Wrong to say City ruling ‘not good for football’
Manchester City and Liverpool are fantastically run clubs, with top-class managers and brilliant players who are playing some of the best football we have seen in England.
Can we put aside all allegiances and agree on that, or am I being too idealistic?
I know it is beyond the capacity of the most blinkered supporters to tolerate and respect others’ triumphs. Some prefer perpetual resentment, shifting between criticism of their own club’s failure and hunting conspiracy theories as to why their hated rivals win.
Referees’ bias, tapping up or hoarding players, buttering up the Football Association disciplinary panel, breaking financial fair play rules, and preferential treatment from Var. We have heard all kinds of petty nonsense over the decades, pathetic attempts to distract from the fact every champion deserves the crown.
The envy Manchester City have experienced since the Abu Dhabi takeover is not new.
Serial winners always risk unpopularity beyond their fan base. Poisoned minds must find a reason to dislike them, what they represent, and the way their fans have the audacity to savour their victories. Manchester United fans know what I am talking about. They were the side everyone wanted to beat in the 1990s and 2000s. Sir Alex
Ferguson revelled in it. Chelsea fans know what I am talking about. They spent years railing against the idea their title wins were less worthy because they were bankrolled by Roman Abramovich. Jose Mourinho would be wise to remember that when commenting on the City case.
No great side of the modern age has been constructed without significant investment. Everyone involved in professional football understands this.
Leicester’s title win is the closest we have come to a Premier League fairy tale, but even that had massive investment from Thai owners behind it. Leicester’s title was a sporting, rather than economic miracle.
The taunts about City’s success being “bought” have been more extreme, backed by the governing bodies’ prolonged investigations.
That inevitably means most responses to the ruling of the Court of Arbitration for
Sport against City’s Uefa ban for financial fair play are defined by club loyalties and vested interest. I have said from day one that current FFP rules are a contradiction, focusing too much on well-run clubs who can afford massive investment and not enough on those financially mismanaged. That is why I do not agree with Jurgen Klopp when he said the Cas verdict was “not good for football”.
If City qualified for consecutive Champions League finals and strolled to the title as world and European champions, he might have a point. Liverpool have proved there is no cause to fear the end of serious competition.
City have won four titles in 12 years since their takeover. Three were on the last day of the season. Only 2018 was a canter. City’s brilliance over 38 games is no obstacle to others winning 90 points.
A higher threshold for winning the title has been set, but that should elevate overall Premier League quality if everyone else focuses solely on successfully applying their own methods rather than being preoccupied with what City are doing.
City and Chelsea have been good for English football. The top four have become a top six. If others create a top eight, even better. If Newcastle United are bought and new owners plough money into the North East, why begrudge their fans hope after so much despair?
If the neighbours win the lottery, you cannot tell them it is unfair of them to fill their garage with Ferraris because everyone else in the street still has to get by with a second-hand car. Money is fundamental to success, but money alone does not make you successful. Look at Manchester United. They have spent more than City recently and have been nowhere near the title for seven years.
The fear that clubs such as City and Paris St-germain will overspend to dominate European football has not materialised, either. Neither have won the Champions League yet.
Yes, the French league is a non-contest, but no more so than the Bundesliga. How can a rival match the self-sustaining, revenue-generating commercial power base of Bayern Munich without first having finances to build a team who can beat them and lure the next generation of supporters? Spanish football would be less predictable if a billionaire bought a mid-table club and stopped Barcelona and Real Madrid turning La Liga into a two-horse race. I am on board with City’s fury at the Spanish clubs’ posturing, those clubs carrying on for years as if they have a divine right to sign who they like.
So yes, while I think there should be constant assessments of how to protect competitiveness, I disagree with FFP in its current form – and find the efforts to use it to belittle City’s success ridiculous.
But disagreeing with the rules is no justification for obstructing investigators examining if a club have broken them.
City’s gleeful response to a reduced punishment of £9 million based on technical deficiencies in the disciplinary process exposed the depth of their persecution complex.
Upon hearing the verdict, they reacted with the joy you expect when a club win a trophy, Pep Guardiola posting a selfie before setting his sights on Uefa for trying to implement rules and rival clubs for pressuring the governing body to do so.
The most laughable image is of City being a lily-white organisation subject to attack from a hostile cabal of eight elite clubs. For the record, one of the eight are Burnley.
I am not sure how City, or those pleading on City’s behalf, can make the argument they are revolutionaries fighting the system and keep a straight face. Oil-rich sovereign nations are not, and never will be, “plucky underdogs”.
Add to that the content of an email from a City lawyer joking about the death of one of Uefa’s overseers and, whatever the rights and wrongs of how those documents were obtained and leaked, you find yourself in danger of losing balance on that moral high ground.
In summary, the outrage towards City and City’s outrage is pure tribalism.
It demeans everyone when the juvenile spats of social or even mainstream media are encouraged and fed by the clubs.
City and Liverpool have shown there are alternative ways to build a title-winning club and each is comfortable with how they have gone about it.
There is much about City I am sure Liverpool wish they could have. There is much about Liverpool I am sure City wish they could have.
As world-class teams, they have plenty in common. Unfortunately, it seems neither side will ever admit that. That does not make one better than the other, just different. For as long as that is the case and a variety of clubs can challenge for the title doing it their own way – and for the moment that remains the case – football will be enhanced, rather than denigrated by the next big spenders.