THE DAWN OF A BLUE ERA
Glenn Hoddle and Oliver Holt on Pep’s champions
THE happy shrieks of the children in the playground at Divine Mercy RC Primary School drifted around on the bitter Manchester breeze last week. Once, this patch of land where the kids skipped and played tag was the Platt Lane End, its rows of long wooden benches sloping away from behind the goal at Maine Road.
A lad in a hoodie walked down Blue Moon Way, a street that rose from the ruins of the stadium. He did not know where the small monument that marked the site of the Maine Road centre circle was, he said. In fact, it seemed news to him that Manchester City had played here at all. ‘This is Moss Side, mate,’ he said, and walked on.
It is nearly 15 years since they demolished the old stadium, which means a generation of young people who do not remember that being a City fan once meant pain, self-deprecation and a lot of forbearance. A woman coming out of her neighbour’s house pointed the way. The centre spot is now in a landscaped communal garden.
There is not much to see. Sometimes, it feels as if we are ashamed of our football heritage and the way our game used to be. But there is at least a memorial stone and inscription. ‘ The centre spot,’ it says. ‘Heart of Manchester sport, music and culture 1923-2003. Maine Road, from Moss Side to the world.’
It was a nice thought. City produced some fine teams and great players before they moved away, but however much nostalgia infuses the memories of those of us who can still see Helen ringing her bell in the North Stand and sense the surges in the Kippax, City never shouted their message back then as loudly as they have broadcasted it to the country this season.
This season has felt like a new beginning for the club, more than any other season since it moved away from its old home. There have been other great leaps forward, particularly when the club was bought by Sheikh Mansour in 2008 and when City won their first titles under his ownership with Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini.
But there was always a fragility about those triumphs. They brought the club great highs, of course, and Sergio Aguero’s late, late goal to clinch the title in 2012 spawned both a classic gobbet of commentary by Martin Tyler and one of the most dramatic final day denouements there has ever been.
And yet there was never a sense of permanence about those achievements. On both occasions, City won the title and then fell back the following season. On both occasions, those triumphs felt like false starts. This season feels different. This season feels like the dawn of a new English football dynasty.
Yes, the twin Champions League humblings that they experienced at the hands of Liverpool rightly tempered some of the tributes paid to City and their manager, Pep Guardiola, after they clinched inched the Premier League title le with five games to spare pare when Manchester er United capitulated d by losing at home to West Brom last Sunday.
City fans do not mind too much about that. The Champions League exit was a shock but they will l be back next season n and will be among the favourites to win in i t. Their elimination does not wipe out the astonishing season their team has had.
It does not wipe out the memories of the breathtaking football they have played. It does not change the fact they will go 16 points clear of United if they beat Swansea today. It does not expunge the records they are breaking. Nor does it alter the importance of their achievement. City’s title victory under Guardiola is the most significant triumph in the domestic game since Sir Alex Ferguson won his first with United in 1993. That ushered in a new era in English football and when City clinched the championship last weekend, it promised to do the same. There is i no sense that this City C team will fall away. This is no not an ageing side. si They will strengthen s in t he summer. There will be no shortage of funds. They willw not sabot a get their own progress pr as Chelsea Che did spectacularly tacul after last season’s season triumph. And ther there is something else: this title feels special because of the way City have won it. It feels special because they have won it playing beautiful football that makes the soul sing. The way City play comes with risks. Maybe a little more pragmatism would have served them well on those European nights against Liverpool but with pragmatism, much of their magic would be lost.
City are so far ahead of the rest of their domestic challengers that it is difficult to see them being caught next season, although Liverpool’s performances against them and their own upward trajectory underlined the fact that Jurgen Klopp’s side is the most exciting and vibrant of the potential challengers.
City do not look like a collection of players who will slow down. It comes from the relentlessness of their manager. ‘The standards that he expects, he will not allow them to drop,’ City’s former star, Paul Lake, said last week at the Etihad. ‘I heard that in training before the Chelsea game last month, they had taken their foot off the gas a bit after the victories over Arsenal and he was in their faces.
