And so the season ends with doomsday in the Premier League, and the race for the name still continues until the last day.
The trophy will be sent to Manchester, adorned with the now-familiar sky blue ribbons, but a reproduction will be sent to north London, with red ribbons, should a dramatic twist in the past see Arsenal crowned champions for the first time in 20 years.
It’s a desirable prospect for neutrals, for example Arsenal. But in reality we all know how it ends:
The city’s tale of good fortune has become. . . complicated.
How could it not be confusing when Amnesty International described Sheikh Mansour’s ownership of the club as “one of football’s most brazen attempts to ‘whitewash’ the deeply tarnished symbol of a country (the United Arab Emirates) through the glamour of the game?” How can it be otherwise when the Premier League has referred City to an independent regulatory commission for 115 alleged breaches of its monetary regulations over a nine-season period?
Advertising
In the nine years of research, City won three Premier League titles.
They have won fourth, fifth and sixth place in the four years between when the Premier League launched an investigation into the case (covered by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2018) and, after overcoming a series of legal hurdles, it was referred to court. Regulatory Commission.
They won a seventh last season, 3 months after the fees were imposed on them.
They are the overwhelming favourites to clinch eighth place ahead of the as-yet-unspecified time when Masters insists a regulatory commission will nonetheless hear the case.
And it’s such a confusing case (not as straightforward as Everton’s PSR and Nottingham Forest’s breaches, some would like to equate them) that few would be surprised if City won a ninth league title before it was all sorted out one day. .
GO FURTHER
A year later, why haven’t the charges against Manchester City been resolved?
How can it be otherwise when his dominant club of that era has had such accusations about him for so long?Whether your view is sympathetic or hostile towards City, what does this scenario say about the Premier League and – a hot topic of those days: its ability to regulate its clubs and competitions?
Its president, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, admitted as much last June, stating that the fact that the club has been “characterized”, throughout the initial and subsequent allegations, “is very frustrating because it takes away a lot of the wonderful pictures that are being made at this club. “
That’s done. To be sure, the praise for City’s achievements is tempered by the allegations that have plagued the club for so long.
At every turn there’s this warning, this indictment that none of this — this phenomenal organization of players, under this phenomenal coach, hired through a phenomenal sporting operation — would be imaginable without regulations being damaged along the way.
Advertising
City questioned the context of the emails published in Der Spiegel, but also their veracity. Above all, he questioned the legitimacy of the proceedings against them, stating that the club had faced an “organised and transparent attempt to damage (their) reputation”.
Undoubtedly, the club’s reputation has been tarnished. Even when they managed to overturn a two-season suspension of the UEFA festival in 2020, the verdict of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is not pleasant to read.
Some of the fees imposed on City were set, but others were simply time-barred. The content of the questionable emails has been questioned. They were accused of “blatant disregard” for UEFA’s investigation, accused of failing to cooperate with UEFA for failing to provide truly thorough evidence and fined £8. 8 million ($10. 1 million).
They have shown, as Guardiola said last year, that “we were absolutely innocent”.
But does this deserve to have an effect on the vision we have for the team?Is it possible to differentiate between ownership, executive management, and football team?Is it possible to have serious considerations about a) sports laundering and the developing phenomenon of football?clubs used as geopolitical tools, and b) alleged monetary violations, while maintaining a deep admiration for Guardiola and an organization of players who have reached such common heights over the ensuing seven seasons?
When you make such a suggestion, you tend to annoy almost everyone.
Question the club’s monetary arrangements, or whether it’s healthy for a club to be owned by the UAE vice-president, and you’ll accuse them of having a calendar opposed to the club or even opposed to the Middle East. Salut City’s brilliance and you’ll be accused of being partners with their owners. Do either, even at the same time, and the complaint will come from both sides.
Advertising
But how can we appreciate Guardiola and an organisation of players who, over the course of the last seven seasons, have achieved degrees of consistency and brilliance that are arguably unrivalled in the history of English football?
It’s not just about the number of league titles. It’s about the number of goals, the number of wins, the number of editions. . . and at a time when, thanks to its unparalleled publicity and monetary strength, the Premier League nevertheless lived up to its claim to become the most powerful in Europe.
And beyond the natural numbers, there is the technical genius and ingenuity of their football.
There have been many wonderfully well-rounded players and groups in the Premier League, but never before has there been so much technical sophistication from full-back to striker. Until Guardiola’s arrival on those shores in 2016, and indeed during his first season here, there was a wide range of people who have come to the fore. I trust that his dogmatic confidence in the natural ownership of football is untenable amid the blood and thunder of English football.
