Why this Champions League campaign feels very different for Man City
Enzo Maresca has an idea of how, to borrow a phrase adapted from an Inspiral Carpets song, this is how it feels to be City. It has changed in the last three weeks,with a guilty verdict returnedin the case of 114 Premier League charges, with an official judgment that they benefited from more than £900m in disguised, and thus illegitimate, funding, withthe word "sham" attached to their contractsand, for some, their achievements.
Maresca has talked about how he and his players have hadto block out the "noise", as he terms it. They did it very effectively at Anfield on Sunday, shrugging off chants about cheatingto beat Liverpool 3-0.
He accepts it is harder for the Manchester City faithful to ignore it, and not merely because the subject matter goes beyond the usual back-and-forth between followers of competing clubs. It is hard for Man City fans to ignore the barbs of opposition supporters(PA) "It probably has been more tough for our fans than for the players or for me because it's probably more complicated," said the Italian.
"Because if I am an Arsenal fan or a [Manchester] United fan and you are a City fan, I can tell you, 'Hey, my friend, you cheat,' or this kind of thing." And if that creates an image of Maresca not as a manager, but as a rival supporter, calling City cheats, his captain endured a similar soundtrack for 90 minutes on Sunday and sounded unruffled. "I feel like when you build yourself as a player, you build yourself against any kind of noise.
So be it the word you just described, or any other kind," said Ruben Dias. "Personally, and I really feel like I speak for the whole group, we're very calm.
Top of the Premier League with a 100 percent record, having won the two away games that tend to mean most to their supporters - United and then Liverpool - and with Maresca looking a worthy successor to Pep Guardiola, theyface the champions of Europe on Wednesday. Paris Saint-Germain could provided a barometer of the progress of this new-look City side.
Dias was asked if Luis Enrique's team will win a third consecutive Champions League. Hopefully they cannot," he replied, speaking to his own ambitions.
Yet this is more than a duel of the nouveaux riches, the last two first-time winners of the competition. They have been bracketed together for other reasons: Middle Eastern ownership from oil-rich states, heavy spending, questions if it fell within the parameters of the rules.
It was not City who spent a world record €222m on Neymar.