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Dear Pep: An apology

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Dear Pep,

Good luck in the Champions League final tonight but I don’t believe you’ll need it. You don’t know me but I’ve been known to be a doubter. Who can forget the time I suggested Steve Bruce could be a success at Manchester City while you would also struggle at Mike Ashley’s Newcastle? I was one of those who sneered at your Barcelona success with Messi, Xavi, Intesa and co. Tsch, anyone would win La Liga with that lot. Bayern? I could manage Bayern to the Bundesliga. Then Manchester City. Now, let’s put aside the money and potential legal issues. Let’s talk football and where my view began to change.

As Chelsea and Man Utd continue to prove spending billions on players doesn’t guarantee success. Where I’ve changed my view is on your ability to see what others don’t even in the very best.

The best examples this season are working out how to get the best out of Haaland. The way de Bruyne gets better, spending 100 million on Grealish ripping his game up and starting again to make him even better. Keeping all those highly paid superstars motivated and only thinking team. Gundogan performing despite the questions. My favourite and biggest influencer though is turning English centre back John Stones into an auxiliary number 10 when you have the ball. I still laugh out loud when I see him in and around the opposition’s penalty box jinxing, shimmying and passing while Roadrunner Kyle Walker patrols the half way line snuffing out any deluded Wyle E Coyotes who think they may have a chance. I could go on. As a pure football team you have created the best I’ve ever seen in my 50 years watching football.

So sorry Pep. Of course you’re a genius who single handedly has raised the bar on what can be achieved in professional football. Lots of teams have lots of money few managers have your bravery, foresight, imagination, man management skills to create the perfect storm your football team now is.

I expect you to dismantle Inter Milan tonight with few hiccups and you deserve it. Watching your football team and ignoring the noise has given me great pleasure this season. You and your players can’t influence what the owners or the Premier League do. What you can do is play football and my god it’s a beautiful thing.

Yours,

Dave Ross

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Comments

  3. From a purely technical and artistic perspective this Man City team have produced some of the best football ever played – the dismantling of Real was awe inspiring. HOWEVER there seems to me to be too many questions over the ethical and ‘fair play’ aspects. This is clearly not just City – Chelsea started this ‘mega owner, limitless cash’ philosophy and for me its destroying the game. Clubs living in the real world can never now really aspire to be competitive in the top flight. Yeah there will be the occasional blip like Luton but I’ll be amazed though delighted if they can survive. But even if you do survive the vast majority of the teams in the Prem are simply playing to stay up – a few more scrapping for the lesser European trophies and 4/5 realistically challenging for the title and/or Champions League places. It all seems out of kilter and some levelling up needed.

    Disgruntled Rotherham Fan

    • Agree.

      Two of the teams who went down from the Prem in May 2001 wore sky blue shirts.
      The Gulf (SWIDT?) in their changing fortunes since then is all down to sports washing.

      While PG is a great, great, great manager and Man C play some of the finest football
      I’ve ever seen, he wouldn’t be there and that football would never have been
      possible without its owners’ bottomless budget.

      The sad thing is when Man City are bought to book for their 100-plus FFP-related offences, PG and his team’s achievements will be forever tainted by a little * next to each trophy they’ve won.

      Time that the FA did something to level the playing field

      • They could make changes about ownership and limit spending and budgets for wages to attempt to level things up, but then the best players would no longer play in England. So it’s a tough one.

        City have a net spending of a billion or something over the last decade. They should be winning everything, the fact e.g. Liverpool have been close to them or bettering them (in Europe) last 5 years is a minor miracle.

        Also if Pep is so good why has he often messed things up by making baffling selection and/or tactics changes in crucial games (mainly in the Champions League)?

  4. I think Pep is absolutely one of the greats. Other teams have spent more and got less out of squads. I will happily watch Man City play football because, most of the time, it is astonishing how good they are.

    The 1st half against Real Madrid in the second leg was the best display of football as a team game I have ever seen. Brilliant stuff.

  5. What a pile of shit.Bankrollrd by a corrupt Middle Eastern government. Over 100 misdemeanours that an EFL club would receive hefty points deductions for. The Premier league has become bland and boring. No longer any meaningful competition and the PL will not take any action st risk of upsetting SKY.
    The Premier league couldn’t be any more boring than it is right now.

