To add to the tidal wave of opinion...
City have absolutely ridden the wave to the upper echelon of European football under the auspices of a Middle Eastern investment fund run, for all intents and purposes, by the rulers of Abu Dhabi.
That said, at almost every turn, they have conducted themselves above reprpoach, with the fans and the Community at the centre of their plans.
Yesterday, that stopped.
At the European level, ESL is a flagrant desire, by what can only be considered the richest clubs in football, to close the door on ANY other club EVER becoming what we have become.
We felt hard done to as UEFA and the ECA sought to exclude us, up to and including our exclusion from their premier tournament. This is that...but to almost every other club in Europe.
At the domestic level, we have literally said we are better, regardless of competitive merit, than 14 other clubs in the current Premier League...or ever in the Premier League. The irony is watching Leeds, a team with far more European history than us not only beat us and take 4 of 6 points, but hold Liverpool to a draw TODAY to keep them out of the Top 6, and barely in the Top 6 TODAY!!!
As Neville said, like United, City are a club built upon the humble and modest beginnings of a church providing a place for working men to go. We have gone through many iterations of the club, most of which have been playing second fiddle to the well run clubs in England. With the move to the COMS, we started a new era, but the foundation of the club..local fans...remained, even though success on the pitch was still out of our grasp.
After a succession of owners seemingly unprepared or incapable of waking the sleeping giant, along came Sheikh Mansour and a cheque book that was open for business. Other clubs had done this before, albeit quieter and behind the scenes, but City were being “in your face“ and unwilling to apologize for splashing the cash to catch up to the Sky Four, thus they became an easy mark for the ethnic slurs and outright racist sentiments associated with our ownership.
Meanwhile, the fans continued to pay their hard earned money (more and more of it every year) to see their club play. The ownership continued to invest in the club. Results followed and it ruffled feathers, both domestically and, more importantly, within UEFA.
Ten years later, after much handwringing and a few legal cases, City were exonerated for their investments (ironic, especially against the backdrop of massive debt loads of other “traditional” European giants) and the on field success led to City being seen as one of the new giants in European football, having finally (and without fear of reprisal) followed their nose into the tent, and become an integral part of the Champions League.
City fans, though, have always sat ill at ease with UEFA and the CL, because of our treatment and the realization that it was being run by our sporting foes in a manner designed to harm our competitiveness...both on the field and off it.
We boo the UEFA anthem, we despise their hypocrisy in denigrating a debt free, cash rich club, while propping up the old, traditional European football powers who haven’t seen success in years.
In recent years, UEFA has continued to tinker with the Champions League in an attempt to assist those old, traditional powers...who just happen to sit on the Executive Board of the organization...in their attempts to restore their clubs to past glories all at the expense of new, vibrant, upcoming clubs such as Dortmund, the Red Bull teams, Atalanta, and the likes of City and even Leicester.
While all of this is going on in the Staff Room, no-one seems to have thought about the kids on the playground, who are the entire reason for there being staff needed at all!
From here, it remains to be seen how these two behemoths of European football are going to both clash and, thereafter, settle out. Currently, it feels like it is a seismic shift in football, but I don’t see it that way.
We have seen “SUPER leagues” developed in other sports, but how that translates to such a foundational, culturally significant sport as football in England remains to be seen.
To be quite honest, I think an ESL could be a success, IF it is tweaked, but that seems unlikely at present. Unless they are completely tone deaf, they will understand that it needs to be based on domestic success EVERY SEASON, not some current and forever notion of being the “big clubs” in their country and in a perfect world, would include the top X number of teams from each top footballing country, with a mix of top teams from other countries and....oh wait...that’s the Champions League!?!
To me, there are big egos and big names aligned on the different sides of what is going to become gladiatorial fight. There is clearly PLENTY OF MONEY TO GO AROUND, but it also appears clear that the top clubs in Europe believe UEFA is siphoning off “their” money, while trying to expand the number of clubs at the trough, which is diluting the competition and also flogging the players unnecessarily.
There is an obvious solution, at least to me, and that is a two-tier CL competition, separated by the Christmas Break. Phase I would be the free for all UEFA seems to want, where more clubs are included, with Phase II being the stage where the big clubs...dare I say ACTUAL Champions and the top #2 teams...enter the fray with the top 4/6/8 teams from Phase I.
Easy peasy, which means there’s no chance it comes to pass! Maybe they could put the Champions AND Champions from prior season into Phase II if you’re looking for some legacy slant to it? Doubtful when you see SIX team from England, THREE from Spain and Italy, and who knows who the other THREE might be?
Whatever they ultimately decide to do, it MUST RESPECT THE FANS, and to this point, both the new CL format AND the ESL fail that acid test!
