MANCHESTER, England – All that remains, now, is to fill in the final regulatory details. Manchester City may not have to throw another shot at their third Premier League title in three years, if their last rivals, Arsenal, lose to Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
Failing that, one win in City’s last three games will do. Of course, this will be against his first opponent: Chelsea, a team that now works as the opposite of City, a disturbing proof that having money to burn is not enough to guarantee success.
The truth is, anything that can be done will not just increase kneeling on something that has been impossible for some time. Where this change of season came is easy to interpret. It could be City toppling Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in February. Or his condescension to the same enemy at the Etihad Stadium two months later.
Pep Guardiola once said that no moment is right. Everything changed, he said, with an impromptu meeting later February draw with Nottingham Forest. It was a time when the manager of Manchester City believed or wanted to believe, that his players gave up, improved, and turned to the Premier League to do their bidding.
Or, perhaps, nothing is true. There may be no noticeable change. There is a very good chance that this season has ended as it always does, as Premier League seasons do. more and more like end. Perhaps the outcome was premeditated. Maybe we all knew, deep down, how this would turn out.
Regardless, something will be ticked off Manchester City’s bucket list every day. Only a handful of teams – four, to be exact – have ever won three English titles in a row: Huddersfield Town in the 1920s, Arsenal in the 1930s, Liverpool in the 1980s and Manchester United, twice, at the beginning of this century. .
It is a feat that, until now, has been held by only two managers: Herbert Chapman, Huddersfield and Arsenal, and Alex Ferguson. (Liverpool changed its coach in the middle of its run.) For a long time they have been seen as the last place of greatness, the pearly gate of the unassailable. Manchester City, and Guardiola himself, have gone through it.
In doing so, City will have reached another milestone in what appears to be a deliberate campaign to create irrefutable evidence that this is the greatest team England has ever produced.
During Guardiola’s six years at the helm, City have taken every record they can get their hands on, placing their name at the top of every club’s leaderboard in the game. It is the most points scored by any team in a single season. And a lot of goals. It has won the most consecutive games of the campaign, and had the biggest goal difference, as well as the biggest margin of victory.
It was the first team to sweep all four domestic trophies. In Erling Haaland, can claim to have the best players in the Premier League. Next time, it will not need a warning: Haaland has five games to reach 12 goals and pass the high water mark. If he doesn’t do it this year, he might do better tomorrow.
Indeed, such is City’s domestic supremacy that it now has to look far and wide for other nations to conquer. Look at Manchester United in the FA Cup final and Inter Milan in the Champions League final and City would have had a treble, a mythical and sacred achievement, which has only happened once in English history.
After that, his wishes turn into fantasy. No team has ever won four English titles in a row. No one has ever won seven championships in one year, or four. No English team since Nottingham Forest has retained the European Cup. Maybe City could try to be the first team to win a game with zero strength, or use their left foot, or with a line-up with only people named Neil.
It has become clear to say that this is just the nature of football. There is, as former Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany said, always an “ogre,” a group that sits at the top of the pile, that climbs up the hill, that absorbs all the air. “It’s never been different,” Kompany told The New York Times in an interview earlier this month. “Liverpool was terrible. Manchester United is an ogre.”
There is some truth in that thought, but not the whole truth. During its heyday, in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool was an unquestionably rich club: In the years before broadcasting and television and international travel, it had one advantage, being a big team in a big city. of the city.
But it wasn’t much heavier than most of its opponents. His opponents at times were Manchester United and Leeds and Everton, as well as Ipswich and Derby County and Nottingham Forest. The controls of the game were very good, the leveling was not difficult at all.
Twice, between 1977 and 1991, Liverpool kept the British record, but for sale: first Kevin Keegan to Hamburg, then Ian Rush to Juventus. During that time, West Bromwich Albion, Wolves, Forest and City all spent more money on the player than anyone else. Liverpool did not break the £1 million barrier until 1987.
The quality of United was very modern, very popular, built on clubs business heft. It is worth examining, however, one of the words that entered the lexicon of the game at that time: Fergie Time, the idea that referees often gave United as much time as needed in the game to find a way to escape.
That was not true, of course. The reason United have built a reputation for success of late is because of the personality and resilience of Ferguson’s talented team. But the idea stuck.
United was the biggest club of its age. It was possible, however, for the opposition to deceive themselves into believing that all this was due to luck, to the grace and favor of the powers that be, and that if the war was good then United would receive its arrival.
The same cannot be said of Manchester City. All those records, the dominance that has come to characterize the game’s history, show a kind of quality that English football has never seen before. Not only did City redefine what it takes to succeed in the Premier League, but they also redefined the game’s concept of success. His control feels more extreme than anything that has gone before, mainly because it is.
And the response was not the revulsion created by Liverpool and United – the most powerful threat handed down from one generation to the next – but acceptance. Guardiola’s performances are very popular. The beauty of his company, the intelligence of his ideas, attract loud praise.
The success of the club itself, however, is cold, clinical, detached. Manchester City has a mechanical atmosphere, the way the project is designed and the way the team plays. Therefore, it should not be surprising that it would cause a person to respond in the same way. It is a government-backed enterprise with unlimited resources and a big vision. It may be hard to fall in love, but it’s even harder to say no.
City’s advantage is not, as they lazily claim, that they can spend more money than anyone else, although few teams can afford the kind of squad that Guardiola has. Manchester United have spent hundreds of millions on the transfer market. Chelsea, too. Liverpool pays more wages to its team.
The edge of connection. City will often – if forced – be forced to sell a player for anything other than his own interests. That is what separates it, as much as anything else, from all its peers. Most clubs have plans. The city is the only one that has the opportunity to see without the unacceptable intrusion of reality. It’s a club that doesn’t work under pressure like everyone else.
These are not the same, however, and do not play by the same rules. It’s a coincidence, no doubt, that the run of games that ends with Guardiola’s team looking to start another chapter after the club’s end. accused of 115 crimes – from more than ten years, throughout his reign – and the Premier League.
These charges still have the potential to replace, to some significant degree, all of the City’s earnings over the years. Names, trophies, records – everything depends on this matter.
It is possible that the fans, at this game, can swallow the idea that the club is working in order to advance the interests of the country is acceptable. It may be that television is a television station that relies on unrelenting soap operas to do whatever they can.
It can be very difficult, however, to forgive and explain and – above all – to accept that one group feels that the laws it signed are not really working, to decide that it should not be followed by the same obstacles. like all the others. Manchester City will claim their third trophy in three years. It is on the edge of treble. It has written its name next to every English football record has to offer.
What it has done, in the last few years, is clear to all. What will be remembered has not yet been decided.