This display alone is worth a line or two of unfettered praise, uncluttered by the grudging prose that has met the club’s progress so often in the past. Real, who had refused to collapse at the same stage last year, were swept aside in their own tournament by a tidal wave of precision power football. The first three played a robust part in the defrocking of Real Madrid in an extraordinary semi-final of the Champions League, a game that crowned City as something extraordinary. They pay clear testament to, whisper it, wise spending, excellent scouting and astute team building. City’s planet-sized chequebook has bought £14m Manuel Akanji, £20m Julian Alvarez, £24m Ilkay Gundogan and, before them, £6m Vincent Kompany. You splash enough cash, the saying goes, and the golden gates open wide for you. City, of course, are in another league above that, a place of Lamborghinis and caviar, champagne and gold-crusted balti pies. The Premier League is awash with the stuff, to the degree that Brazilian starlets choose Bournemouth ahead of Milan, Fulham instead of Bayern. It was always going to.Įveryone in football has money now. People felt sorry for the legions of bedraggled and clearly deranged people who insisted on following their ridiculous antics across land and sea (the “sea” part in those days restricted to quaint pre-season drubbings by Celtic in Dublin and not Istanbul for a Champions League final).īut money has put paid to that. So awful as to be harmless enough to wish well.
City became many people’s “second club” so dopey and lethargic, pathetic and stained were they.
The butt of every joke, a disaster zone sprayed liberally with a brand of trophy-repellant so strong, everything that came into contact with it simply detonated.
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