The Abu Dhabi-owned club have become an exercise in how to construct the supreme modern
Football team with vast money
When Sergio Agüero won the
Premier League for
Manchester City in the 94th minute of the last match of the 2011-12 season, the emotional extremes, how nearly they cocked it up, made a fevered connection with all the stumbles of the old club. City fans are pinching themselves again now at the prospect of a
Champions League final within touching memory of a League One play-off final with Gillingham, but there can no longer be any illusion that this is the City of old.
Since 2008, after the takeover by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, Manchester City have become an exercise in how to construct the supreme modern football club with vast money available for the project. And in the first season, as Mansour’s men and his multimillions rescued City from the chaos of ownership by the ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the ideal to replicate, Pep Guardiola’s
Barcelona, was winning the Champions League.