Ruminations on Mark’s Mercs

I must admit, my feelings about this season’s brand new, shiny, precision-engineered Manchester City team are what one might term ‘conflicted.’  I’d never previously had any great like or dislike for the club, although I’ve long been an admirer of Steven Ireland’s and I always enjoyed the speed and sharpness with which the team tended to play on their home turf.  And naturally, there is always a pleasure in seeing the “other” Manchester team do well, living as they do in the ever-lengthening and ever-darkening shadow of the most loved and hated team of any sport in civilized history.

Then, everything changed.  Over the course of a few brief months a massive overhaul of the club took place, and the dearth of resources newly available to the club, a seemingly perpetual cascade of cash(or “cashcade,” if you will… or won’t.  Frankly it would speak better of you if you didn’t), allowed Mark Hughes to essentially point in the direction of any footballer in the known universe and say “we’ll take him, please .”  And he did.  Many, many times.  Of course not every club or player is going to agree to the deal just because you drive to the meeting in a solid platinum car with endangered species leather upholstery, but if you make enough offers you’re going to get some bites.

…Leaving City with almost enough new faces to field an entire team with.  So, we come to the beginning of the conundrum:  Whether or not we liked City before this sea change, can we keep hold of the same views of them in light of their metamorphosis?

This isn’t a problem for EPL fans who are actual residents of E, because they have geographical ties to teams and can anchor their love, or hate, or anything in between, to the firm bedrock of their birthplace.  Those of us here in the US, or anywhere else in the vast Prem-following world, must base our support, or derision, of teams, entirely upon merits unrelated to the oft-cubed ‘location’.  We grow to love a team over time from watching them, getting to know their style, their players.  Suddenly City has all new players, and has also invested in all manner of aesthetic touchups.  I must say, Umbro has created what might be the most fantastic looking jerseys I have ever seen.  I’m tempted to get one solely out of sheer artistic admiration.  And have you looked at mcfc.co.uk?  Some of the best and most visually pleasing web design you’ll ever encounter.

For me, a great deal of liking a team is about liking its particular players.  I’m not saying I’m going to drop the teams I love now when the new generations take over, simply that the players are what hook me.  And I have felt great personal conflict about the City issue for this reason.  Craig Bellamy, Roque Santa Cruz, Gareth Barry and Shay Given were all players that I had grown to like a great deal, and all of a sudden they had been put together in the same place.  And yet, I felt that just throwing a bunch of stars together in one place when one got hold of the resources to do so was odd, inorganic and against the very principle of a team.  I simply didn’t know how I felt about the whole mess.

At some point, it occurred to me what this new team reminded me of, and this is not something that has gone unnoticed by others in the EPL fan world:  A mercenary company.  In a tradition dating back to the old Free Companies of medieval Europe, Hughes collected together a band of skilled young men with little in common but their desire to play and now intends to rampage all across the league without regard for the team’s history or traditional place in the scheme of things.

The reason why it’s so hard to form a strong view on Man City anymore is because a team’s fundamental personality is largely defined by its players, and the dynamic and atmosphere that forms around them as they play together, get to know one another and establish a rhythm.  Mark Hughes brought together a disparate group of players from across the country – or in one case, continent – and in so doing, swept the old dynamic away.  You can’t really like or dislike the personality of a team when it doesn’t have one yet.  The established atmosphere, the old rhythm, the etched makeup of what was Manchester City FC is gone.  It is up to the new cohort to take responsibility into their own hands and forge a new creation with the white-hot blob of iron that sits on the anvil before them.  As you have probably seen in my previous humor posts, I’m not exactly a fan of Hughes, but it does sadden me somewhat that he was taken away from his creation before he really had the chance to see what it would become.  I still don’t know what to think of City, but I’ll be watching them, curious to see what’s next.  And so will Alex Ferguson.