We’re now 13 years in from when the first alleged offences of topping up sponsorship with sovereign wealth of Abu Dhabi were recorded and the lawyers’ bill will be well over £30million, as City continue their fight, now against the Premier League’s 115 charges of inaccurate financial reporting, non co-operation and not providing full details of a manager’s and players’ remuneration. Back in 2014, when City had their first brush with UEFA over financial fair play regulations, City’s legal counsel revealed in an email that Al Mubarak ‘says he would rather spend £30m on the best 50 lawyers in the world and sue them for the next 10 years’ rather than agree to a financial penalty that UEFA were proposing. So, while it is about the men in boots, it also about men in suits, because Khaldoon Al Mubarak, City’s chairman, has made football like this. There perhaps hasn’t been as one-sided a European Cup/Champions League final as Inter v Manchester City since Barcelona took on Steaua Bucharest in 1986. Yet there has been nothing quite so dominant in a clash of two teams acknowledged as Europe’s best.Īnd that is the problem City have. We have witnessed extraordinary European nights and Liverpool’s 4-0 win over Barcelona tops City’s achievement for sheer drama and jaw-dropping incredulity. This was a similar scale of evisceration, a triumph of Pep Guardiola’s footballing mind and a tactical landmark for the ages.

Fabio Capello’s AC Milan beat Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona 4-0 in a Champions League final in 1994 in the game of that decade. Not since Barcelona overwhelmed Manchester United at Wembley in 2011 have we seen anything quite like Manchester City’s 4-0 demolition of Real Madrid. The glory game, as Danny Blanchflower christened it, is about nights like last Wednesday at the Etihad, that roar of support, the passion of fans, the sheer majesty of a player like Kevin De Bruyne, the exhilaration of Erling Haaland, the magician-like impishness of Bernardo Silva and the joy of Jack Grealish. The game is about players, not owners and directors. Football is about men in boots, not men in suits, a colleague reminded me last week, quoting the advice of a wise sports editor from the days before women’s football became the phenomenon it is now.

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