Shirt off your back ... Pairoj Piempongsant and Sulaiman al-Fahim (R).
'City 'til I buy'
By Simon Hill, Fox Sports
September 04, 2008
IT'S official. The world has gone totally, utterly mad.
In transit from Sydney to Eindhoven for the upcoming Socceroos friendly via London, I missed all the hullabaloo regarding Manchester City’s incredible takeover by the unfortunately named “Abu Dhabi United” group - but boy, did I play catch-up when I hit the tarmac at Heathrow!
There it was in black and white - my beloved club, owned by an Arab sheikh, and Robinho - ROBINHO for goodness sake - signed from Real Madrid for £32.5million ($65m)!
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Is this really my boyhood team? The club where I used to sit on hard wooden benches in the old Platt Lane end, set amidst the scruffy backstreets of Moss Side? Can it be true, that the club that once purchased - as its big summer signing - Jim Tolmie, a basement buy from the football equivalent of Aldi, now shops at Harrods?
In fact, even that’s a poor analogy. Several years ago, Mohammed Al Fayed, the Egyptian grocer who owns Harrods, breezed into Fulham, promising to turn them into the “Manchester United of the south” - nowadays, he is more Big Issue than big-time in the dizzy world of the Premier League.
So, are we City fans happy at this news? Of course we are!
Who wouldn’t want their own trillionaire to bankroll their club towards the sort of success that only exists - for us - in sepia-tinged photographs? With that sort of money behind us, how can we fail?
Yet lurking at the back of my mind is the sort of uneasy feeling that perhaps only City fans will really understand.
It all boils down to this. How on earth will we deal with success, should it arrive?
City has always been the sort of club that exists outside of the square. When teams such as Oldham and Tranmere were having their once-in-a-blue-moon trips to Wembley, we were consoling ourselves by waving inflatable bananas, and singing melancholy songs about er….well, blue moons.
While other clubs were building state-of-the-art stadiums post-Hillsborough, City were adding lego pieces to the ageing Maine Road. One temporary structure was so open to the elements, it became known as the “Gene Kelly Stand” - so-called because the fans were left “singing in the rain.” It was left to Manchester City Council to gift us our new stadium - known affectionately as the “Council House” but soon to be renamed “Middle East-lands.”
How many other clubs would hold a celebratory dinner to commemorate 30 years without a trophy? Yet that’s what City did in 2006, clinking glasses to toast the balding, 50-something Dennis Tueart, scorer of the 1976 League Cup Final winner against Newcastle.
City’s lack of success has become an article of faith - a grim reality, born stoically and with great humour, by those of us for whom being relatively crap has been a lifelong experience. We may have craved something better, but misery has become a comfortable bedfellow.
But what now?
For years, we’ve taunted United fans for their relentless pursuit of the dollar and ridiculed Chelsea’s “nouveau riche” rise to the gentry. Now, all of a sudden, we’re part of it.
Will the City of Manchester Stadium become a tourist epicentre a-la Old Trafford? Will Japanese day-trippers stand for photos next to the Joe Mercer mosaic? Will the new owners rotate the pitch to face Mecca?
It’s all rather absurd, but this is what the Premier League has become post-Abramovich - a world league in everything but name.
The purchase of City has - predictably - caused some brows to furrow, particularly here in Australia, where anything that smacks of English power (however tenuous that link may be these days) is about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.
But they would do well to remember the following things.
Firstly, it was FIFA, the world body, which sent football careering towards this unholy union with the business world, by commercializing the World Cup many years ago. Secondly, I don’t remember anyone being particularly peeved when Real Madrid splashed oodles of cash during the era of the Galactico. Thirdly, a big challenge to English domination is already starting to rise in the east, courtesy of the Russian oligarchs. Nothing is permanent in football - and nor should it be.
Fourthly - and most importantly - this is the new reality in football. I don’t have to like it - in fact, if truth be told, I don’t much care for it at all - but post-Abramovich, what is the alternative for clubs who want to compete?
If it's good enough for Madrid and Moscow, why shouldn’t it be so for Manchester?
As for us City fans, well, we’ll treat this latest chapter in our frankly surreal history like we do any other. We’ll cheer the wins, we’ll moan about the defeats and the dud signings (and there’ll be a few - this
is City), but most of all, we’ll laugh, occasionally shake our heads in bewilderment, and enjoy the ride.
Only when (or if) we start acquiring trophies will it become tricky. Being successful on a regular basis would be a strange experience - in fact, to quote my dad, (a City season-ticket holder of 50 years, who still thinks George Best wasn’t fit to lace Peter Doherty’s drinks) “winning all the time would be boring.”
Still, football is supposed to be fun - and with our petrodollars at the ready, and the price of oil continuing to rise, we should have a few giggles over the next few months.
In fact, it’s already started - celebrity City fan Noel Gallagher quipping that “It’s nice to know that every gallon of petrol a Manchester United fan buys is going into our transfer kitty.”
Indulge us - we know that with our history, it might not last too long - and whatever happens, I’ll still be City 'til I die!
AAP
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,24292053-23215,00.html
