Media thread 2022/23

[Gesario]

This guy is such an embaressment to me as a Dubliner, please be advised this is not your typical football fan over here. Although i do really enjoy the ovbious pain and bitterness, must be really eating him up inside.

This guy is an odious utter shithouse embarrassment and needs to get out of his mams broom cupboard and maybe one day visit his teams ground The cnut

 

[waspish]

the guy has got 17 replies, why is he even on here, ive said it all along, people go out of their way to highlight the bad press and it waters down what actually is a problem with the uk media

Correct I never go looking for the negative I see it on here and on social that people post or retweet.

 

[Lemon7277]

Mr Harris seems to of taken it in all in his stride with his piece on the sky news app..nothing but congratulations sent our way NOT

We're still STATE FUNDED and have now spent 2 BILLION (was 1 billion last week) in our quest for glory

No home grown players starting the final unlike the Trafford red Sox got a little shoe horn in

Guy is some feckin whopper

 

[Segga]

Breaking news on my sky news app, Rob Harris in all his glory. What a absolute chopper.

 

[SilverFox2]

Beautiful isn’t it. To quote Keane, “You’re aching, you’re breaking and I can see the pain your eyes. Cause everybody’s changing and I don’t know why.”

Can’t we just freeze the world in 1999? Sorry Rob, no.

Frankly I enjoyed Mr Keane after our PL victory listening to our captain explain how he worked within a team then felt compelled to tell him what a great player he was.

He knows how good we are.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

I'd love to see this thread locked and R.I.P added to the title?

It's over. There is literally nothing they can say or do which should cause us any more rage.

The world is a big fucking place and these deluded cunts aren't known outside their groupthink bubble.

They lost. City won. Don't give oxygen to people who stamp their feet and bark at the moon.

The people who run our club have our backs, work with the best in their fields, they don't concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.

 

[The Viking]

This was a very significant day in the history of Manchester City, and a very significant day in the history of football. Rodri’s 68th-minute strike brought City’s first Champions League and made it only the second side in English history to complete the treble with a 1–0 win against Inter Milan. But as nation states invest more and more into sport this was also a red-letter day: The first time a state-run club has won Europe’s premier competition.

How much did this mean to City? It mattered enough for Sheikh Mansour, the club owner and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, to turn up for his first game since a 3–0 win over Liverpool in August 2010. His brother, Mohamed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, was alongside him in the VIP area. This was evidently a great day for Emirati sport.

For Abu Dhabi, for City, this was the culmination of the project. And for football there is reason for unease. The success of a petroclub has been expected for some time— presaged, even, by the two Champions League titles Chelsea won under Roman Abramovich, an oligarch acting with state-backing—but that doesn’t lessen the significance of this moment. It’s a long time since football was a noble or innocent game, but this is a further step into the darkness, not only because of the human rights records of the states in question but because the states are essentially ungovernable by the football authorities.

Inevitably there must be longer-term concerns. How sustainable, really, is this? Football is now operating beyond the usual laws of the market, the state-run clubs sustained only by generous sponsorship deals with other state-run entities. The rest cannot compete and will not be able to until the states lose interest. It happened with China, which has caused problems for Inter, which is co-owned by Suning. But with Saudi Arabia stepping up its interest, effectively nationalizing the four biggest clubs, buying Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kanté to join Cristiano Ronaldo in the Saudi league and vying to host the 2030 World Cup, there is little sign of Gulf enthusiasm for football waning any time soon.

Fifteen years and billions of dollars on from their 2008 takeover, Sheikh Mansour and Abu Dhabi have achieved through Manchester City what they set out to do: establish the tiny emirate on the Persian Gulf as a major player in international sports.

The purpose of this has been threefold: to diversify its oil-dependent economy, bolster its geopolitical standing in a volatile region surrounded by powerful neighbors, and associate it in the global consciousness with glamor and success rather than being an autocratic monarchy presiding over well-documented human rights abuses. The phenomenon is often referred to as sportswashing.

Just as with Qatar's ownership of Paris Saint-Germain, its hosting of the 2022 World Cup and its ongoing pursuit of Manchester United, and just as with Saudi Arabia's purchase of Newcastle United and effective takeover of professional golf, the ultimate purpose isn't to promote and support elite sport itself; that's just a means to an end.

2022-23 will be remembered as the season when sportswashing won. Lionel Messi won WC in Doha, played for a Qatari club & shills for Saudi tourism. Pep Guardiola won UCL in Erdogan’s Turkey, manages an Emirati club & was an ambassador for Qatar. And that can't but taint their genius.