  7. What a sh*tty win.
    With literally bottomless coffers, they still needed a flukey ‘save’ their keeper knew nothing about to achieve a win.
    What is the point of this type of football?
    The closest analogy is playing in a fantasy league but if one team doesn’t have a budget restriction.
    To follow up the most repulsive World Cup in history with a victory in what was once called the European Cup by a sports washed conglomerate felt essentially inevitable, pretty much summing up absolutely everything wrong with the modern game, & appears to be the final nail in the coffin of ‘the people’s game’.
    Just yuck.

  8. Not exactly a dismantling. Inter set out to spoil and they executed their plan to perfection and could perhaps should have won. John Stones was extraordinary again, ridiculous in fact. Him, Grealish, Foden and Walker have ramped up the pressure on Gareth Southgate but that’s a conversation for another day. My post was based on the football this team plays, who knows the authorities might strip all the titles away but the goals and the skill of this team of footballers will remain.

    Oh and Jack Grealish’s interview ❤

    • The most exciting side I’ve witnessed live, and I’m a lifelong toffee, is Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool. The best I’ve seen on the tellybox is Brazil 1970. Those were very different days, when pitches weren’t as smooth as snooker tables and tackles were agricultural. But, boy, the skill of those teams was breathtaking. Man City do not make me leap up in the air as they did.

      • I think those Liverpool teams were great but not thrilling nor particularly inventive. I’ve often said football peaked in 1970. The thrill of Argentina 78 was in the whole spectacle. I’m not in love with football like I was 50 years ago but Stones, de Bruyne, Haaland, Ake, Akanji, Foden and Jack, oh Jack under Peps tutelage are doing things no other team has.

  10. Last season I saw Man City v Liverpool live. Astonishing, simply astonishing, levels of skill – a world, a universe, away from the days when we cheered as, for once, our centre-half trapped the ball first time. Our team was crap but they were our team, stuffed full of local lads and psychotic thugs.
    There is no doubting Man City’s magnificence and Pep is almost definitely the best manager ever. But my passion for football is but a tiny spark of its former fire. Money has ruined the Beautiful Game (and as for VAR……)

  11. I love this City team on the pitch. De Bruyne especially is a glorious player. And it’s good to see that Guardiola has made English players a key element of his squad rather more than most of their rivals. But I can’t love them off the pitch because of the money and where it’s come from.

    That said, although the chances of success for any club have narrowed, ‘‘twas ever thus that a few clubs dominated, and, in many eras, one club has become the team we all love to hate because they win everything – Liverpool, United, now City. The 30 odd years of the Premier League have produced just 7 champions. But the previous 31 years produced just 10. Overall just 9 clubs have won it more than 3 times and 5 of those have done so relatively recently. I am sure the period of City dominance will pass. I am also sure that my alleged big club, Tottenham , who have only won it twice, the last time 32 years ago, won’t be replacing them any time soon.

      • Oh.

        Typical Tottenham fan – combination of wishful thinking and big club entitlement based on bugger all actual achievement.

        Except …..we were the first to win the double, first to win in Europe, for many years top FA Cup winner, unbeatable when there’s a one in the year etc etc ad unconvincing nauseam….

  12. I’m a Liverpool supporter, and am proud that we managed to interrupt City’s run of six straight titles. Whatever the funding issues (I’m not qualified to speak) they are a RELENTLESS footballing machine who seem to hit their best form in the run-in.

    The ‘title race’ with Arsenal reminded me of a Tour de France stage where a plucky group of also-rans launch an early breakaway, only to be gradually but inevitably reeled-in by the chasing pack.

    So fair play to City, and I hope any City fans amongst us had a great night.

  14. Well, as a long-standing City follower I am not in the least surprised at those who dislike the club. While I don’t agree with you, as the club I support was there long before its current owners, and will be there – I hope – long after they’ve sold it on. For the club is ultimately bigger than their owners if enough people care about it. Our current dominance also gives everyone else plenty of entirely understandable reasons to dislike us too, as my United-following friends will remind me from the peak Fergie years. They didn’t care then, and we don’t care now. For those who can appreciate the skill and beauty of the play, the tactical genius of the manager then thank you. The best words on last night were that no-one ever plays a final, they only win or lose. Three out of the last four finals were 1-0, tight and tetchy affairs. We rode our luck. The first half of the Real Madrid second leg semi was the one, some of the best football we’ve ever played, 11 players seemingly with one brain, culminating in Bernardo’s two sublime finishes.

