It began, as most planetary distractions do, with a shrug in Turin. When UEFA first paired Manchester City with SSC Napoli in the 2011-12 Champions League group stage, global markets barely blinked; the euro was wobbling, Occupy tents had colonized lower Manhattan, and the world’s attention was fixed on the slow-motion car crash called the…
Juventus vs Borussia Dortmund: A Timeline of Two Empires Pretending Everything Is Fine By “Il Conte” Malatesta, Senior Continental Misanthrope 1993 – The Cold War Is Over, So Let’s Fight Over Midfield The first UEFA Cup final between these two continental super-brands lands in the same year Bill Clinton is learning the saxophone and the…
The Ballad of Etihad Accounting: How Manchester City’s 115 Charges Became the World’s Favorite Soap Opera By L. Marchetti, International Correspondent-at-Large (and part-time cynic) In the grand, gilded circus of global football, nothing travels faster than schadenfreude—except, perhaps, a Gulf-state sovereign wealth fund. So when the Premier League finally unsheathed 115 charges against Manchester City…
