Another day, another note of unreality; another vivid and brilliant spectacle that feels as though it has been whipped together out of meringue and burnt sugar. Time flies when the world is closing in. Two weeks on, this was Manchester City’s first home game since the verdict dropped, the irrefutable body of evidence was refuted, and English football entered its state of ongoing whiplash.
In the stadium this felt like watching someone dance while the world burns. This was a brilliant game pegged out around six goals, a collapse, a comeback, posts and bars struck, saved penalties, and a performance of state-of-the-art omni-football from this brilliantly high-grade PSG team. Pep Guardiola was even present in the stands, looking oddly haunted beneath a flat cap.
Looking in fact quite a lot like Vincenzo Pentangeli in The Godfather Part II, the mute Sicilian brother who turns up in the courtroom and has a congressional hearing dismissed just by glowering wordlessly. Well, it’s the best defence anyone’s come up with yet. City’s players gave everything against superior opponents.
The crowd roused itself from a state of sullen defiance to a state of angry defiance and occasionally even jubilant defiance. At times there was even a resurgence of that euphoric state of the glory years, the collective cognitive dissonance, hard white lights blotting out the sky, nothing out there beyond the spectacle. Take me to the place where you go, where nobody knows if it’s night or day.
There has been some talk in recent days about whether City’s games should be broadcast or even played at all. Is it all just empty, dystopian, an insult to sport? On the other hand, this is by far the most interesting City have ever been.
It has been a cold project at times, frictionless football, the hand of a sovereign state at your back, victory without content. In the age of charge-rage and mega-defiance City are suddenly total box office. Say, yeah OK we did cheat but the real cheat is the rules.
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