We reached the summit a few minutes before midnight. It was nothing like Manchester City dreamed of, not a fantastic climax of staggering and complex movements, but with something more arbitrary and more human. Minor mistakes that were nothing more than technical flaws were openly exposed in matches and punished immediately. A gateway between one day and the next.
A decade and a half after the shocking takeover of City by an investment firm led by UAE Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, football’s most ambitious project finally finds its ultimate form. rice field. inevitable conclusion.
City had long established themselves as a dominant force in English football. He has won five of the last six Premier League titles. He also won the FA Cup this season. Now, at the final hurdle, they have defeated the resistance of Europe’s last great veterans, Inter Milan, standing in their way. Winning the Champions League was the only trophy we hadn’t had yet, and the moment we wanted more than any other was just around the corner.
As the brilliance rained down and fireworks soared into the sky, Sheikh Mansour (this was the second time he’d seen the team he owned live) and his brother, the ruler of the nation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. With both Al Nahyan watching, UAE and Manchester City can finally be called European champions.
In fact, more than that, City are now just the second English team and one of the few in all of Europe to win the domestic and European treble, football’s final challenge and a testament to football’s true greatness. One of the selected clubs. This is exactly what Abu Dhabi envisioned 15 years ago when they bought midweight side City and turned it into a powerhouse.
Given the size of the investment, it’s no surprise that the company has achieved that goal. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Soccer is a sport, but it is also a business. By conservative estimates, the Manchester City project, designed into a palace on the Persian Gulf for reasons that had little or nothing to do with sport, cost billions of dollars.
Nothing is left to chance. Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger once said City were dangerous because they had both “gasoline and ideas”. Having money is one thing. Knowing how to use it is another thing entirely.
City definitely does. We have some of the best training facilities in the world. It features a state-of-the-art academy, a global network of sister teams, and a bespoke squad of players hand-picked by a large expert recruiting team, regardless of cost. There you have Pep Guardiola, the best coach in the world, the intergalactic brain of football, and he has everything he could want.
City’s successes include not playing by the same rules as other players and using the UAE’s sponsorship network to circumvent first UEFA and then the Premier League’s financial regulations. There are still suspicions that there is something more behind the
Of course, the club denies all of this, claiming it’s just a plot of jealous and blackmailed people. The magazine says it has comprehensive irrefutable evidence to prove its legitimacy. It is not yet in production. UEFA’s complaint was dismissed. It may be years before we know if all 115 Premier League teams are up to the task.
City has done it all for this purpose, in some cases or not. Not just to win, not just a rarely seen form of dominance, but to overthrow the established regime of European football. order.
In the years to come, the story of how the last step was taken will be all but forgotten. In fact, when the final whistle blew on Saturday night and Guardiola and his staff stormed off the bench, a sense of euphoria, disbelief and, more than a little relief, the City players and their fans This kind of thing would have gone out of my head. He was brought into the club for this express purpose. It certainly took longer than he had hoped.
He won’t dwell long on the nature of his victory, his third Champions League trophy and his second European treble as a manager. He may be a perfectionist, but he wouldn’t mind at all that City found only a few cracks in Inter’s armor – it was the perfect Federico Dimarco leaving Bernardo Silva free. Then there was the slip when Rodri landed a solid shot into the corner – or by City standards, it was a dominating performance in a dominating final.
But there was something about it that applied perfectly. The arrival of City’s opponents Inter Milan in Istanbul was a bit of a surprise. At heart, he was expected to play the role of a sacrificial lamb who would be battered unceremoniously by a City team that seemed superior to him in every conceivable way.
City are England’s default champions. Inter are the third strongest team in Italy. City own football’s T1000 striker, Erling Haaland, sent from the future to wipe out all records. Inter’s squad is old even by the gerontological standards of Serie A. From most perspectives, the final was a discord, a queue and a fait accompli.
However, conquering European football turned out to be much more difficult than Abu Dhabi had imagined. After a while the Premier League may have been at City’s mercy, but the Champions League has always been at the mercy of it.
So it’s no wonder that Inter’s stubbornness and conviction stopped City’s stride. There was no desperate rearguard action, no black and blue Helmsdeep. Instead, Simone Inzaghi’s Inter side used their wealth of experience to frustrate City in every conceivable way.
threw a free kick. It remained in possession. Indulge in petty fouls and take the rhythm of the game. He drew the pace from City’s formidable attack and delivered a sting. At times it remained still, reluctant to be pulled out of its position. Proudly, Intel made the ugliest game possible.
And it was all perfect or near perfect. Guardiola was furious at the touchline. “Relax, relax,” he barked at his players, scratching his cheeks with his hands and pointing out as many of the kettle’s flaws as possible. There is more to football than just beauty, skill and imposing. There are grit and grizzle, gnarled and noose, but Inter had them all in abundance.
But in the end it just wasn’t enough. That was the story of Manchester City over the last 15 years, told from everyone else’s perspective. nothing was enough. After all, the city cannot be stopped.
It would be unfair to say that Inter’s concentration has waned, even for a moment. DiMarco simply put one of his feet in the wrong place. He tried to intercept the pass but his body shape was wrong. he stumbled. Silva was absent. His cross is diverted back to Rodri’s path, and in that moment the arbitrary and human resistance of Inter is defeated, thereby breaking down the last bulwark of the great old men, the traditional aristocracy of European football. gone.
Manchester City, as usual, finally knocked down its doors. A whistle blew. Glitter fell. Fireworks exploded. And in the midst of that celebration, one day ended and another began.