    • Don’t think people dislike the club per se, M.

      Just the appalling dictators who own it and the
      reasons why they bought it.

      Ultimately, all the inspired football and glittering
      trophies in the world isn’t going to detract from
      the atrocities they are intended to conceal.

      • From the Amnesty international website

        Freedom of expression, association and assembly

        The government exercised control over expression, at times censoring content in the media or cinema deemed to be immoral. At least 26 Emirati prisoners remained behind bars because of their peaceful political criticism.
        In January, the Office of Public Prosecution announced that it had summoned “a number” of people who had posted videos online simply reporting rocket attacks on the UAE by Yemen’s Huthi militia, warning that any reporting of such incidents on social media violates the country’s laws.
        In June, the Media Regulatory Office banned Lightyear, a US-produced film because it depicted a same-sex kiss.

        Also in June, the newspaper Al Roeya, which is published by a company owned by Deputy Prime Minister Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, fired almost all its journalists and editors because the paper had reported on how Emiratis were reacting to the rising price of energy. The print newspaper then ceased publication, with the website kept online by a skeleton staff and publishing only business news.

        In August, the Media Regulatory Office and Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority instructed Netflix to remove same-sex content from its services in the UAE or face prosecution.

        The new Code of Crimes and Punishments, which went into effect on 2 January, brought in some reduction of sentences but retained overly broad provisions that criminalize free expression and assembly, and added a new clause punishing unauthorized transmission of governmental information. Article 178, a new provision, forbids transferring “without a licence” any official “information” to any “organization”, which taken literally criminalizes most transmission of governmental information. Article 184 decreased the punishment for “anyone who mocks, insults, or damages the reputation, prestige or standing of the state” or “its founding leaders” from 10-25 years to a maximum of five years. Article 210 decreased the punishment for participating in any public gathering “tending to damage public security” from up to 15 years to a maximum of three years.
        Article 26 of the new Law on Combating Rumours and Cybercrimes, which also went into effect on 2 January, imposes up to three years’ imprisonment on anyone who uses the internet to encourage a demonstration without prior permission from the government.

        Arbitrary detention

        The UAE was responsible for dozens of new and ongoing arbitrary detentions. The authorities refused to release at least 41 prisoners who completed their sentences during the year, bringing the total number, including those from previous years, to 48. All 41 were part of the “UAE-94” mass trial of 2012-2013. The government characterized such detentions as ongoing “counselling” for those who have “adopted extremist thought,” a procedure authorized under Article 40 of the 2014 counter-terrorism law. The law requires the Office of Public Prosecution to obtain a court order for such detentions, but does not give the detainee the right to challenge their continued detention.1
        Torture and other ill-treatment

        In July, in its first review of the UAE, the UN Committee against Torture stated its “concern that reports received detail a pattern of torture and ill-treatment against human rights defenders and persons accused of offences against state security.”

        Authorities held human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor in solitary confinement for the entire year and deprived him of glasses, books, a bed, mattress and pillows, and personal hygiene items.2 Such prolonged solitary confinement, especially in combination with the degrading and inhuman treatment, rises to the level of torture.

        In one case, authorities denied Mohamed al-Siddiq, imprisoned since 2012 for exercising his right to freedom of expression, all phone calls with his nuclear family who live abroad.

        Discrimination

        The authorities continued to deny members of the UAE’s native-born stateless population, who have ancestral origins in East Africa, South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, the state-paid healthcare and education provided to nationals. Stateless Emiratis must pay to receive education and healthcare through the private market. Stateless people also had to find “sponsors” to obtain temporary residence permits, without which they are considered “illegal residents”, and are ineligible to work in the higher-paid government sector.3

        LGBTI people’s rights

        In September, the government directed schools across the UAE to ensure that teachers “refrain… from discussing gender identity, homosexuality or any other behaviour deemed unacceptable to UAE society” in classrooms. UAE law criminalizes consensual same-sex relations between adults.

        Failure to tackle climate crisis

        The UAE raised oil production, contrary to the UN conclusion that countries must begin reducing production to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change, to which the UAE is a party. According to World Bank data, the UAE has one of the world’s top five highest levels of per capita carbon dioxide emissions.

        Women’s and girls’ rights

        In July, the CEDAW Committee, in its concluding observations, found that UAE law discriminates against women in the transmission of nationality to children, and that the government maintains reservations to the CEDAW that are incompatible with the purpose of the treaty.

