Most fans want Man City to beat Arsenal to the title. Why?
COMMENT: Manchester City have won six of the last eight Premier League titles and have become, for some, the ‘default champions’. But what does it say about the modern game that many neutrals would prefer to see a ‘sportswashing project’ edge out Mikel Arteta’s team in the title race? By Miguel Delaney
At Arsenal , there’s long been a feeling that some players are a touch too conscious of social media noise. Most of that, of course, is about “bottle” and the nature of their play , but those players that care will surely have sensed something else behind that. They can’t but be conscious of it.
There’s a glee. So many fans, more than in most title races, want Arsenal to fail. It’s been one of the more interesting dynamics of an emotionally intense season, that perhaps says a bit about the social and media landscape that modern football now takes place in.
The issue is all the more fascinating because of who Arsenal are up against. Manchester City are one of England’s great historic clubs and have recently offered up some of the finest teams that European football has ever seen but, under this Abu Dhabi ownership, it’s also true to say that they amount to a political project by an autocratic state. The description, in this writer’s own States of Play book, is of a “sportswashing project” .
That brings questions of how the club is used in the context of human rights and geopolitical questions. As recently as this Thursday, then, human rights group FairSquare issued a press release calling on the UK government to investigate the links of City owner, Sheikh Mansour , to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group accused of genocide in Sudan . The statement cites evidence that points to Mansour, a senior Emirati royal and deputy prime minister of the UAE, of “having played a central role in the UAE’s dealings with the RSF”.
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