Being a lifelong Manchester United fan and former inhabitant of South Manchester I’ve been watching the developments at Manchester City with great interest over the past week but am still, like a lot of City fans, undecided about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. Is the decimation of a club’s identity worth the promise of success?
Growing up in Manchester the two big clubs are prevalent in everyday life from an early age. If you haven’t had the choice of your allegiance made for you at birth by your family or by the area you reside in then by the time you start school you will be forced to choose your colour.
At the catholic school I attended there were two ways to divide the playground for football every lunch-time. Either the classic international game Irish kids vs. English kids or the more commonplace club game United vs. City. So pretty much everyone has made a decision at a young age and carries it with them for the rest of their life.
As Manchester City have not won a trophy worth mentioning in my lifetime the fans of the club learn at a young age they will never be able to win an argument over who is the better team by talking about football so instead their main bone of contention with United has always been the public image of the club.
Although they know it isn’t the whole story they like to present the image of Manchester United being a soulless business only supported by opportunist glory hunters.
Ever since the tragedy in Munich and the glory days of Best, Law and Charlton the success Manchester United have had has brought them a large fan base around the world. The United museum is regularly packed with foreign tourists taking pictures of the trophies.
Anybody who has ever taken a ferry from Ireland to Liverpool or Holyhead on a weekend will know about the volume of Irish fans who loyally make the journey over the water for every home game.
As well as United’s foreign support their other main criticism is the fact that technically Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford, isn’t even in Manchester.
Manchester is a city at the centre of the wider metropolitan area of Greater Manchester which is made up of ten boroughs Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan along with the cities of Salford and Manchester.
Old Trafford is in the Greater Manchester Borough of Trafford so technically they have as much right to carry the name Manchester as Wigan or Bolton. Which is why City fans have been known to refer to United as “Stretford rangers” or “Trafford United”.
In truth both stadiums are equal distance from the center of the city, about one or two miles, but this doesn’t hold any weight with City fans which is why you might see the away support at Old Trafford on derby day with a giant banner that bears the words “Mancunian section”.
Manchester City’s fans believe their team to be Manchester’s true team. The people’s team. “This is our city” stickers can be seen in the back windows of supporter’s cars and I’ve always had a sneaky suspicion that the very name of their stadium “the City of Manchester stadium” is a thinly veiled dig.
Despite what I might think of them Manchester City’s fans have real loyalty and a die-hard devotion. They are the skin and bone support that every club has once the glory hunting blubber has wasted away after decades of being deprived of trophies of any merit.
Sadly for some fans, though many have welcomed it, the club has changed beyond recognition in recent years and is set to change even more.
My first recollection of a change in the club, though a small one, was back in 1997 when they changed the club badge. The original badge was apparently impossible to trademark as it was too similar to the Manchester coat of arms.
Although the new badge retains the ship which also appears on Manchester United’s badge (a reference to the Manchester ship canal which made Manchester the third biggest port in the world, despite being 40 miles inland, and Manchester heritage as the world’s first industrial city) and has three stripes that signify the three rivers of Manchester it seemed to me massively out of place for a team in the north of England.
The eagle holding the crest struck me as a cheap looking Lazio rip off. Maybe that was the point. A reference to another city’s underachieving second team. And then there are the three stars. The joke at the time was that each one represented every ten times they’d been relegated. The truth though was even more embarrassing: they are purely aesthetic which seems ridiculous to me.
People may think I’m being petty but for a club with such support and identity it appeared that they were trading both away by re-branding the club as something it clearly wasn’t. Something that would continue six years later.
The 2002/2003 would prove to be a very sad year for Manchester City fans after it was decided the club would move from their stadium ‘Maine road’ and move to a more modern stadium that was being built for the Commonwealth games.
Maine road was a classic North of England football ground in the style of Anfield or Goodison. A rickety old place caged in by two-up-two-down terraced streets.
A close friend of mine grew up in Rusholme among the streets that surrounded Maine road and along with the other local kids we spent many match days and concert nights taking advantage of the stadium’s ancient design and somewhat lacking security by sneaking in at every opportunity. I pride myself on never giving the club a penny of my money for hours of entertainment.