It's behind a Paywall...

When Manchester City lifted their first Champions League trophy in Istanbul on Saturday night, the Gulf’s rapid takeover of European football’s commanding heights was complete. City’s owner, watching his team in a competitive match for the first time since 2010, is the Emirati royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. His Qatari neighbours hosted this winter’s World Cup. Saudi clubs have spent the past few months signing some of the world’s best players, including Cristiano Ronaldo. Meanwhile, in the week of City’s triumph, Saudi Arabia effectively took control of golf’s PGA tour.

No region outside western Europe has ever had such a grip on football’s shiniest baubles. Many fans lament this — partly because of the Gulf monarchies’ mistreatment of women, migrants, LGBT people and dissidents, and partly from a feeling that football shouldn’t be for sale. There are still attempts to contest the Gulf’s dominance. The Premier League has referred City to an independent commission, which will review more than 100 allegations of financial rule-breaking — charges that the club denies. But football faces a dilemma. Gulf money has made the contest at the top of the European game much more exciting than it would have been otherwise.

Look at how Emirati funds lifted Manchester City from joke status into football’s trendsetting team. Every City fan in Istanbul over the age of 30 could remember the years of stumbles. In 1998-1999, the team spent an embarrassing season in English football’s third tier. City’s fans often treated their club almost as the footballing branch of Monty Python. They waved inflatable plastic bananas, and sang, surreally, “We’re not really here.”

That old City survives only in the form of songs, dances and memories. On the field, the Emiratis transformed the club. Their money bought players who won trophies, in the process wiping out the old football cliché that held: “You can’t buy a winning team.”

In fact, if you want a winning team, you have to buy it, with salaries and usually with transfer fees, too. The ugly truth of football economics is that the only way for Cinderella to become a princess is to be bought by a prince.

City are following in the oil-fuelled slipstream of Chelsea, who were bought by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2003. The two clubs between them won 12 of the last 19 English titles. They are also the only European clubs since 1999 to win a Champions League for the first time. Oil money has allowed two upstarts to beat the established powers.

English football could have taken a different route, rejecting Gulf money. It could have followed Germany, with its “50 + 1 rule”, which states that club members must hold a majority of voting rights. That stops outsiders from taking over clubs. The rule is often praised by football traditionalists. However, it means that German football has no oil-fuelled upstarts. The consequence is that the German club with historically the highest revenues, Bayern Munich, faces no serious challengers, and has won 11 league titles in a row. The rule also means that no other club from Europe’s biggest economy has a hope of winning the Champions League, whereas three different English clubs have won in just the last five seasons. Now yet another oil-fuelled challenger may be emerging: Saudi-owned Newcastle United, freshly qualified for the Champions League.

Gulf money will probably keep shaping football for a while yet. Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani is bidding to buy Manchester United from the Glazer family, and Saudi Arabia may bid to host the 2030 World Cup, perhaps jointly with Greece and Egypt.

The monarchies’ spending on football is often explained as a cunning plan to “sportswash” their reputations, or as an “investment” to diversify their economies away from oil and gas — even though football clubs typically lose money, especially given the salaries that the Gulf royals pay.

In fact, there is a simpler explanation for why these people went into football: it’s fun. It makes their friends and neighbours jealous. It’s an affordable hobby for billionaires. And they face almost no competition from their peers elsewhere. Abramovich and other Russian oligarchs have been expelled from the sport since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, few Chinese ever entered, while most Americans who buy into football want to make profits from their clubs, and therefore balk at paying the salaries that would allow their teams to compete with the likes of City.

So European football has become a status competition between Gulf monarchies, with City showing the potential to build a dynasty. The men’s team coach, Pep Guardiola, in situ since 2016, has constructed one of the great teams of football history, even if they didn’t show it in Istanbul. This season they have won the Treble of Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup. They attack, they are tactically innovative, and the current squad is young enough to remain dominant. Early on Sunday morning, exhausted in triumph, Guardiola warned Real Madrid, who have won 14 Champions Leagues to City’s one: “We are on our way. If they fall asleep, we will be catching them.” That may not have been a joke.

 

[The Viking]

 

[RayCTID]

It's behind a Paywall...

What a big stinking pile of Arse Gravy

 

[NatalieM008]

Do you know something? Closing this thread was actually a great idea.