        Refugees’ and migrants’ rights

        In July, cabinet regulations revising immigration laws once again did not recognize the right of refugees to claim asylum.

  15. Cagliari have just beaten Bari with a last minute goal to earn themselves promotion to Serie A next season.

    I have absolutely no idea what I’m on about.

  16. Guardiola is quite clearly the most influential and innovative manager of his era. But then, he was that even before he arrived on our shores.

    There was a profound misunderstanding in some quarters (namely our press) of quite what he’d achieved at Barcelona, quite how improbable it all was and quite how much the game was already changing as a result. So we saw a lot of sneering op-eds about how he’d been lucky with the players he’d inherited, how he’d got it wrong on Joe Hart (chortle), and how he wouldn’t be able to adapt to English football. As it turns out, English football adapted to Guardiola.

    When Guardiola took the reigns at Barcelona in 2008, the sport was still largely, albeit not entirely, defined by individual brilliance. You assembled the best group of players you could, you motivated them by whatever means necessary, and you sent them out with some semblance of a strategy but ultimately hoping that one or two individuals would grasp the nettle and grab you a win. This is the reason England were still persisting with playing Gerrard next to Lampard at that time – because star power and individual ability were still outweighing the needs of the system.

    Guardiola changed that forever. He took a team that had finished 18 points off Madrid the previous season and implemented ideas about the game that in many cases owed as much to basketball as football. The use of triangles, the importance of the press and counter-press, the positional fluidity. He also booted out of the club Ronaldinho and Deco, who were then perceived as the two stars of the team, but whom he immediately identified as being unable/unwilling to bend to his needs. Ronaldinho was 28 years old and notionally at his peak. But the system had to come first. For the same reason, he promoted an unknown Sergio Busquets from the B team and gradually preferred him to Yaya Toure, another decision met with some incredulity at the time.

    That first season, Barca started slow, but they ended up winning every competition they entered, playing football from the future. The same brand of football that is now seen as the defining model of the game; either you’re playing it, or you’re trying to figure out a way to counteract it. 2008-09 is an absolute hinge point in football history – for better or worse, it’s when the pendulum swung towards the system.

    Which brings us to this week, and some mixed feelings.

    First of all, to all the long-term City fans on here and out there – hats off. I hope you enjoy every minute of this, because many of you have well and truly earned it. City are a fantastic team, well worth the win and you deserve all the joy it brings.

    And yet… a little of my own love of the sport dies with this treble, as it’s yet another signal of the path upon which we now appear to be set. Because this isn’t just a victory for City fans, but also for sport-washing. For the use of football as a form of soft-power. The City fans bring the romance to the occasion, but – really – that’s all the romance there is, because everything else about the event is as cynical as can be.

    First up, the famous 115 charges. It’s interesting to watch people posting net transfer spend and wage bill comparisons above, because the implication of these charges is that the numbers you’re throwing out for City are very possibly sheer fantasy. When the Unauditables take the pitch, none of us really know what they’re being paid, or what was paid for them. Nor will we, if City have any say in it, because instead of responding to the charges by throwing open their books and proving their innocence, they’re doing all they can to obfuscate and frustrate the process, just as they have done previously with UEFA.

    There are some who say innocent until proven guilty, and that’s true up to a point. But this is football, and this is money. Real money, big money. The notion of guilt is fairly liquid, and the concept of justice is largely up for sale.

    My own team this season has contained an individual who is allegedly up on multiple accusations of rape, and who has continued to play. And that’s arguably correct, because of the presumption of innocence. But then you reflect that the conviction rate for these offences is horrifyingly low, and that the conviction rate for incredibly high value footballers who have the resources and connections to buy their way out is pretty much zero whatever the evidence (see: Mason Greenwood), and you reflect that even if this individual is cleared, his name still won’t belong in your mouth on matchdays. In fact, you reflect that you want him gone ASAP. No one should go to prison without the benefit of the presumption of innocence, but I’m not convinced that it’s so integral when all that’s at stake is the extent to which sporting achievement is regarded as bona fide. For such matters, I am happy to default to the standard of proof we use in civil claims; balance of probabilities.