‘There is a kind of madness to his intensity. There’s something forensic about it. It can take you aback if you think you are going to drop your levels and dictate how you play. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not happening, mate. And if you do drop your levels, away you go.’
Lake took some stick from United fans earlier this month after he was recorded at half time of the derby match at the Etihad waxing lyrical about City’s performance. United promptly scored three goals and delayed City’s title party and United supporters made sure Lake’s musings went viral.
Some City fans did not begrudge United that slice of glory. ‘That was us for the last 20 years,’ lifelong City supporter John Marshall told me. ‘Year after year, we knew we weren’t going to compete with United for the title. All we had was the chance of beating United in the Derby. So I know how they felt.’
Lake is a superb analyst of the game and is well-placed to put what City have achieved under Guardiola into context. An outstanding midfielder whose career was cut short by injury, Lake was a symbol of a club that became a hard luck story, a team whose fans were called ‘long-suffering’, a club that seemed destined to live out its existence in the shadow of United.
That has changed. Sheikh Mansour and City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak started the process and Mancini and Pellegrini furthered it. But it took the arrival of Guardiola to start the revolution at City and the wider English game.
Others crow when he stumbles but that is because they yearn for some sign of weakness and because
they would love him for their own. The football City have played this season is t he football Roman Abramovich has wanted to see since he saw United beat Real Madrid 4-3 in 2003 and bought Chelsea. It is the fantasy football everyone craves.
‘It was a revolution when Pep arrived,’ said Lake. ‘It’s the intelligence of the football that I had never seen before. We talk about the fans being the 12th man but to me, Guardiola’s philosophy is the 12th man. It is as if the game slows down. It is as if they are seeing it in slow motion, like a fly to a human. When it slows down, there is still that quality. We rest in possession. That is something that this country has never seen. Think about that.
‘When someone comes from a different country, when he bares his football soul, people that are openminded and innovative and excited by different ideas and philosophies will buy into that and embrace it. But the football community at large, the fan bases, they don’t like change. There is scepticism. It’s the told-you-so culture.
‘Change creates fear but you need to give it a chance. What you see now, creating overloads into wide areas, trying to play through as often as you can, playing out through the back, the 4-3-3, so many people were saying “it will never happen, it won’t work in this country, it’s destined to fail”.
‘He has had to fight against the culture of English football and yet still be true to his identity and his beliefs and understand that he is going to learn a hell of a lot and that there has to be change from him as well. If you love true football in its purest sense, there is no one really that can criticise Guardiola in terms of that idea.
‘ Yes, we have got fantastic players, and yes, we have got lots of money but the exciting thing for me is that he has brought change, he has allowed people to be critical and have their moment and say “this is not our DNA, this is boring, this is not our identity” and he has pressed on. To manage all that change is just breathtaking.’
The process of change is still continuing. City have flaws. The Liverpool defeats showed that. In a way, that’s the daunting thing for the rest of the league: City are a country mile ahead of their nearest domestic pursuers and there is still room for improvement.
Roy Keane, the former United captain, was right when he chal- lenged their claim to greatness, too. City’s season has been stunning but they need to defend their title to begin pressing their claim for a place in the pantheon of the best English sides. They need to win the Champions League, too.
But none of that lessens what City has achieved. If you do not like watching this City team play, you are tired of football. And you are tired of innovation. And you are tired of adventure. And you are tired of beauty. Or you are just a United fan tired of the terrible din from the noisy neighbours.
‘There is a sense of joy that this is a sky blue City shirt that I’m seeing playing this football,’ Lake said. ‘You look back with fondness on where we’ve been as a club but we have been to the depths.
‘But when you see City so many points ahead at the top of the league and being regarded as one of the most exciting teams in world football, ever, and it’s my team… you turn up and you are seeing this.
‘It’s like you’re having this wonderful dream and somebody’s given you a slap around the face and said: “No, no, this is really happening.” When people are talking about the best football anyone has ever seen and they’re talking about City, well, it can almost bring you to tears.’