We’re not really here

On FFP, Manchester City, and the nature of fandom

I’m the wrong person to write this article. Or maybe the perfect person. I’m not sure and probably both descriptions are apt, depending on your own perspectives and fandom.

I’ve never particularly hidden my cheering interests when it comes to football — I’m a Toronto FC and Manchester City fan (along with the Canadian national team and a very casual interest in England on the international side). The former club doesn’t really need an explanation — I live 10km from the stadium they play in. I’ve been a season ticket holder since 2007. TFC is my local team. Simple as — the latter, however, requires constant explanation, whenever someone meets me, or discovers my writing/Social Media work/profiles.

That’s especially the case of late, when the club has become synonymous with “cheating” and everything that is (apparently) wrong with Modern Football.

How can you possibly like them?

There’s an answer to that question that I have shared many times before, and it has a certain logic. If you are new or just discovering me through this article, the (very) short version is “family.” My heritage is English and some of my UK-based relatives have supported the blue side of Manchester since the 1980s.

That’s not the nuanced answer, however. That requires a deeper dive into the psychology of cheering for strangers to kick a ball into a net, and then allowing their success at doing so dictate your mood.

As simply put as possible, Manchester City spoke to me as a club when I first was looking to follow a team in England. Make no mistake, like all North American fans there was always an element of choice in what team to follow. Even in cases like mine where there is a family connection, the geography gives carte blanche. There was no local choice for me. I picked the laundry I was going to cheer for.

What spoke to me was their underdog status. Keep in mind, I’m going through this exercise 35 years ago. There were far easier choices. Including the obvious one right there in the same city.

But, I kept coming back to the yo-yo team in sky blue — precisely because they were the contrarian choice, because they attracted a working class fan in a working class city, and, especially, they weren’t the big red machine that everyone chose.

I bring this up not to fully deconstruct it — I may do that in the days ahead when I have time to continue my Taking it to the Corner series — but rather to frame the rest of this article, an article about Financial Fair Play and the Premier League’s ruling against City this week.

A ruling that has literally caused me physical discomfort at times. I have avoided social media because I just don’t want to read about it, or think about it, and I especially don’t want to read the half-cocked opinions of fans of other Premier League powers who are gleeful about the prospect of a 146 year old football club being destroyed. I don’t think that’s going to happen, for the record, but this article is not about what the outcome of all this is going to be. If I was still on SoccerToday, I’d have to do that kind of analysis — and I’d also be better positioned to do so as I would have been following the day-to-day movements of the case more closely. But now? I don’t know what will happen. I only know how all this makes me feel.

That’s the only thing I’m qualified to speak to, anyway.

I want to go back to that idea of choice again, but now I want to look at it from another angle — not why I first chose to support City, but rather why I chose to continue to support City after those underdog characteristics were gone. They were, after all, why I was attracted to the club. Suddenly, trophies were an expectation rather than an exception.

I’m not going to sit here and type nonsense about how the winning never mattered because that’s utter bollocks. Of course winning played a role. Winning stuff is fun. It’s why the sport is so tribal — people want that jolt of joy, and they feel that they should have had more of what I had over the last 15 years.

I’m also not going to accept any counter argument from you, the reader, that it was all that mattered, or even that it was the most important thing. Because it wasn’t.

The reason why that choice I made in my late teens became a passion in my 30s, 40s and beyond was because of the community that I discovered around the team. Friends. Some local, others virtual. But, all who made a choice to care about the club for a variety of different reasons, all personal, and all equally relevant and meaningful.

This may come off as cliched trite, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And, it’s why I’m going to still care, regardless of what the outcome of this is.

The only control supporters have is to care and I chose to care about the most important thing around any football club — my fellow supporters, the people who make it matter and who will give it value whether in the Champions League or Championship (or beyond).

Notes:

I purposely did not get into my opinions on the value of FFP, or on what I think an appropriate punishment is, because I want people to read this as football fans, not as United (or Liverpool, or Arsenal, or…) fans. I’ve been pretty open in my feelings about FFP — I don’t believe it is well designed, a benefit to football, nor does it do what it claims to do. I also have questions about the impartiality of the review, which I’m sure is the basis of City’s appeal.

However, that’s all irrelevant to now, or what I want to see happen next.

What’s that? I want it to be over. I said the same thing two years ago. 50 point penalty? With a multiple window transfer ban? Sure, whatever, just let the fans get on with supporting the club without having to constantly argue over the admin.