The only surprise, if things play out as we are increasingly sure that they will, is that it has taken this long. Seven years ago, Manchester City ended a Champions League semi-final tie against Real Madrid with Fernando, Gael Clichy, Bacary Sagna, Eliaquim Mangala and Kelechi Iheanacho on the pitch, and when Manuel Pellegrini looked to the bench for an extra striker he saw only Wilfried Bony. With the right amount of respect to all involved, we are talking about levels here.
As with Paris Saint-Germain, the other wholly state-owned behemoth (for now), domestic dominance never quite translated into continental swagger when it mattered. Manchester City have won more than a third of their last 100 Premier League games by a margin of three goals or more. But before this season, they had played 17 quarter-final or semi-final matches in the Champions League. They had won one of those by more than a single goal and none by more than two.
The spring of 2023 has forcibly changed all that. In two home games against the only non-English Champions League winners stretching all the way back to 2015, Manchester City have scored seven times without reply and it could, should have been more. Wednesday evening was an explosion of atmosphere and wonder, a meticulously-prepared collection of elite footballers performing as artists under a pressure you could not increase were it prepared in a laboratory.
It was also an explosion of power and dominance. Two substitutes who cost £80m to buy were used solely to preserve energy and run down the clock. Phil Foden, the poster boy for one of the most powerful academies in the world, is second choice to the most expensive footballer in his country’s history. Erling Haaland, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva – there is always another game-changer waiting on the wing and they will have their time now or soon or eventually.
In 2021, when Manchester City lost their only Champions League final to Chelsea, the top scorer in the competition was a 20-year-old striker at Borussia Dortmund. Now, Haaland is theirs and he is top scorer again. When the bricks are made of gold, the building will glint and shine in the sun and under the floodlights.
There is a reason why this has happened and happened here. Football has been built through three distinct ages. It emerged via the rampant industrialisation of the late-19th and early-20th centuries that had the north west as one of its hotbeds (between 1901 and 1930, clubs in the north won 28 of the 30 Division One titles). Then, in the late 20th century, rampant capitalism and free market economics allowed for Sky Sports to position English football at the top of the financial food chain, an ivory tower with a 100-year lease.
And now the third age: state ownership. Football clubs have become tools of geopolitics and soft power and those fortunate (if that is indeed we or they choose to see it) to be vehicles are carried on to power and wealth and dominance. Only here (and now in Newcastle) do those three ages of the game blend to create the potential for ultimate dominance. Paris Saint-Germain lack the heritage. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and most of City’s domestic peers lack the endless wealth. Any league outside England lacks the broadcasting revenues that attract the high-end players that fuels the improvement of the quality as a whole.
Nobody expects Manchester City supporters not to be delighted. They went through the bad times too: the relegations, the financial issues, the careless owners who make these ones seem inherently good, the perception of UEFA Financial Fair Play not as a means of preservation but protectionism. And the growing conspiracy theories that charges have dropped at home and abroad because City didn’t fit the face of the grand old clubs who own the closed shop.
There are caveats to our caveats, too. Sympathy for Real Madrid, who sold their training ground to the regional council for £278m and thus cleared their debts, who receive double the amount of broadcasting revenue as the fifth biggest club in Spain, may be thin on the ground. Carlo Ancelotti’s bench contained £100m, £75m, £45m and £30m signings and only one of them came on to try and alter the pattern of the game/stop the bleeding.
And there are few underdog stories at this stage of this competition anyway. Inter, Manchester City’s opponents in Istanbul, may not be state-owned for reasons of sportswashing or soft power, but the fact is still true: the Chinese state is a part-owner of Inter. 10 June welcomes a global contest as well as a European final.
Outside Manchester City’s support, this is understandably a little harder to bear. If the business of business is business, the essence of sport is supposed to be sport, founded upon competition and uncertainty and intrigue. But what about any of this is uncertain? How many will they win by this week? When will they win everything? When will they ever stop winning?
The only question is to what extent you can separate the two or, to be more revealing of my personal stance, can you pause your cynicism of the macro to enjoy the micro? Watching Manchester City on Wednesday was a joyous experience without context. We all grew up with the daydream of football as magical elixir for everything mundane or troublesome in our lives and here, on a silver platter and a green expanse, was magical football. Are you not entertained? I was.
Some solace comes in the knowledge that elements of this may well be unique. Pep Guardiola’s brilliance in improving players and in formulating tactical plans is undoubted and, in the modern age, perhaps even unsurpassed. Just look at the enhancement of that English core: Stones, Walker, Grealish (Okay, we don’t talk about Kalvin). Having money isn’t everything; just ask PSG.
But to many, to greater and lesser degrees, this is all simply noise because this was all simply inevitable. Manchester City are now a club that deals exclusively in whens, not ifs. It might have been easier if they had won the Champions League in Guardiola’s first season and they damn sure might as well win it now, because it saves us the continuation of this relentless march to “The Thing That Cannot be Stopped”.
On some level, we have all been waiting for this. Football itself has been waiting for this. A wholly state-owned club is likely to win the European Cup for the first time. Pandora’s Box has been opened and anyone who believes that they can reseal the lid is either a fool or a dreamer.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/JKTvYir
Post a Comment