A Bump in the Road

A funny thing invariably happens on the road to glory – you will always face a bump in the road. This is especially true in soccer. With the first round of Champions League football underway, there remains the old guard, the constant favorites to win the Champions League – Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Chelsea. These teams are not favorites because they have the best players, the oldest traditions, or the best coaches – although they do possess all those traits. Rather, it’s because when faced with adversity, they rise above it and conquer their opponents. That is precisely why Arsenal, another storied footballing club, cannot be considered among the elite – when the chips are down, they fold.

However, this is a new era – a time when ultra-billionaires buy football clubs for fun and unlikely contenders enter the ring and climb the ranks. This is best exemplified by Manchester City, the new boys on the block. Twenty years ago they weren’t even in the top tier of the English Football League. However, fortune smiled on them when one of the richest families in the world, the Abu Dhabi Royal Family, purchased the club back in 2008. Fast forward just three years later, and Manchester City has finally reached the pinnacle of club football: the Champions League. * (Note – the ‘blueprint’ for a rich oil magnate buying a soccer team was laid out with Chelsea FC and Roman Abromavich, but that is a different case because Chelsea were already in the Champions League and on the rise.)

The Manchester City project is a fascinating one given all the positives and negatives soccer fans connote with the club. Most of the players are viewed as mercenaries (many would warrant articles of their own), which is the highest insult in soccer, a sport that lives under the facade of players remaining loyal to their clubs. This assumption is not only erroneous but laughable. Just consider this: if every player were loyal to his childhood club, we could not have globalization of soccer and multi-cultural teams. Nevertheless, there remains an albeit small grain of logic in the vitriol aimed towards Manchester City. Soccer lives for tradition, and the mere suggestion of challenging the status quo makes fans nervous and unhappy. This is typical of any revolution. Moreover, because soccer players also are repelled by teams who have no business reaching for the sky, Manchester City has had to overpay for every player they have brought in. As a result, Manchester City are simultaneously the ‘big’ and ‘little’ man, a strange paradox indeed.

Manchester City should be viewed as footballing giants – they have amassed one of the four best teams in the world in both talent and coaching staff. The squad is littered with World Cup winners, Champions League winners, up and comers, and established pros. It should come as no great surprise then that they are one of the favorites to win the Champions League this year.

So why are they the ‘little’ man at the same time? They have not played in a Champions League game since the 1960s, they have no tradition of winning, and – overshadowed by the fame of Manchester United – many casual fans outside of England have little clue who they are. Further, this is a manufactured team – more than half of the squad hasn’t even been with Manchester City for more than 13 months. Fans believe in chemistry and balk at the thought of just bringing the most talented players together in a hodge-podge fashion and turning them loose on the field.

Perhaps the biggest reason they are still the little man, however, is that they have not faced true adversity yet. It is easy to be the up and comers, to be doubted and ridiculed, but what happens when you become the hunted? What’s more, what happens when you’re the hunted and you haven’t even won anything yet? These are some of the questions Man City faces, and this season will provide many answers. This past Wednesday, Man City played in their first Champions League game in over 50 years, and with the new format, are expected to go past the first round. They faced Napoli at home and were expected to win. Considering almost all of the starters for Man City have Champions League experience, you would expect them to win against the team projected to finish last in their group. But don’t be fooled by those projections – Man City have been placed in one of the ‘Groups of Death’ – making their task even more difficult. Still, playing at home you would expect a victory – but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. In the 70th minute, Napoli scored a goal and Man City were losing, their first real punch in the mouth (they have started the Premiere League on fire winning their first 4 games with a +12 goal differential), and they were staggering. Shots were hitting posts, flicks bounced off of players, and the crowd grumbled for the first time this season. Showing true class, grit and determination, Alexsander Kolarov scored on a splendid free kick 4 minutes later and the game ended 1-1.

So after the first real bump in the road for Man City, we are still left with as many questions as before the game. How did they not win this game? Will they make it to the second round? Should Man City focus on winning a league title, their first in the Premier League era? Man City are the most fascinating story in club football right now, as they have all the expectations in the world, yet have no pedigree to justify these expectations. It’s going to be a fun and bumpy ride.


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