    On the balance of probabilities, having read the charges, it seems fairly likely to me that City have done these things (or at least some of them). And that these things are cheating, however they might be dressed up. And that they’ll probably get away with it, which is pretty saddening. Equally saddening is that a sizeable portion of the game doesn’t really care either way. There are enough journalists and media types on the gravy train, enough people for whom winning will always be a balm that soothes all other considerations, that they’ll get a pass.

    In the last month I’ve read editorials (some of them from the same people who were so critical of Guardiola upon arrival on these shores) to the effect that – really – if you don’t agree with rules, why should you obey them. The logic of a child. Shameless. These people want to continue to trumpet “the best league in the world” and “Super Sunday”. It doesn’t matter any more to them whether it’s all real than it would if they were promoting WWF. And they’ll tell you endlessly what a “well run club” Man City is, ignoring that another of our oil clubs once won the Champions League with Robert Di Matteo as coach, and reached another final with Avram Grant, because money talks. And over a long enough period it screams. Enron were a “well run” business, once upon a time.

    The other sad thing about all of this is on the sporting front. There’s a lot of comparison this week of this City side to others from the past. First up, the Utd side of 1999. Now, I will admit to a long term loathing of Man Utd, and particularly that team. And yet… they won that treble at a time when no one thought it could be done, in a moment where the English league was a comparative minnow in European football. They won it against some fabulous sides, a number of whom were visibly better than them, to the point where no one would really have backed them until ten seconds before it was all done. True sporting achievement.

    For City, on the other hand, this Champions League win has been in the post for a decade or more – you’d have been more surprised if they’d somehow continued not to win it. And the treble has been achieved with minimal friction, minimal drama. My own team were their title rivals, and despite leading the pack for most of the season there were literally ten minutes all year I seriously believed we might win the thing (the ten minutes before Xhaka woke up Anfield). The rest of the time it was just enjoy the ride, have fun watching the kids express their talents and recognise that winning isn’t everything. Because what you’re up against simply isn’t normal.

    Perhaps that’s a sign that City are just such a great team no one could possibly get near them. But I’m not convinced by that. They finished the season with fewer points, fewer goals scored, more goals conceded. Some of that is due to their wrapping up the title a couple of games early, but it doesn’t speak to a side who had particularly gone up a level. My own suspicion, and this is something the press seem to have missed entirely, is that holding a World Cup in the middle of the season was always going to hand a material benefit to the club side with the strongest squad in Europe, the side most able to rotate across the season and reap the benefits of fresher legs come May/June. And I think that’s largely what’s happened here. Fantastic side, with fantastic players, probably achieving at about their usual (incredibly high) standard and given a little kick on in the final furlong by that extra month of football. That and Madrid’s legs finally catching up with them – it had to happen some time.

    So, as sporting achievements go, once the hyperbole subsides (John Stones up with Beckenbauer – behave, Dave!) this is lower on the totem pole for me than Utd’s equivalent, to the extent such comparisons even matter. It certainly scores far lower for sheer improbability, particularly given that another club very nearly achieved the precise same feat last season.

    The other team to whom City have been compared to is Guardiola’s great Barca team. And I’m afraid that comparison is simply nonsense. When I watch this City team I see an absolute machine – superbly coached, each cog playing its role. But from an aesthetic perspective they don’t possess a tenth of the verve and excitement that Barcelona did. I would run home early to watch that team, whereas I feel no real compulsion to watch City, no sense that I might miss genius I know they’ll win, and De Bruyne is a fabulous player to watch, but this hasn’t been the fantasy football of that Barcelona. It’s been more akin to the grinding efficiency of the Spain team of the same time. The face of this team is Erling Haaland; ruthless efficiency, but a joyless automaton in his play, and not remotely what I personally look for in a footballer. Pace and power are lovely, but it’s the feet where magic happens.

    For my money, that Barca would have slapped this lot sideways, in much the same way they slapped probably Ferguson’s best ever Utd XI (a team who were European Champs themselves and had come within a whisker of their own treble the season before, lest we forget) all over the park. Nathan Ake marking peak Messi, with Dani Alves on overlap? It’s not even a conversation, I’m afraid.

