Tainted Trophies? You Can't Taint Memories And Experiences

But hang on, scrap all that. Turns out it was fake, all of it. It may have happened in real time, you may remember that whole day as if it was yesterday, but it now counts for little, a mirage in your mind. You see, City have cheated, have been arrogant and done some other bad things too. Not the club itself, just some of the people who work for it. Bang to rights, it means now we must question all that has gone before. Now that we know the conditions of what happened it changes the reality we experienced, it seems. The stress of this ban is not just about what may lie ahead, but what has already gone. Because of that, I toss and turn, I can’t sleep at night. Tainted love.

Ah, bless. It seems quite a few people on football twitter, the home of reasoned debate and calm discourse, think Manchester City’s achievements have now been tainted forever. Very worrying if true. It seems my entire life has been a lie. I expect it from fans, but of course the moral arbiters in the press will soon be on the case too, if not already.
But so what if rival fans say City’s achievements are tainted? They’ve been saying it for years anyway, because it makes them feel better, it validates their own less successful team that little bit more. Hey, my team might be shit, but at least we’re organically shit, following the rules. Rules we helped shape, but let’s not dwell on the finer details. Whatever, who cares either way? I don’t need the praise of a United-supporting welder from Cork to enjoy and appreciate my football team. Waffle on all you like about DNA, rebirths, history and blooding youth, fact is you’re 7th in the table and about to finish below City for the 7th season in succession. Simple facts.

Let’s cut to the chase here – the trophies City have won in the past decade are of course not remotely tainted, because some money may have been moved about to pay for a sponsorship deal deemed to be of fair market value. City’s success was not built on this particular cache of money, and even if it had been it would be no worse than the achievements of Leicester and Liverpool being built despite FFP breaches or the enormous expenditure and growth of English and foreign teams built entirely on debt – in other words, money they haven’t earned.  City aren’t going to be stripped of titles, the stories simply desperate straw-clutching that gets hits in the wake of the frenzy created by Friday’s decision. The Premier League FFP is not the same as UEFA’s, is not as stringent, they’d have to prove their own serious misdemeanours, and I very much don’t they have the desire or the energy for such a fight. The Premier League bosses are interested in making money, little more. It isn’t happening, however much interest “Stevie G” takes in proceedings. City’s alleged creative accounting did not make him slip on his arse. Much of the weekend coverage was little more than journalists with a tenuous grasp of the situation (at best) looking through rule books that made their heads hurt to find different angles on what *could* happen, not what probably will. After all, I *could* bump into Kylie Minogue in Aldi, Sale this afternoon by the miscellaneous garden equipment section, strike up a wonderful friendship before eventually marrying and settling down in a farm ranch in the Australian outback. It’s unlikely though.

But that aside, it’s all irrelevant anyway. Because I’ve already lived the dream, and that can never be taken away from me. Football is about the experiences and the memories, not the record books. The chief sports writer of the Telegraph certainly can’t take a single memory away from me, nor any football fan. Football is about the social aspect, the bonds formed, friendships made, the journey as much as the destination.

No, those experiences will stay with us all forever, they cannot be wiped out by an asterisk. Their impact cannot be tempered by the decisions of some crusty committee in a dusty room. The emotion of hearing Abide With Me and seeing City win their first trophy in a generation. A friend or two shed tears that day because they never thought that day would come. But it did, and we lived it, every moment. The unbridled joy when Sergio scored THAT goal. Those celebrations, I’ll never feel anything like that again. The night spent in the Waldorf, the last ones to leave, the final JD and coke drained. The following day devouring the internet. Those three close title campaigns, the nerves, the stress, the defining moments, the eventual elation, and relief. Legends created, memories formed, lives changed. Getting on the trophy parade bus, the most surreal experience possible. The many trips to Wembley, getting to see your captain climb the steps and lift the trophy. The goal celebrations, and the injuries some of them caused. Watching the greatest players in my lifetime ply their trade, master it, in front of me. If it all goes horribly wrong, and it probably won’t, we may never see anything like it again. But we’ve seen enough, more than I once thought possible.

Whilst much of the media has shown its true colours over recent days, it’s laughable that “rival” fans think they can get at us with their taunts and empty claims. Just accept the fact – we’ve seen things most of you will ever see yourself, had experiences you’ll never match. And a superior net spend isn’t much of a consolation really, is it? We’re lucky of course, we had no say in it all, no real input, it just happened, and we got to live the dream. Bought, cheated, tainted, whatever. It still happened, you cannot re-write history and I drank it all in, we all did. With life-long friends and those that matter to me. It’s just a shame that FFP will prevent fans of certain other clubs from having the same experiences. So with that in mind, and I apologise for the coarse language, fuck your memes, fuck your emojis, fuck your hot-takes and get downstairs, cos your tea is ready.  Not a single memory will be tainted in any shape or form, not even if some fuckwitted Geordie YouTuber, whose knowledge of FFP or any aspect of City could be listed on Ernest Rutherford’s split atom, claims otherwise. Here is the classic case of attempting to belittle the achievements and experiences of another fan base because your own club has underperformed and been run into the ground by a deeply unpopular owner. Own it, rather than crying because it wasn’t your club that Sheikh Mansour took over, as could have happened all those years ago. The only things that have tainted my last decade as a City supporter had been constantly losing to Wigan, the awful official website and Wilfried Bony. And those pointless fan surveys, obviously.

There’s something else that sticks in the throat of the recent coverage of City’s European ban by the media. You see, it’s almost as if some football journalists, by attempting to hide their allegiances, by purporting to be neutral and not affiliated to a particular club, have forgotten what it’s like to be a football fan, what is involved emotionally in that pact. They are so detached from reality. The vanity too is off the scale – they probably think this blog is about them. In the pub last night, quite simply, no one gave a shit. The mood was not down, it was great. There was a discussion on the week’s events, and many other things, and a shrug of the shoulders. Essentially, nothing had changed. The club will continue to exist, we’ll go and watch them and that’s all that matters. There will be good days, there will be bad days, and days in between. The social aspect for many has always been as important as the game itself. It’s easy to laugh about playing in Division 2 when it hasn’t happened and we know is rather unlikely to ever happen, but the defiance and belief was still there to say with conviction that it would be embraced by many of us supporters, especially those that have paid their dues over a number of decades. Hey, Phil Foden might even get a game.

There’s always been a subconscious assumption that City will keep accumulating trophies for the rest of my life. That assumption is now under threat, possibly. But what will be, will be. The past decade has provided more riches, more joy than the morose 30 year old me could have imagined. The much older morose me is thankful for what he has received. And I swear, if we never see anything like it again, we’ll be fine. Because we did see it, we lived it, we breathed it in. And it has been one hell of a ride.