Culture is the key thing here. The contrast between the leading lights across Europe is pretty stark just now in that respect. People talk about tactical innovation, and recruitment, but at its root, culture can be decisive when the clutch moments arrive.
It's worth a proper end-to-end analysis and contrast but with this mob, the feeling is their culture is inherently toxic. And Man City, like any other organisation, is full of people. People don't function quite as well in toxic environments as a rule - they find ways to embody the cultural tone, and that being unhealthy for them long term, find weird ways of engineering a kind of organisational self-harm. If the tone is drama, you find ways to perpetuate the drama.
So quickly, and top down... cos the tone is set at the top - we can maybe do a proper article on this as a contrast.
Owners
They have owners who have a specific agenda: 'We will sportswash Abu Dhabi'. That's because Abu Dhabi has things it wants to hide from the world, and with a changing economy, things it wants to portray itself as that don't fit with the underlying reality. They want to project themselves as perfect, as unbeatable, as flawless. As a result they try to control even the narrative around their ongoing results and behaviours beyond what's 'ordinary'. They worry about message to the extent that a video comes out the second they clinch the league title - you know the video - old men drinking water, if you're happy that we did it shout hooray... They march three dozen lawyers into a CAS appeal and ensure the panel includes people they're 'comfortable with'. They demean the governing bodies. They call the integrity of their competitors into question. They refer to a qualified legalese 'not proven' and time-limit-driven judgement in their favour as 'complete exoneration', and do their best to control the media narrative around that. They hire influencers on social media. They encourage a fan base to hound journalists based not on what suits the fan base or their own cultural context (COVID, economic horrors, political turmoil), but on what suits their agenda, and oddly, they follow that tone, because that's how it works.
So - what are the key 'values' that cascade down from that lot?
Insincerity; paranoia, exasperation and not being able to control things that just can't be controlled, a faux air of superiority, a lack of understanding as to why that gets under people's skins (see Rudi Garcia this week - even Lyon feel that way), summary dismissal of whatever doesn't suit their cause (ideas, people, governing bodies' authority), provocative, bellicose communication, blame, and lastly, an agenda-driven response to their own success: they can never truly enjoy their moments, because they are a means to an end.
Management in Suits
Soriano and co - they follow that tone in relation to activities with finance, sponsors, interaction with competitors and counterparties (£40m with an extra £1m for good measure solely to avoid negative PR - really?), UEFA, and so forth. Press conferences calling investigations biased, when even CAS find they had merit. And so it cascades down. Documentaries, PR videos, influencers, and so on and so forth.
What cascades down?
Insincerity; paranoia, control-based exasperation, faux air of superiority... and so forth, arriving at an agenda-driven response to their own success: they can never truly enjoy their moments, because they are a means to an end.
Management in Combat Chinos
Selfies on hearing a CAS verdict, on his knees, head in his hands, gesturing to the Gods at Anfield, holding sarcastic press conferences and post-match interviews, setting a disposable tone with players and player recruitment (Sane, Mendy, Silva, Stones, Delph... all quietly thrown under a bus rather than developing them) spending on full backs like a drunken sailor and discarding them just as quickly in the knowledge they'll just do it all again, ignoring the youth system as best he can, telling coaches they're unacceptably overweight to the extent it'll demoralise the players, quietly blaming refs and VAR while claiming not to ("I am so polite"), claiming Wenger's success was built on exorbitant spending, claiming an elite of English clubs had ganged up on his club, trying to control risk, trying to control everything, feeling increasingly paranoid over whether that control is being effectively exerted, setting motivational time bombs like the one after Sterling misses an open goal at Burnley where he says that these kind of misses can never be forgiven (oh dear)... behaving like a strange, manic, flawed evil genius (when at your root you suspect there's probably a nice fella in there), rage v Spurs VAR, rage v Liverpool VAR, weird European team selections, seeing the leader and one trustworthy senior centre half leave and not replacing him...
What cascades down? (We know fine well, but add to it a sense of mild hysteria among the playing squad and staff.)
Players
The players? They know they have to toe the controlling line and overall tone or they'll end up under that bus. Some can hack it - KDB can hack it for example. Creativity with control is the watchword. Fernandinho, Silva - they can hack it. But the rest? They're never quite sure. So they follow the lead of those above them. They feign class when they win, then sing about Liverpool fans getting attacked on a plane (no other team seems to be doing things like this right now - Jose is trying to encourage the Spurs lads to get onto that tip as we speak, but they're not there yet). When Man City lose, they go full-on petulant in post-match interviews (see KDB after the Lyon game: another season, same story), and then go full on paranoid on social media (Laporte), then full on off piste on social media (Silva). They attack international team mates on international breaks. They racially abuse each other. But here's the key point. Eventually they miss open goals inexplicably in big games at clutch moments when the manager has previously stated that misses of that kind can never be forgiven...
What cascades down, etc etc?
The fans
The fans... well, we know about the fans, the influencers, the increasingly snide references to those of them who were around when they really, truly were shite. The 'What has Pep done for us lately?' tone after unprecedented domestic domination. The complete absence of joy in relation to any of the success they've experienced since Yaya Toure left them.
I'm rambling, but it feels like the tone from the top cascades down the club. If only their club had a different tone cascading down from the top, eh? Oh no, that's us. (We're very lucky and we should be very grateful!)
The culture and tone are straight up dysfunctional, and so the organisation, while it should dominate, fails to function to the level it should given the disparity in resources when compared with their competitors. Weirdly, PSG have similarities on the European stage. Who'd have thunk it?
It feels like it's inevitable the wheels will come off there to the extent they can, and they'll grow stranger and stranger as they develop. They'll still win loads of stuff of course, but it'll all feel like a bit of an out of body e