    And Guardiola? Well, he’s still a magnificent coach, and I wouldn’t argue if you were to call him the greatest of all time. My own heart will always be with Wenger, largely because of his moral courage in facing down England’s xenophobic football press and thereby opening up our game to talents such as Pep, but clearly Guardiola’s on-pitch achievements are above and beyond. His arrival in England has also finally wiped away the last vestiges of a historically troglodyte belief that “English football” in its purest form was superior to its overseas equivalent, and that anyone who didn’t ensure they had a big lad to whom to hoof it as Plan B was suspect. The game as now played up and down the ladder on these Isles is Pepball, and it’s been to the enormous advantage of the English national team, now populated by players being given a proper tactical education at club level.

    But still, despite all that, as I watched Pep earlier this season defending his paymasters, all wounded honour and faux surprise, a little of the respect in me withered and died. I get that he probably wants to see what happens when he harnesses his preposterous managerial gifts to near bottomless resources, and maybe that’s a sportsperson’s prerogative, to simply be the best they can. But in making that defence, and making it in such spirited fashion, he also rendered himself the face of something truly ugly in the game, and that’s the belief that winning will wash away all your sins. That it doesn’t really matter where the money comes from, how it’s spent or what you’re acting in service of, because you’ll be forgiven on the podium. And the sad thing is that, in some quarters, you will. And so will Newcastle, when they roll through and win the Champions League, chests out and shameless, and so will god knows whatever comes next.

    There will be columnists by the dozen to tell us that this is simply always how the sport has been, that we must focus on what happens on the pitch and ignore everything that happens off it. That any complaints are simply jealousy. But that’s all nonsense, isn’t it? Does anyone seriously feel that the sport has *always* been like this? So degraded? Or that we’ve always needed quite such a concerted effort to compel us to focus on the left hand and ignore what the right hand is up to? I didn’t like Ferguson’s Man Utd, but I respected them. This lot, I’m not so sure, because something more than sport is at play here.

    Meanwhile, a good many of us will look on and feel that love for the game at the top level, that love we’ve harboured since childhood, fade a little more. And that seems a shame to me. Personally, I’d like to see revisions made to prevent clubs being used for geo-strategic/nakedly political purposes. I’d also like to see changes made to level the playing field financially; and by that I mean level the playing field with the goal of having multiple teams challenge for/win the title, rather than the usual contenders ad infinitum. What form those changes take, I cannot say, but I’d be more than happy to rip it up and start again, even if that means my own club have some or all of their own historic advantages eroded. None of that will happen, of course, so the instruction remains: simply pray for an petro-state owner of your own – dream big, sportsfans.

    Someone posted above a comparison of titles winners in the last 20 years against the 20 years before that. But, as with the “5 year net transfer spend”, that’s just picking a time frame designed to gloss over the problem. Manchester City have won 5 of the last 6 Premier League titles. Since they first won it a decade ago, the title has gone to a non-oil funded club on only two occasions; once with Leicester City in what is generally considered to be the sporting long shot of the century, and once to a Liverpool team who had to perform at an utterly superhuman level to win it (and dear god what an achievement that was). That’s the pattern that I’m afraid points the way ahead. It’s only really Klopp and his genius that have maintained the illusion of competition; remove him from the equation and you’re looking at a no-contest.

    So then, honest congratulations to the City fans (and apologies if all of the above seems churlish – I’m just being honest about my own thoughts). If anyone had to have this success, perhaps it’s right that it’s you, and I really hope you enjoy it, because someone should. But it’s a shiver down the spine for many of the rest of us. As Jungle Jim says above, this treble, coming off the back of that World Cup, really does feel like a bit of a moment. It’s such a beautiful, beautiful sport, and it would be lovely to watch it again without having to wonder in whose interests it is being corrupted.

    As I wrote all of the above, a name kept flashing into my head as a sort of counterpoint to the direction the game is headed. A player whose languid style, lack of running and naked individualism would have put him at odds with Guardiola (he wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes at City), but who to me sums up much of what is glorious about this sport. In Argentina, nearly a century ago, they used to talk about “Criollo football”. A football of individualism and free movement, and sheer joy in having the ball at your feet and green space in front of you. At aiming for aesthetic beauty in your play, even ahead of winning. It’s that spirit I sometimes think we’re in danger of losing, and it’s summed up for me most beautifully in Juan Roman Riquelme, who seemed to put the game in slow motion and who reminds me how beautiful it can still be amidst all this ugliness. So let’s end with him (or Georgi Kinkladze if you want to keep it Sky Blue).

