Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Love turns to hate for teams who dominate football, but City’s honeymoon will outlast Liverpool, united & Chelsea’s
THE thing about teams who dominate in this country is neutrals quickly tire of the superlatives and the fawning.
In the 70s and 80s when most trophies headed to Anfield, Norwich City’s fanzine was called “Liverpool Are On The Tele Again” ref lecting the nation’s resentment at the adoration lavished on them.
The next decade-dominating, trophy-winning machine, Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, drew similar levels of jealousy, spawning a badge worn by millions who couldn’t bear their superiority : ABU – Anyone But United.
And when Roman Abramovich began to sweep all before him the backlash was intense, fuelled by the arrogance of Jose Mourinho and the feeling Chelsea were at the forefront of attracting a new breed of shallow fan who were in it for the glory. The plastic flags didn’t help, to be fair.
The truth i s, we have an unhealthy, or healthy, depending on your taste, distrust of success stories and it doesn’t take long for the applause to turn into a desire for them to fail. Which is why it will be intriguing to see when the tide will turn against the team who are set to dominate for the foreseeable future, Manchester City.
With a 16-point lead in mid-march threatening to turn the Premier League into the Scottish Premiership, the resentment should be surfacing, especially with the obscene amounts of cash the Sheikhs have thrown at them.
But it feels like there could be a longer honeymoon than usual. There isn’t the same enmity towards Sheikh Mansour’s City that Abramovich’s Chelsea generated. Maybe that’s because they’ve never had the sense of entitlement that appeared very quickly under Mourinho.
Maybe it’s to do with Pep Guardiola. The man who created in Barcelona the most exciting side everyone who didn’t see the Brazil team of 1970 can remember, is building again on the same lines and the clinical beauty that’s emerging is a pleasure to behold. Or maybe it ’s because outsiders suspect City fans of a certain age, riddled with decades of insecurity and gallows humour, are still waiting to wake up from this Lottery-winning dream.
I ’m guessing there were quite a few of those old fans making their way back from Stoke on Monday night thinking back 20 years and feeling a cold shiver down their spine before pinching themselves. They ’ ll have remembered being slumped i n that ground in May 1998 after beating Stoke 5-2 but being relegated into the third tier after Port Vale won at Huddersfield, thinking the future could not be bleaker.
That their once-great club, now filled with journeymen players picked by journeymen managers, and financially a joke compared to their allconquering neighbours, were heading towards the abyss.
They could never have imagined that 10 years later they’d be taken over by the United Arab Emirates and 20 years on they’d leave the same Stoke stadium two wins away from wrapping up the title with eight games left, enabling them to concentrate on becoming champions of Europe.
But that is where they are, and anyone who witnessed their misery as they floundered for decades in the shadow of Old T Trafford would have a h hard heart to beg grudge them their joy.
History tells us t their dominance will o only be temporary and eventually another t team will take over. B But the attraction of C City’s story is it gives hope to fans of all those historic teams who have drifted into mediocrity, to never stop believing. Because, as that two-decade road from Stoke proves, fate really can be surreal.