier club with potential for development, build a new club in a fresh location from scratch, as in New York. The additional complexity is the current state of the league, with owners happy to run unsustainable economic models.

'It is growing in attention and interest, but it's still not good business,' Soriano insists. 'The owners are losing a lot of money. America and Australia were solid. China wasn't two years ago. It is much, much better organised now, but still very expensive. We must be careful. In our other markets, investors are there to generate value.

'That might mean losing money short term, like Manchester City, but always with the final aim to recover the value. In China there are investors, brands, companies that own football clubs because the government like it and it is a cool thing to do. They lose $50m a year with no plans to stop. And this is something we would not do.'

Back to Manchester where on Saturday all eyes will not be on projects and balance sheets, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic versus John Stones and Fernandinho's battle with Paul Pogba.

If City lose then, short-term at least, none of it matters. In the workplaces of Manchester on Monday morning, nobody will win bragging rights by breaking down that if Melbourne City represent just ten per cent of what the City Football Group are worth then, on the China Media Capital deal alone, they are valued at over £25m having been bought for £6.84m in 2014. Who cares? What's the score, pal?

Yet the Manchester derby is two hours in one day and this is the project of a lifetime. It is eight years since the Manchester City takeover, and the club already talks of the next ten or 20. What their rivals mistakenly considered a costly ruse to get around Financial Fair Play was in fact the big idea it is hoped will allow City to compete with United and the rest, long term.

'I was having issues with the city council about out stadium,' Edelman continues. 'I said to them, "You guys are never going to believe how good we are unless you come to Manchester and see it".