A few final thoughts on the Manchester City & the Champions League

There is something distinctly striking about the fact that, for all the talk of a new empire having risen, of flourishing of an era of dominance the likes of which we have never seen before, they kind of stumbled and staggered over the line to get there, in the end. Manchester City are the champions of Europe, and it’s been met with something of a collective shrug.

Perhaps it’s the fact that it had been expected for so long. Perhaps it’s a pre-emptive defence against accusations of having them “living rent free” in their heads. Perhaps it’s a genuine feeling of being nonplussed at this finally having come to pass at the end of an evening that wasn’t without drama, but without the fireworks that come with the je ne sais quoi that separates a football match from a good football match, and the good football match from a great one.

The comparisons with Manchester United’s treble have raised further questions. If nothing else, these two domestic clean sweeps of The Trophies That Matter are notable for the two very different ways in which this sort of footballing greatness can be achieved. There was precious little drama in Manchester City’s stately procession to the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the Champions League. 

There was none of this coming from two goals down to Juventus in Turin or scoring twice in the last minute against Bayern Munich in the final nonsense to be seen from Manchester City. They cruised through the knockout stages of the competition and then won the final having scored the only goal of the match midway through the second half. 

But the more you unpeel the final, the stranger it gets. Kevin De Bruyne, arguably the best midfielder in Europe this season and the pivot around which so much of their best football flows, had to be withdrawn after half an hour. Erling Haaland was having one of those evenings when it wasn’t quite falling for him. Inter were defensively solid and compact, some way past the ‘none shall pass’ blanket defensiveness of the Catenaccio years of their distant past. 

If we agree that there can be such a thing as ‘club DNA’, although that actual phrase is clumsy and not entirely accurate, then surely Internazionale of all teams went into the match with a chance. Three times winners of this very competition, it always felt overstated that the semi-final between City and Real Madrid talked about as though it was “the real final”. Inter, as things turned out, put up a far better fight than Real Madrid did.

The lack of narrative hanging over the evening could be seen in its only goal. Rodri’s volley was outstanding, a true moment of excellence on an evening punctuated with mistakes and disconnected thinking, but…it was Rodri. An outstanding player, for sure, but one almost entirely without a backstory. Why couldn’t it have been the local lad, Foden? Or the record-shattering Nordic goalbot? Or even the captain İlkay Gündoğan, who has been a strong contender for their player of the season this year but who was likely playing his last game for the club in Istanbul, too. 

We probably shouldn’t have been surprised by the margin of victory. Of the 26 times that English clubs have played in the final of the Champions League or European Cup, on only five–Manchester United in 1968 and 1999, and Liverpool in 1977, 2005 and 2019–have they scored more than a solitary goal. It’s been a common trope of finals across a range of competitions for years that just the understanding of what is at stake seems to have an inhibitive effect upon even the very best players. Just tipping the balance slightly in favour of not taking chances can make finals soporific affairs at the time. To call this match soporific would be over-stretching things somewhat, but neither was it a classic, either. 

But if there is a reason for anyone reading this to be on the edge of their seats, it’s probably what comes next. The other stuff. The stuff that you can’t just put to one side when you’re talking about Manchester City. The state ownership stuff. The human rights stuff. The oil money stuff. The cheating stuff. To try to get a little bit of an idea of where I stand on all of this, here’s where I consider my baseline views to be on the subject, in an overall sense. 

1. Sportswashing is bad, and the state ownership—or the de facto state ownership—of football clubs is bad. It should not be permitted for clubs to be owned by any organisation with state connections, and certainly not where those states ride roughshod over basic human rights.

2. Supporters are obviously not responsible for the owners of their club, but they become so when they enthusiastically start cheerleading for them and denigrating those who are critical of their owners. A little critical thinking isn’t too much to ask, though no-one should feel as though they are being pressured to stop supporting a team because of the owners. 

3. FFP has been a dreadfully-implemented piece of legislation. It was perfectly obvious that the most likely outcome of it would be the entrenchment of a familiar hegemony at the top of the game. It is absolutely not the fault of other clubs that just about the only way to challenge them in any meaningful way required state-level money to do so. 

4. The true enemy of football supporters is financial inequality between clubs. It is patently absurd that perhaps more than three-quarters of the teams in Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues have effectively no chance of winning the competition in the foreseeable future.

5. But I have little faith that supporters of, say, Liverpool or Manchester United would want a genuinely more level playing field, any more than I would ever believe that Real Madrid would want the same in Spain. I ordinarily dismiss the complaints of other “big” clubs over the overspending of other clubs as merely wanting the traditional hegemony to remain untouched. 

6. By the same token, I don’t really believe that there are ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in the ongoing legal ructions between what’s left of the fundamentally flawed European Super League project and UEFA. It should be perfectly evident that UEFA aren’t doing this ‘for the fans’. Practically nothing is done ‘for the fans’ these days. They’re primarily interested in their powerbase being kicked away from underneath them. Of all the organisations and groupings of people who would deserve a European Super League, UEFA would be pretty close to the top of the list.

7. There’s little arguing with the fact that Manchester City have spent money well, but infinitely deep pockets make it easier to make mistakes. If the most fundamental difference between Arsenal and Manchester City in the Premier League this season was the depth of their squads, well… that’s that inequality at work. Being able to rest key players and still throw highly experienced and highly skilled players on from the substitutes bench is an enormous luxury. We have become inured over the years to just how unbalanced it makes the game in this country.

8. There is no ‘conspiracy’ against Manchester City, and the extent to which a very vocal proportion of the club’s support has embraced borderline conspiracy theorising has really put them at the vanguard of one of the most unappealing aspects of modern football. 

9. The 115 charges brought against Manchester City are a very bad look for the club, as is the failure to cooperate with the Premier League’s inquiry into it all, which makes them look as though they’ve both got something to hide and are insufferably arrogant. We shall see, I guess. 

10. And yes, all of this does rather make the rest of us shrug our shoulders when they do win. Oh, set the skill level to the lowest possible level and then eventually won the Champions League, did we? Well done, you.

Does this all sound a little unfair? Possibly. But then, for decades now it has felt as though this entire game is being played for the benefit of an increasingly small number of wealthy clubs. I’ll be saving my sympathies for the supporters of that vast majority of clubs for whom winning such riches are little more than a pipe-dream, but who can be pushed close to disaster in having to keep pace with the wage inflation caused by this imbalance.

Well done Manchester City, I guess.