Has the romance of football gone?

Anyone who knows anything about the game knows that Manchester City are a magnificent football team. The sky blues just claimed a third successive league title following Arsenal’s defeat to Nottingham Forest on Saturday, becoming the first side to manage the feat since Manchester United from 2007 to 2009 and just the fifth in the history of English football. They are the overwhelming favorite to add an F.A. Cup and its first ever Champions League to its cabinet with both finals still to play.

Triumphs in the two finals, or even just the latter would bestow upon the club a serious claim as the single greatest side of the Premier League-era. Having sealed the league title, the Citizens can now grasp the one prize that’s eluded them and the one they’ve most coveted over the last several years with a victory over Inter Milan in Istanbul on June 10th. A European crown would see them boast every possible piece of silverware on the continental level in the Pep Guardiola era.

While perhaps the only Premier League-era club to deliver this level of success, dominance on this scale is hardly unprecedented. Throughout the last decade and a half, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid have each stood head and shoulders above the rest of Europe for a certain period. Manchester City are now enjoying a period of its own at the summit of the football hierarchy and after obliterating its strongest competitor in the Champions League with a sensational 4-0 victory over Real Madrid, is enjoying it quite well.

However, a key variable in City’s exceptionalism distinguishes it from those other clubs and that is the fact they have succeeded primarily because of the wealth of its owners. Whereas it’s benefited from the limitless funding from Abu Dhabi royalty to assemble and hoard the strongest cohort of players on the planet throughout the past decade, the accomplishments of Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid derive from far more organic means.

The achievements of the brilliant Barcelona sides of 2009 and 2011, coached by none other than Pep Guardiola himself, was largely a product of the club’s youth academy from which the likes of Xavi, Iniesta, Sergio Busquets, Carles Puyol, Pedro and Lionel Messi all emerged indoctrinated in the philosophy of possession based total football. Once established first team players, they executed that philosophy on the pitch flawlessly en route to winning two European Cups, a Copa Del Rey and three straight La Liga titles all in three magnificent years.

Then came Bayern Munich. After defeats in two of the previous three Champions League finals, one of which at its own stadium to Chelsea, the Bavarians were not to be denied a place in yet another final. In the 2013 semi-final between themselves and Barcelona, the German side ruthlessly dispatched its opponents by an aggregate score of 7-0 over the two legs before it finally got over the line in the final with a 2-1 victory over Borussia Dortmund. A German cup victory would complete the treble for that season, a deserved reward for shrewd recruitment and sheer resilience to overcome the heartbreak from previous seasons.

In the following years, Real Madrid would reclaim its continental throne. It won its tenth European Cup in 2014 and shortly after became the first side to defend its title in the Champions League era with three consecutive triumphs from 2016 to 2018. There’s no greater ode for the most decorated football club in Europe that can thankits success to its rich heritage.

City’s path to its first European crown feels far less romantic. The roots of their ascension lie not within the soul of the club itself, but in the external plot of a foreign state. City’s emphatic victories over Bayern Munich and Real Madrid suggest that not even the sport’s most storied institutions can keep up or offer an answer. The club’s Emirati state ownership has enabled it to cement a dynasty in the Premier League and it’s now in an optimal position to extend its supremacy across the rest of Europe.

The journeys of the traditionally great clubs to their glory are the sporting equivalent of love stories. Manchester City and their  inevitable Champions League success will feel more like an arranged marriage.