by TIC Tac. Humans love extinction events. Entire religious mythologies, entire episodes of Star Trek tend to move in this direction, towards arrogance and nemesis, the notion of the end times.
The Mayans had set the end of the world for December 21, 2012, which, in retrospect, might have been a decent offer that we should have accepted. The entire cultural history of the 1980s is basically Midge Ure walking through the Viennese fog in a leather coat surrounded by decadent grandeur and giggling Nazi yuppies, waiting for megadeath to fall from the sky.
Except, of course, things keep happening. The world keeps ending, but people keep showing up asking where the party is. The Euro Cup draw is about to be held. King Charles is worried about methane. Midge Ure lives in Somerset these days. We are still, practically, before Skynet.
Related: Everton files an appeal and hints at tension over the commission’s independence
It is worth keeping this in mind when considering the ominous news that Manchester City and the Premier League have agreed a date to process those epic-scale financial charges, a moment that feels like an existential threat not just for City but for the future of the league itself.
According to reports first published in the Daily Mail, the court will begin next fall and a verdict will likely be issued in the spring of 2025. Even without appeals, it will be two years after the charges, a wait that has already generated some anger.
There are good reasons for the delay. This is not Everton, who admitted guilt on a single charge. The city denies all 115 charges and has followed Logan Roy’s divorce playbook, hiring every human lawyer available, from Lord Helicopter-Gunship KC to the guy from The Wire who knows where Marlo Stanfield is.
More to the point, the danger here is enormous for both the accused and the accuser. The charges date back 14 seasons. City is, after that period, the most profitable entity in world football, the poster child of the Premier League. In an industry where the product is basically broadcast rights and lucrative stability, it is in many ways surprising that these charges have made it this far.
But now we have a ticking clock. There is, as the man on the radio said, an Asterix (sic) that hangs over City and also over the credibility of the league itself. With this in mind, there are probably two things worth saying at this point.
Firstly, there is a temptation to see a potential extinction event for the Premier League. The defining tension in world football right now is who gets the product. The super league was run chaotically. It continues to move, 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 can any empire last? City fans were among the most vocal in their rejection of the idea of a break-up, criticizing greed, money and the upper class in a way that is both encouraging and also a good practical example of dramatic irony (Google: inherited monarchy).
Fines and point deductions, plus five more years of dissolution of the collective will. How strong do we feel? How united is a Premier League where generational champions are at war with their own governing body? Perhaps this is precisely where history has always headed, a league that kept opening its doors to every passing visitor and ends up being held hostage by its own greed. Let the right one in.
On the other hand, what is the most likely outcome? I remain deeply skeptical that football, which exists within an absurdly large bubble, can decide, free from any outside influence, how this plays out. This isn’t a Truther-style thing about not trusting the government. It’s the opposite. Trust that the government will continue to behave as it always has.
Manchester City is not a football club in this context. It is an arm of a highly influential nation state, with which the UK traded £25 billion last year. Two years ago, the United Arab Emirates, led by Abu Dhabi’s state fund Mubadala, agreed to a multibillion-dollar investment in British infrastructure. Mubadala’s chief executive, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, is also chairman of Manchester City.
The same year, the UK prime minister met Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces to agree a key defense pact. Sheikh Mohamed’s brother is Sheikh Mansour, the de facto owner of Manchester City. Hey. Can we talk to the old man about this football thing?
This is simply realpolitik here. We know that the Foreign Office has discussed the Premier League charges with its counterparts in Abu Dhabi. We know that ministers are prepared to go before the department of culture, media and sport and argue, absurdly, that Newcastle belongs “to a fund” and not to a state actor because it is a necessary line and it involves vital relationships such as the United Kingdom has done it. is reeling in a world ravaged by war and carbon dependency.
What would be the most normal result? That a bunch of football administrators have free rein to decide what happens here? It’s even quite curious that football is surprised or angry about something like that. Invite a government to own one of your clubs and you’re asking an entity concerned only with its own strategic interests to abide by some rules written by employees of a foreign sports league.
There is another point worth making, before this starts to feel like an apocalyptic moment. Football is, in the end, just content. And for neutrals, these charges are perhaps the most objectively interesting thing about City’s current era, a battle that will now define this era of success and, indeed, the future of elite club football.
This does not mean that the team has not been beautiful or that the football has not been seductive. Pep Guardiola has transformed English football tactically and textually. Players captivate because great players captivate. Watching Bernardo Silva play soccer is like watching an adorable field mouse win 25 simultaneous games of chess and, at the same time, defeat an army of orcs using only a tickling stick.
But for neutrals this is also a cold project. The great teams have tended to express something, from that sense of Catalan-Dutch modernism to the simple romance of a few individuals brought together by chance and hard work. What does this Manchester City express, apart from the obvious mathematics that the richest club in the richest league, with the best manager and the best backroom staff, all together without danger, personal interest or financial risk, will inevitably succeed? . The final form expresses a kind of sporting perfection, free of edges, a machine designed to win.
Now, however, we have this. We have a challenge, we have a fight, we have the absurd but compelling spectacle of the richest club in the world, owned by a sovereign wealth fund, presenting itself as a butt-kicking underdog.
Booing the upper class, raising your fist against the cartel and still being the richest and most powerful player on the field: this is a wonderful liberation. At the very least, it fills the void, the basic futility of gaining order under the leadership of a state. In its place we have the Cursed City, and in one fell swoop this becomes a story you can’t take your eyes off.
There remains a year and a half of this tension before a decade of elite successes must be restructured by a court decision. The story seems determined, sharpened to a certain point. Maybe don’t expect a brave ending.
