Post by John Parry on Sept 27, 2008 17:59:36 GMT -5
As some of our members will know, I sometimes drift off and pay attention to another interest of mine. That of football, variously known as soccer, association football or futbol (Hi Ron !). My team is Manchester City, who have become known over the years as "everybody's second team".
The reason for that is that they are likeable. Perrenial losers. Outright winners of the Cup for Cockups. Always striving to play attacking, flowing football. And archetypal victims of the old saw that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy's Law? City wrote it.
People like their supporters too. I'm not just saying that - its true. Despite not managing to win anything for 32 years (as our rivals and arch-enemies Manchester United constantly remind us), City supporters are regarded as the most loyal in the country. They return year after year for more pain to be inflicted on them. When City got relegated from the first tier of English football to the second, and then (yes, this is City we're talking about) to the third, it was widely predicted that they would never recover. Their match attendances were expected to plummet, and the loss of revenue from that would cause them to go out of business. What happened? Their match attendances were the fifth highest in the country.
As an example of "typical City", two seasons ago they were really struggling. Their team performances were dire. During the whole of the season they managed to score only ten goals at home. (To put that in perspective, no other team has ever done that and managed to avoid relegation). And at the end of the season, the club was bought by the ex-Prime Minister of Thailand, a multi-millionaire in his own right.
Well, obviously that was the end of all City's problems, the start of a new era, money to burn - right? Wrong... While initial results for the first half of the season were good, it didn't last. The new Chairman had all his funds sequestred back in Thailand. He couldn't get his money out of the country. He had to borrow money from the previous Chairman, just to pay the players. Team morale was rock bottom, and they lost the final game of the season 8 - 1. Their worst result in living memory. Rock bottom.
Are you beginning to see a pattern emerging here? So what happened next?
Manchester City, the poor neighbours, the all-time also-rans, were purchased by Sheikh Mansour of Abu-Dhabi. Rumoured to be the seventh richest man in the world. They went overnight from scraping the money together to make payments for their players, to being a team that could afford to buy the New York Yankees, The Dallas Cowboys, Real Madrid, and the two Milan teams on the same day. Cash. Without blinking.
Why?
We reckon its just "typical City".
Regards - John
The reason for that is that they are likeable. Perrenial losers. Outright winners of the Cup for Cockups. Always striving to play attacking, flowing football. And archetypal victims of the old saw that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy's Law? City wrote it.
People like their supporters too. I'm not just saying that - its true. Despite not managing to win anything for 32 years (as our rivals and arch-enemies Manchester United constantly remind us), City supporters are regarded as the most loyal in the country. They return year after year for more pain to be inflicted on them. When City got relegated from the first tier of English football to the second, and then (yes, this is City we're talking about) to the third, it was widely predicted that they would never recover. Their match attendances were expected to plummet, and the loss of revenue from that would cause them to go out of business. What happened? Their match attendances were the fifth highest in the country.
As an example of "typical City", two seasons ago they were really struggling. Their team performances were dire. During the whole of the season they managed to score only ten goals at home. (To put that in perspective, no other team has ever done that and managed to avoid relegation). And at the end of the season, the club was bought by the ex-Prime Minister of Thailand, a multi-millionaire in his own right.
Well, obviously that was the end of all City's problems, the start of a new era, money to burn - right? Wrong... While initial results for the first half of the season were good, it didn't last. The new Chairman had all his funds sequestred back in Thailand. He couldn't get his money out of the country. He had to borrow money from the previous Chairman, just to pay the players. Team morale was rock bottom, and they lost the final game of the season 8 - 1. Their worst result in living memory. Rock bottom.
Are you beginning to see a pattern emerging here? So what happened next?
Manchester City, the poor neighbours, the all-time also-rans, were purchased by Sheikh Mansour of Abu-Dhabi. Rumoured to be the seventh richest man in the world. They went overnight from scraping the money together to make payments for their players, to being a team that could afford to buy the New York Yankees, The Dallas Cowboys, Real Madrid, and the two Milan teams on the same day. Cash. Without blinking.
Why?
We reckon its just "typical City".
Regards - John
), Detroit was not one of the cities selected to host a team. Perhaps they figured we were already deluged with pro teams ... in baseball, football, basketball and hockey.
