Manchester City are suddenly at the box office in the era of rage and mega challenge | Manchester City

Another day, another note of unreality; another bright, vivid spectacle that looks like it’s been whipped from meringue and burnt sugar. Time flies when the world gets closer. Two weeks later, it was Manchester City’s first home game since the verdict, the body of irrefutable evidence was refuted and English football entered its permanent whiplash state.

In the stadium it was like watching someone dance while the world burns. It was a brilliant game built around six goals, a collapse, a comeback, hit posts and bars, saved penalties and a peak omni-football performance from this brilliantly high-level Paris Saint-Germain side.

Pep Guardiola was even present in the stands, looking strangely haunted under a flat cap. Actually looking a lot like Vincenzo Pentangeli in The Godfather II, the mute Sicilian brother who shows up in the courtroom and whose congressional hearing is dismissed simply by glaring wordlessly. Well, it’s the best defense anyone has ever imagined.

City players gave their all against superior opponents. The crowd went from a state of sullen defiance to a state of angry defiance and sometimes even jubilant defiance. Sometimes there was even a resurgence of that euphoric state of the glory years, of collective cognitive dissonance, of harsh white lights obscuring the sky, nothing beyond spectacle. Take me to the place you’re going, where no one knows if it’s day or night.

There has been discussion in recent days about whether City matches should be broadcast or even played at all. Is this all meaningless, dystopian, an insult to sport? On the other hand, it is by far the most interesting city that has ever existed. It has sometimes been a cold project, football without friction, the hand of a sovereign state behind your back, a victory without content.

Well, not anymore. In the era of rage and mega-challenge, City has suddenly become a total box office. No more refusals. Just go full Nosferatu. Embrace the darkness. Salute and acknowledge. Say, yeah, OK, we cheated, but the real cheating is the rules. It’s all a deeply compelling main character, a performative villainy, like Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, who sees the rules, rejects them, and ends up stealing all the limelight from a boring, rule-obsessed old God.

City had perfect opponents here in PSG, who are a sort of twin entity in all this, brothers from another mother. Glove puppets on the state of oil. Twice punished for cheating on financial rules.

But nothing explains the world like football. Abu Dhabi against Qatar in Manchester. Right. Tribal populism. All this took place against the backdrop of a British Prime Minister in trouble, with vultures already pecking at his insides. Andy Burnham has always promised to deliver something fresh and different. To be fair, he might yet be the first prime minister driven out of office because someone really needed to overpay for Kalvin Phillips.

The Etihad was a feverish place before kick-off. There was smoke, fury, a crackle in the air and a decidedly heartwarming heritage video of the club on the big screen, local people looking happy and real, legacy images of skinny-legged Alfs and Herberts, men in brown overcoats. Then on to the years of glory stolen, the trophies lifted, the titles of the last days, with the final legend shouted: “The blues is in the land of dreams”. Yeah. It doesn’t really look like what you think.

Above all, there was a chance here to boo everything and everyone. The PSG team was booed. The chant of PSG supporters was booed. The Champions League anthem has been deleted. A City Till I Die Tifo was hoisted because yes, death must enter. The first songs were “City are going to collapse with a billion in the bank” and the classic “Gary Neville is a wanker, is a wanker”. What happened to not looking back in anger?

But then, this has always been a project defined by defiance, the fist-raising, the punk V-sign, even if that means kowtowing to the benefit of an inherited billionaire monarchy. The banner reading “Sheikh Mansour, Manchester thanks you for 10 great years” is still there. It was always a strange feeling. Why were you thanking him at the time when it was all self-financing, a miracle of sponsorship, appreciated by airlines and telephone companies? It makes more sense now. Of course. He pays for everything.

PSG were brilliant here from the start, Luis Enrique stood in crumpled black tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, looking nicely ravaged, like a jogging Jedi. And by the time Vitinha made it 3-0 in the 32nd minute, the score could have been anything. The midfield was suffocating in and out of possession. Désiré Doué was sublime on the left, all spring and quick balance, like a squirrel on a branch.

And for long periods, City fans remained silent. You can’t blame them. The feeling of grievance may be misdirected, but it is undeniably real. If City fans are angry at being neglected, conspired against, forced to kneel to a distant overlord, well, that’s because they are. Welcome to the world, welcome to East Manchester, welcome to the empty, lit boxes of New Islington, rental engines for an overseas state.

All that love, that hunger, that connection has been siphoned off in the most tantalizing way, sold back to you in the form of stolen glory. Please don’t put your life in the hands of a petro-state propaganda machine, which will ruin everything. Here at least, they had a brilliant match, players who gave everything, spectacle if not victory.