  17. Side thought: English teams have a decent haul of European Cups, but how many were skin-of-the-teeth victories or even fortunate wins by teams who were second best on the night? A fair proportion of pundits were forecasting an emphatic win for City at the weekend but English clubs rarely have comfy, “get out the cigars, we’re in total control of this” cup final nights.
    Unless they’re playing Spurs.

  18. This treble thing … hmm … and this is not a dig at City ….

    Hey! I want Manchester City to win things, that way Chelsea, Tottenham, and Manchester United don’t!

    … but the bigger achievements of:
    1. Tottenham Hotspur double (1960-61)
    2. Arsenal double (1970-71)
    3. Manchester United treble (1998-99)
    4. Manchester City treble (2022-23)

    … are either one of the first two.

    Please, feel free to fanny around about the also-rans, numbers 3 and 4, at your leisure.

    Reason? Every side that entered those competitions in 1960-61 and 1970-71 wanted to win them – check out the Leeds team at Colchester United (lost 3-2) – and named full-strength sides to try to do it.

    More of them did, too, the winners of the League either side of Tottenham were Burnley and Ipswich Town. I picked up a preview for a season in the 50s recently, sponsored by a betting company, where the 10th most fancied team to win was about 12-1!
    Winners of the Cup before/after 1971? Can’t be bothered, there was a different winner pretty much every year.

    If you were to offer, even a bunch of no-hopers in the 21st Century like Tottenham Hotspur or Newcastle United or Everton – 1st, 6th, 6th, 6th, and 6th in the Premier League over the next five seasons – they’d pass over 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, and 3rd.
    If you’re passing the graves of Nicholson or Shankly, whisper.

    • When the facts change, I change my opinion. The economics of contemporary football are such that five 3rds in a row and five runs in the Champions League are just worth much more to the club. In cash, not glory.
      It’s debatable whether the actual supporters on the other hand, wouldn’t prefer a title. In most cases, I expect they would.
      Wigan and Portsmouth got to the cup final in seasons when they faced relegation. When the vox popper offered supporters the choice, there was a strong preference for a trophy and the trapdoor over safety and no pot..

      • The facts won’t change …
        … unless a 5th or 6th side are introduced to the fray, and I suggest that will happen if they are rich enough, it is only going to get worse and/or ring-fenced.

        The League and F.A. Cups have teams fielding sides so sub-standard that any “giant-killing” is more of a “gnat-killing” – there is no such thing as a giant-killing any more.
        The F.A. Cup is wonderful until Christmas, fill yer boots, and a dead duck afterwards. Of course, if you want to pretend Gillingham beating Bournemouth Reserves is a big deal, good luck.

        4th place in the League is the only real goal.
        the champions league is in small-case because, frankly, few of them are champions.

        The whole thing has been designed by committee/rupert murdoch (also small case) and it is bollocks. Perhaps, not as bollocks as pop music – what could be? – but it drives it a close second, which would be enough to get it into the champions’ league … and in the world of pop music (no. 2), mean someone outside your immediate family might have heard of you!
        OK, that last bit’s unlikely.

        That said, Rugby Union is in a worse state. No really.
        80,000 for a Premiership match, at jolly-old Twickers – 500 for the League immediately below – unlike the 6 or 7 levels to get to that stage in football – and a sport utterly incapable of having a domestic Cup competition.
        The best thing the chinless-wonders at jolly-old Twickers could do is go cap-in-hand to the Premier League and ask them how to run a business.
        It would be dull, desperately so, but at least it might have a semblance of structure, and the equivalent of Luton Town would be allowed to compete.

  19. This thread has got much more interesting and thoughtful the less it talks about City and more about structures and direction.

    To add another: @deramdaze is on the money about the FA cup, reserve sides and 3rd place-itis. All that stuff is for the club execs and the brand building.

    But let’s be heartened by the Hammers and their turning of the Europa Conference League into a moment of real triumph. We had a thread on that and it’s clear that it’s anything but tinput to the fans, as the reactions have shown. The Carabao has like the FA Cup become something of a ‘season saver’ for the big six/seven whatever. Play the youth teams and reserves up until Feb and then if the league/CL goes wrong we still have our ‘season saver’. The Europa is a bit different because of Seville’s remarkable grip on it and how the CL teams who finish third drop into it, but the Conference appears to give whoever enters from the UK a great chance of a trophy. Be interested to hear how Villa fans feel (I will ask some) about whether they’d rather finish 4th or win the Conference league.

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