Jesus its a handy aul life too for Henry, Evra, Carragher, Schmeichel, Ferdinand, Micah et al.
Talk shite, get paid.
Liverpool and Manchester United’s runs in the Champions League were always box office. The days of the 1999 and 2005 Champions League finals, you could feel the air around Dublin heavy with expectation. Arsenal were less of a draw but they’d still have attracted a good bit of interest. Chelsea were a decent draw too because while they were among the elite coterie of super franchises, they had a cuntish personality that made for compulsive viewing.
Manchester City are just…meh. Nobody cares. There’s a grand irrelevance to it all.
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What did Holly and Phil do?
I remember for the 2008 and 2009 Final’s when United were involved, end of year school ‘exams’ being brought forward to ensure everyone was finished on the Wednesday afternoon and could enjoy the games in peace.
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I don’t know, but I think I heard they don’t like each other.
Yanited fans were absolutely thrilled to be the first big club on the stock market 
Phil has been errr best leave it there.
In my view the 2008 and 2009 finals, while “big”, lacked the all pervasive bigness of the 1999 final.
1999 was a defining event because it was the natural culmination of a journey for Manchester United and Alex Ferguson which went back to Ferguson’s days with Aberdeen, through Gothenburg and Rotterdam and Ta Ra Fergie and Mark Robins and Steve Bruce’s header. The venue helped a lot to make it a defining event. If it had taken place in the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen rather than the Nou Camp in Barcelona, it would probably not have been such a touchstone in popular culture.
The BIGGEST Champions League nights of the last 30 years are as follows:
1 Manchester United v Bayern Munich 1999
2 Liverpool v AC Milan 2005
3 Real Madrid v Barcelona 2011
4 Liverpool v Chelsea 2005
5 Juventus v Manchester United 1999
6 Liverpool v Barcelona 2019
7 Chelsea v Barcelona 2009
8 Barcelona v Bayern Munich 2015
9 Liverpool v Manchester City 2018
10 Manchester United v Juventus 1999
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It was so much better when the team i liked were doing it.
Gas cunts all the same
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Man United v Barcelona 2008 was absolutely huge too.
This costs more.
That’s simply not true.
City probably put in one of the greatest ever performances yesterday and nobody really cares about it because they cheated so much.
Nobody really believes the performance.
Like If Pretty much any other club done it everyone would be talking about it.
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If Man United or Liverpool put together this sort of body of work it would unbearable for the opposing fans.
Even if it was arsenal I couldn’t watch and probably Chelsea too.
But with city you just feel meh. I’d rather them arsenal or Liverpool.
Sure that’s complete rubbish. I have no love for Manchester United because I support Liverpool but it’s unarguable that Manchester United’s biggest Champions League nights were on a completely different level to Manchester City ones. Pretty much all but the most blinkered Manchester United supporters would say the same about Liverpool. There’s a bitter rivalry there but ultimately a respect for each other’s achievements and status as great clubs.
Chelsea’s biggest Champions League nights were also considerably bigger than Manchester City’s because Chelsea were a team and a club who were polarising - they had a hun persona and most people wanted to see them lose. Chelsea’s brand was “we’re cunts”. You don’t even get that with Manchester City.
Manchester City are just cold, sterile and dystopian, like the Futuristic Zone in The Crystal Maze. Faceless. Anonymous. Like crash test dummies. They’re football by ChatGPT. They’re the football equivalent of toxic false online positivity. Charmless micro-kindness and relentless macro-aggression. They’re the equivalent of corporate greenwashing. The whole thing is utterly shallow. It’s like if 1860 Munich were bought by a despotic regime and won all around them. What would the rest of Europe feel? The rest of Europe would feel nothing.
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Manchester City and BT’s coverage are a perfect match for each other really.
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Wonderful writing pal. I’d love to see this in a newspaper column
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Nobody should begrudge City fans their joy at this point. This has been their journey and their success as much as anyone else’s, and with a little perspective they may even realise that they are not as hated as they sometimes assume. Rather, the overwhelming sensation here for the neutral is indifference, a shrug at the inexorable inevitability of hard power. Everybody in this sport is tainted a little, and even on this unlevel playing field City fans have earned their moment of consummate triumph. By the same token, nobody else is obliged to feel anything about it whatsoever.
Bullet point?
- It is what it is bro
I will say this, Miguel (Hi Miguel!) Delaneys seethe is the equivalent of @BruidheanChaorthainn, @dodgy_keeper and @peddlerscross.
And its fucking delicious.
To quote a great poet as @turenne would say
It ain’t gonna be nothin’ after that, so give me one more platinum plaque and fuck rap, you can have it back
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“Miguel” is a dick of the highest calibre.
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Liverpool’s great European triumphs are associated with Barry Davies commentating down telephone lines. Brian Moore asking “where will this next penalty take us?” and Ian St. John joking “it’s taking us to the hospital, that’s where it’s taking us”. With Andy Gray’s greatest moment, “awwwww ya beauty”, with the crazy commentaries of Liverpool’s Radio City.
Manchester United’s great European nights are associated with Kenneth Wolstenholme, the RTE panel, with Clive Tyldesley’s nostradamus act, “they always score”. With Big Ron’s gravitas laden con-commentaries, before he went full public racist at least.
Attention.
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