Leyland becomes Assistant Technical Director for City Football Group

Talking about his time at Newcastle on Episode #55 of the TGG Podcast, in September 2023, Leyland said: “Although I was only there 18 months, it 100% made me a better practitioner, just by changing the environment, the feel and the people I worked with.

“The way the manager works at Newcastle, and his coaching staff, they are incredible, they are so elite. Their processes, their delivery of training sessions, their review of matches and the detail they go into in analysing the performance of themselves and the players is mind-blowing.”

In Leyland’s first CFG role, his remit was to align playing philosophy and support coaches across the group and in the summer of 2025 he was also involved in a change of first-team coaching staff at Manchester City, after previously working with Assistants Pep Ljinders and Kolo Toure and Set Piece Coach James French at Liverpool.

Leyland will now work as Assistant to CFG’s Global Football Technical Director Riccardo Bigon, who oversees and co-ordinates technical football strategies across the group’s global network of 12 clubs.

Bigon joined CFG last year from Bologna, where he was Sporting Director for six years, and works alongside Brian Marwood, Managing Director of Global Football Services.

CFG was founded in May 2013 and says it aims to ensure that “every club remains authentic to its fans and community, plays entertaining football and benefits from being part of a global organisation that applies the world’s best expertise on and off the pitch”.

Its current clubs are: