And yes, maybe Vinícius Júnior has been replaced by a handsome, baffled-looking waxwork. Welcome to the weirdest weekend of them all. We are now post-judgment, post-statement, postlapsarian.
As the Premier League prepares to snap back into what must be described, out of habit, as reality, armed with the knowledge its serial champions have been the authors of a 10-year sham supremacy, the first question is fairly simple. There is no precedent for this. Even the state of total confusion feels brittle given City maintain their complete state of innocence and deny all charges.
We await the release of Irrefutable Body of Evidence, the great lost Madonna erotic thriller sequel, presumably recast around a steamy three-year regulatory tribunal scenario. City’s appeal defence appears to be based around the government giving them money. This may or may not be related to how you control what the high court considers admissible.
But it is also implied confirmation that the club is the propaganda tool of an overseas state, that Kyle Walker, for example, has basically been a civil servant all these years. Maybe the United Arab Emirates should have six stars on the national team jersey, one for each title. They even look like asterisks.
Beyond this there is the more basic issue of how to present this spectacle as entertainment. How do you structure a Match of the Day now? What’s the balance in the edit of bus-rage, taunting banner clips, managerial evasiveness content, versus the trivial stuff on the pitch with the balls and goals and men in shorts?
Mainly the Manchester City affair has created an existential problem. The key questions in English football are no longer things such as who will win the league, or will Tottenham get relegated (although this is still an excellent question). They are instead: what is real now?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
