It is 6am and already hot. The wind is even hotter and the sun has only just appeared. Cranes and half-built skyscrapers shimmer in the distance as Abu Dhabi's army of migrant workers get ready for another day of back-breaking toil in temperatures that rarely drop below 40C ( 105F). “Manchester United, very good team, sir,” the Pakistani taxi driver said. “Manchester City? I don't know this team.”

Forget Robinho. The big transfer story in Abu Dhabi this summer has been Jorge Valdivia's £13million move from Palmeiras to Al Ain. These are exciting times for football in the United Arab Emirates, even though the national team are bottom of their World Cup qualifying group after losing 2-1 to Saudi Arabia here on Wednesday. One UAE supporter was so angry that he threw his gold watch on to the pitch. “It was sad to lose,” Mohammed Khalfan Al-Rumaithi, the president of the UAE FA, said. “You win some, you lose some.”

Al-Rumaithi can afford to be philosophical because he has bigger fish to fry. The UAE's first professional football league kicks off tomorrow evening with a Super Cup match between Al Shabab and Al Ahli and rumours are sweeping the region that the Dubai Royal Family are preparing a billion-pound bid for Manchester United after running out of patience with Liverpool's bickering American owners.

Buying a Barclays Premier League club is part of Dubai's strategy of maintaining its high profile as a tourist destination and those plans are said to have gone into overdrive since representatives of the Abu Dhabi Royal Family agreed to buy Manchester City from Thaksin Shinawatra for £200million two weeks ago.

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE and if you were born here, you can probably afford to throw your Rolex away when your team lose. Some

9 per cent of the world's oil reserves belong to this sweltering paradise, which is arguably the richest city in the world, and that is good news if you are a Manchester City supporter. It appears that everything that Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the prospective owner of City, touches turns to - or is already - gold.

The football-mad sheikh is the half-brother of Abu Dhabi's supreme ruler and City are his new pet project. Al-Nayhan manages Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Company and he can buy or build anything he wants. The deal to buy City was thrashed out in a £6,000-a-night suite at the seven-star Emirates Palace hotel, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi Government and cost £1.7billion to build. For an extra £10 you can have gold dust sprinkled on your cappuccino while you drive a hard bargain with the former Prime Minister of Thailand or watch City play Chelsea on satellite television today.

Dr Sean Ennis, a sports marketing expert with the University of Strathclyde, which has a campus in Abu Dhabi, said: “They will not tolerate failure. These people are very serious businessmen. They don't want to be associated with mediocrity. If Manchester City struggle, it will be bad for the Abu Dhabi brand. This is not a philanthropic exercise. If City are not in the Champions League by the end of next season, Mark Hughes will almost certainly lose his job.”

City have to succeed because the Abu Dhabi Royal Family demands success. Fifty years ago, this T-shaped island that juts into the Persian Gulf was home to camel herders and pearl divers who dreamt about being able to afford to live in a mud hut. That was before the discovery of oil in 1958.

Now the descendants of those camel herders race through the city in their giant 4x4s while immigrant workers make sure that everything looks spick and span. “Too many Indians here,” the Pakistani taxi driver said. “Too many Filipinos. Too, too may Bangladeshis.”

The immigrant workers need money to send home to their families; the princes of Abu Dhabi need to do deals to keep up with Dubai, their greatest rival among the seven states of the UAE. When the Dubai Royal Family expressed an interest in hosting a Formula One grand prix, the Abu Dhabi Government bought a stake in Ferrari and signed a deal to stage the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix next year. When Dubai announced that Brad Pitt and George Clooney were investing in city-centre hotels, Abu Dhabi negotiated a £500million deal to make movies with Warner Brothers and persuaded Pamela Anderson to become the face of an eco-friendly holiday resort. She is coming to Abu Dhabi and so are branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museum and a Ferrari theme park.

“They are not just in competition with Dubai, but with other states throughout the Gulf region,” Ennis said. “Qatar is bidding to host the Olympics and has adopted African athletes, Bahrain has its own grand prix, the International Cricket Council is based in Dubai. These countries are using sport as a leverage to boost their profiles and to put themselves on the map.”

Abu Dhabi also wants to boost its profile by buying the City of Manchester Stadium from Manchester City Council. If a deal is done, the stadium is likely to be rebranded the Etihad Stadium. Arsenal's Emirates Stadium is named after Dubai's national airline, so it would make sense for City to play in a stadium with the name of Abu Dhabi's national carrier. Just one problem: Etihad is Arabic for United.