His father, like many City fans, has such a hatred of United he refused to let me in his house when I was thirteen years old until I went home and took off my United shirt. He is a typical hardcore Manchester City fan in his forties - the type of person who for better or worse is getting left behind by today’s ultra commercial game.
Like a lot supporters who grew up in close proximity to grounds in the seventies and eighties he is a former football hooligan full of stories that didn’t necessarily revolve around what happened on the pitch. His favourite story was about him and a friend painting Matt Busby’s statue in front of Old Trafford with blue emulsion in the middle of the night (I never have found out if it was true).
On May 11th, 2003, City played their last game at Maine road against Southampton. In typical Manchester City style, on a sad and emotional day, they lost but the atmosphere was great. Many city fans were distraught at the thought of moving from Maine road.
The "City of Manchester stadium" or "Eastlands" (Middle-Eastlands as it’s been recently re-christened by City’s fans ) is on the east of the city whereas Maine road was situated in the south.
I’ve never been in Eastlands but will always remember the sadness of my friend’s father when he told me about the first game he attended there. For somebody who had been going to watch them all his life Eastlands was a cold and sterile place.
The area of the city it is in was a slum before the 2002 commonwealth games but in the manner of all cities hosting international events the truth of the city was hidden from the eyes of the world.
Manchester city council began issuing compulsory acquisition orders in east Manchester as soon as the stadium had planning permission and it has left the stadium sat in the middle of what looks like a soulless wasteland reflecting the atmosphere inside.
Generations of season ticket holders were separated. People who had known each other for decades only because of their proximity in the stadium were never to see each other again. Groups that sang songs together were separated leaving the stadium with all the atmosphere of a library.
In the first season crowd noises were actually played into the stadium to try to create the illusion of an atmosphere. I’ve been told it’s improved gradually in recent years but still can’t be compared to Maine Road so in short moving the club killed the only thing that Manchester City ever had going for it. The support. Like a lot of City fans my friend’s father didn’t renew his season ticket the following year.
With all this in mind it had been my opinion for the last few years that without the prospect of any success Manchester City had sold their soul and re-branded the club, losing the atmosphere of the stadium and identity of their support, for pretty much nothing. An opinion bearing recent events in mind that now looks pretty short-sighted.
Upon hearing the news of ADUG takeover last week my response was immediately defensive. Having a psyche so preconditioned to having nothing positive to say about Manchester City my initial thoughts were that you can’t buy success, Robinho’s a mercenary, Mark Hughes isn’t up to it. When let’s face it United have bought success to a certain extent, Ronaldo’s definitely a mercenary and there is nothing to say Mark Hughes isn’t up to the job.
After much thinking I’ve come to the conclusion that the prospect of City’s new found wealth is very exciting for the city of Manchester and Manchester United.
If Manchester City can become a force in European football it doesn’t mean that United won’t be. Seeing two of the world’s biggest clubs in my city would fill me with pride and would bring an added dimension to derby games perhaps bringing them closer to the realms of the Milan derby and the old firm derby.
For a football club that has never really been able to translate massive support into success I think this investment has come at just the right time.
The Manchester City of old died with Maine road. What will rise from the ashes of what was a traditional English club remains to be seen but they now play with a badge that will look more at home in European competition and play in a modern stadium which would not be out of place as a Champions League venue.
The gold rush is on for Manchester City. With the arrival of Robinho and whoever else they buy in January the club and supporters might be about to get a taste of the symptoms of success they have been criticizing Manchester United for over the last fifty years.
A good proportion of the next generation of football fans could be supporting City in the same way they’ve swayed towards Chelsea in recent years. Companies might be buying up the boxes, tickets and laying on hospitality at Eastlands in the same numbers they have been at Old Trafford. Their atmosphere could suffer further and local identity they are so proud of could well be diminished further.
It has saddened me and many of the fans to see the club change so drastically but if the new owners can bring with them the type of success that the club looks like it is now set up for then maybe city’s current support will one day stand side by side with the bandwagon jumpers that will inevitably come and think it was all worthwhile.
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