by Tick-tock. People love an elimination event. In full religious mythologies, whole episodes of Star Trek tend to move this way, towards hubris and nemesis, the concept of the end times.
The Mayans had the end of the world on December 21, 2012, which could be a good offer, in turn, that we should accept. Basically the entire cultural history of the 1980s is Midge Ure walking through the fog of Vienna in a big leather coat surrounded by decaying grandeur and laughing Nazi-yuppies, waiting for megadeath to fall from the skies.
Except, of course, things keep happening. The world continues to come to an end, but people still show up asking where the party is. The draw for the Euros is about to happen. King Charles is concerned about methane. Midge Ure lives in Somerset these days. We are still, almost, pre-Skynet.
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This is worth bearing in mind when considering the shocking news that Manchester City and the Premier League have agreed a date to process those epic scale financial charges, at a time that feels like an existential threat, not just to City but to the future of the European Union. own league.
According to reports first published in the Daily Mail the tribunal starts next autumn, with a verdict likely in the spring of 2025. Even without appeals, that will be two years on from the charges, wait and see already angry at him.
There is a good reason for the delay. This is not Everton, who pleaded guilty to one charge. The City denies all 115 charges and Logan Roy’s full divorce playbook is gone, hiring every human lawyer available from KC’s Helicopter-Gunship Lord to the guy in The Wire who knows where Marlo Stanfield is.
More to the point, the danger here is great for both the accused and the accused. The fees scroll back over 14 seasons. City, on the back of that period, are the most profitable entity in world football, the poster boys of the Premier League. In an industry where the product is essentially broadcast rights and lucrative stability, it is surprising in many ways that these fees have come this far.
But we have a ticking clock now. As the man on the radio said, Asterix (sic) hangs over City and also over the credibility of the league itself. With that in mind two things are probably worth saying at this point.
First of all, there is a temptation to see an event that could become obsolete for the Premier League. The specific tension in world football at the moment is about who will own the product. The super series was executed haphazardly. It continues to hum, absurdly, in the background, now bound by charter agreements and government warnings. But he’s not exactly dead. Some aspect of this idea will shape the future.
How long will any empire last? City fans have been among the most vocal in rejecting the idea of a breakout, railing against greed, money and overclass in a heartwarming way that is a good example of dramatic irony (Google : hereditary monarchy).
Chuck in fines and point deductions, plus another five years of disqualification. How strong do we feel? How united is a Premier League where the champions of the generation are at war with their own governing body? Perhaps this is the place where the story was always going, a league that opened its door to everyone who passed by, and made it hostage to its own greed. Let the right one in.
Then again, what is the most likely outcome? I highly doubt that football, existing within an absurdly self-important bubble, will be able to decide free of any outside influence how this thing plays out. This is not truth-style or trust-the-government stuff. It is the opposite. Trust the government to continue to behave as governments always have.
Manchester City is not a football club in this context. It is an arm of a very influential nation-state, with which the UK did £25bn of trade last year. Two years ago the UAE, led by the Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala, agreed to invest in pounds in British infrastructure. Mubadala chief executive Khaldoon al-Mubarak is also chairman of Manchester City.
In the same year the UK prime minister met with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces to agree a crucial defense deal. Sheikh Mohamed’s brother is Sheikh Mansour, the de facto owner of Manchester City. Er. Can we have an old saying, about this soccer stuff?
This is simply the realpolitik here. We know that the Foreign Office has discussed Premier League fees with their counterparts in Abu Dhabi. We know that ministers are willing to stand in front of the department of culture, media and sport and claim, absurdly, that Newcastle is owned by a “fund” not a state actor because this is an essential line and these are vital relationships as the UK . lean in a world wracked with war and carbon dependency.
What would be the normal result? That a bunch of football administrators get freedom to decide what will happen here? It’s even quite funny that football should be surprised or offended by any of this. Invite a government to own one of your clubs and you’re asking an entity concerned only with its own strategic interests to obey some rules written by employees of a foreign sports league.
There is another point worth making, before this starts to feel too much like a doomsday moment. Football is, in the end, just material. And for the neutral, these charges are perhaps the most objectively interesting thing about City’s current era, a battle that will define this era of success and indeed the future of elite club football.
This is not to say that the team was not beautiful, or the football beguiling. Pep Guardiola has tactfully and texturally transformed English football. The players are captivating because great players are captivating. Watching Bernardo Silva play football is like watching a lovable field mouse win 25 simultaneous chess games, and defeat an army of orcs using a single tickle stick.
But for the neutral this is also a cold project. Great teams tend to express something, from that Catalan-Dutch sense of modernism, to the simple romance of a few individuals brought together by serendipity and hard work. What this Manchester City represents, apart from the self-evident math that the richest club in the league with the biggest manager and the biggest backroom team, all put together without risk or personal interest or financial risk. . The final form represents a kind of sporting perfection, free of edges, a machine designed for winning.
Now, however, we have this. We have a challenge, we have a struggle, we have absurd but compelling visions of the richest club in the world, owned by a sovereign wealth fund, being presented as an end kicking the cans.
Reinforcing the overclass, raising a fist to the cartel, and still being the single richest and most powerful player in the field: this is a great liberation. At the very least, it fills the void, the basic meaninglessness of winning order towards a state. Instead we have the Damned City, and after a stroke this becomes a story you can’t take your eyes off of.
There is a year and a half of this tension to run before a decade of elite success has to be reshaped by a tribunal decision. The story looks purposeful, sharpened to a point. Don’t expect a bravura ending, perhaps.
