Yesterday, I watched the Super Bowl. I am not a fan of NFL football – it’s a brutal,
pointless, mind numbingly dull game, an opinion that has nothing to do with my
miserable and failed career as a Little League offensive tackle, I promise
-- but I’m an American. The Super Bowl in America is like Christmas
in Britain: even if you don’t believe in it, you put up the decorations.
Part way through the game, a brutal,
pointless and mind-numblingly dull evisceration of the Denver Broncos by the
Seattle Seahawks, the cameras flashed on celebrities in the crowd, witnessing
the spectacle. There was Kevin Costner,
wearing a black turtleneck with what appeared to be a gray shawl, looking dour
and imperial, like Dame Judith Anderson with a manly haircut. There was Hugh Jackman, fashionably unshaven
and jovial.
And there was Paul McCartney.
No longer one of the Four Lads Who Shook The World, Super Bowl Paul is wrinkled and jowly, his hair dyed an unnatural orange, glumly gumming a slice of pizza while a young woman I can only assume is his personal nurse stands by with his heart pills and diabetes medication.
And there was Paul McCartney.
No longer one of the Four Lads Who Shook The World, Super Bowl Paul is wrinkled and jowly, his hair dyed an unnatural orange, glumly gumming a slice of pizza while a young woman I can only assume is his personal nurse stands by with his heart pills and diabetes medication.
This depressed me no end, this silent,
sober reminder that nothing in our uncertain world is constant. Bright brilliant youth slumps into high
trousered dotage. Things fall
apart. Everything changes. I want the Paul of my childhood, jamming with
the band on London rooftops and shearing sheep on the Mull of Kintyre. I want Paul the way he used to be.
City’s recent rise to prominence, fueled by
Chilean strategy, a United Nations of talent and several shipping containers of
Abu Dhabian cash, has prompted much comment, most of it scathingly
negative. It’s not mere criticism. Let’s face it, some things that have happened
in the club’s last decade – City’s brief, uncomfortable association with a
southeast Asian strongman, for starters – have been worthy of criticism. This more recent vitriol is beyond
criticism. It’s ad hominem and angry and
frequently scatological. And
surpassingly ignorant.
It boils down to this: “City have always
been A Certain Type of Club. How dare
they change?” City aren't that club,
anymore, no matter what twitchy Internet posters want. The change is confusing and uncomfortable,
and it’s hardly happening only to City.
Just like seeing a septuagenarian Sir Paul forces everyone to consider
their own mortality, a rampant, world class Manchester City forces fans of
other clubs to recognize the fundamental changes happening throughout the
Premier League: Twenty years ago, English football clubs were mostly managed by
Englishmen, and mostly stocked with Englishmen, and mostly owned by
Englishmen. They were essentially Mom
and Pop operations, where even the biggest, most successful clubs had their
shirts sponsored by the local newspaper or an automobile glass repair outfit.
Today, foreign tactics and foreign players
dominate, fueled by scads of foreign money. It’s different. For some, it’s
uncomfortable. That doesn’t alter the
facts: the League isn’t Mom and Pop anymore; it’s a sophisticated cartel of
multinational entertainment conglomerates, dealing in staggering amounts of
money and exerting its influence in a dizzying number of countries. That may rankle the northern sensibilities of
your typical Newcastle supporter, but it doesn’t change the reality.
Manchester City’s chief offence seems to be
that, unlike, say, Cardiff City, or Hull City, it had the great good fortune to
get foreign ownership who understands the supporters’ connection to their club,
and actively works to both “grow the brand,” and nurture good feelings in the
City community. That’s what generates
the viciousness, the bitterness and the rancor: the change happened and other
clubs got stuck with carpetbaggers and confidence men. And we got lucky.
There have been missteps – Gary Cook was a
mistake, and tossing over Umbro for the fleshpots of Niketown strikes a false
note – but they have been few and fairly minor.
The Impeccable Sheiks seem genuinely committed to protecting and
preserving City’s unique flavor. There
have been no uncomfortable ad campaigns, in which the Starting Eleven was made
to tout fried chicken, no outrageous replacement of team colors, no crest
changes, aimed at improving souvenir sales in the crucial Asian markets. It’s a
newer, bigger, brighter Manchester City, but it’s still City. The Family Mansour has done right by the club
and its supporters.
They have also positioned City beautifully
to take a place on the international stage. Their “City in the Community” project has built soccer academies in
underprivileged neighborhoods from Los Angeles to Miami, quietly establishing
bastions of City supporters across North America, and their heavy investment in
the MLS club New York City FC automatically makes the United States’s economic
capital the club’s second home. Humanitarian efforts have raised City’s profile in Africa and Asia. And of course, they play an inventive,
exciting, deeply entertaining brand of football. While the London clubs bicker and snipe like
the intermarried potentates of fading 16th century monarchies and
the rotting empire in Salford slowly descends into mob rule and madness, City’s
brain trust is quietly, competently gaining strength and influence.
Not tonight, City are playing |
All of this is hard to take for the people
who want everything to stay the same.
This is even true for City supporters. You cannot be City if you don’t love the underdog, don’t have a heart
tuned to the irony of it all, don’t appreciate that sooner or later, Life will
break your heart. That is who we
are. Winning trophies will not change
that. But we aren’t in Moss Side
anymore. Those days, those wonderful
days, have gone. Different days
await. If Maine Road was Our First Love,
all scraped knees and grade school gangle, The Etihad is Our Grown-Up Romance:
a tad frosty perhaps, but dazzling with sophistication and endless, elegant
curves. It’s like we went away to
University, and ended up dating a young Catherine Deneuve. Out of our league? Maybe.
But how do you say no to a young Catherine Deneuve?
But how do you say no to a young Catherine Deneuve?
"If Maine Road was Our First Love,............., The Etihad is Our Grown-Up Romance: a tad frosty perhaps, but dazzling with sophistication and endless, elegant curves. It’s like we went away to University, and ended up dating a young Catherine Deneuve."
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff. You don't get lines like this in the other city blogs. brilliant summation. keep it up.
Thank you. You are very kind!
ReplyDelete