A private point of view, for what it’s worth: the first two winning seasons under Guardiola were a purer, more entertaining, more exciting and more admirable team than the last model, built around Erling Haaland’s centre of attention, a more physical midfield and with centre-backs repurposed where the full-backs were. They have been more formidable in the Premier League, even if good luck in the Champions League has proved elusive.
In the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons they won 32 games, completing with one hundred and 98 points, respectively. Last season they won with 28 wins and 89 points. This season can finish with a maximum of 28 wins and 91 points. Despite Haaland’s presence, they have also scored fewer goals than they did in 2017-18. The fluid football of the first two victorious campaigns has given way to something more controlled and less controlled. electrifying.
But they are brilliant, formidable, remarkably focused and consistent, with a few exceptions, over the seven-plus seasons in which the team has evolved.
Advertising
Ederson, Kyle Walker, John Stones, Bernardo Silva and Kevin De Bruyne (and Phil Foden, albeit on the sidelines in the early years) were there throughout. Rodri and others have excelled since joining more recently. For all their technical excellence, their most underrated quality, as a collective, is their resilience.
If – if – the club ends up being found guilty and sanctioned for accounting breaches, whether it’s a handful of them or all 115, it will of course cast a huge shadow over that golden era.
But this is not, as some claim, a Lance Armstrong scenario.
In cycling, an individual sport in which good luck is tied to a cyclist’s strength and endurance, Armstrong consciously filled his body with EPO and human growth hormone as a component of what the U. S. Anti-Doping Agency has implemented. . Described as “the most sophisticated, professionalised and fortunate doping programme the sport has ever seen”.
It’s very different from being charged with violating currency regulations and failing to cooperate with an investigation. If there are parallels, they don’t go very far.
One of them is the most blatant act of cheating in games. The other is whether a club has provided accurate monetary data in a game that in the past existed with no spending limits.
Any club found guilty of breaching those monetary regulations will be punished accordingly, as Everton and Forest have been. The accusations against City are much more serious and much more numerous. But it’s hard to be too prudish about it. Even in the worst-case scenario. In this case, there would be a huge difference between what Arsene Wenger called “monetary doping” and actual doping.
And while that’s an entirely different question, City enthusiasts are entitled to wonder why spending regulation has suddenly become a fear for dominant clubs in England and Europe in the late 2000s. This doesn’t clarify the right or wrong of your case, but it is a reminder that the principles of Financial Fair Play have not been accurately etched into stone tablets.
GO FURTHER
If Barcelona can’t sign Messi and PSG can, what does that tell us after ten years of FFP?
One might be tempted to say that all that money has made good luck inevitable for City, but Guardiola is right to point out this week that Manchester United and Chelsea have spent similar sums in recent years and are “not here”. They’re a little bit halfway there.
In other words, cash alone is not enough to explain City’s enduring excellence. This money has made it possible to build a top-level football operation (which Manchester United’s hierarchy belatedly thought of trying to replicate). It’s an environment where Guardiola feels he has all the ingredients to succeed and has helped so many players – and rarely the top-tier ‘superstar’ signings favoured at Old Trafford over the past decade] take their game to another level.
Advertising
Emails published via Der Spiegel recommend some boldness in City’s squads in the early 2010s and many accusations revolve around whether the club acted with “the utmost intelligent faith”. But no one accuses Guardiola or his players of acting in bad faith. Why deserve the way we see men (and even women) in boots?
Of course, it’s unlikely that Guardiola would have even taken a look at City if the club hadn’t been built so impressively in the years that its accounts are under investigation. And just as impressive and tough as the other players running in the stadium. Although it is publicity, the very nature of the accusations against City means that there is a natural tendency to say “yes, but. . . “when the club announced last June that it had overtaken Real Madrid as the highest value mark in the sport.
But the Champions League victory in Istanbul a few days earlier was much less difficult to celebrate. Isn’t it conceivable to appreciate and praise a team (the genius of a coach and an organization of players whose skill is matched only by their candidacy) while asking the establishment?Or, to put it another way: is it conceivable to consult an establishment while admiring and praising a team?
Although this Sunday awaits the day of reckoning in the Premier League, everyone knows that the real doomsday for Manchester City is halfway there. It is there – the accusations of sportswashing, the accusations of Der Spiegel, the 115 accusations – that they constitute the prism through which the expansion of a fashionable sports empire is inevitably perceived.
But the team? They are a brilliant team that does not deserve any praise yet. It’s a tale of two cities, a town of two histories. It’s only natural to recognize both.
GO FURTHER
Manchester City’s dominance distorts fandom
(Top photos: Getty Images)