The Backstory

I’ve been a City fan since the 2006/07 season.

Following the 2006 World Cup, I set about picking a Premier League side to support. The old Sky Four seemed too easy, so I began a thorough research process to find a club that a) was a traditional top flight side; b) had a decent upside such that some degree of success was a reasonable goal; and c) was located in a city I’d be interested in visiting for matches. After narrowing my options to City, Everton, Newcastle, Spurs, Villa, and West Ham, I asked myself which of these was the most analogous to my favorite American sports team, the Philadelphia Phillies. The passion and gallows humor of Manchester City, combined with my love of Manchester’s music scene of the 70s/80s/90s, made my choice a fairly straightforward one in the end.

No sooner had I joined the ranks of City followers than they lost the ability to score goals at home and began a worrying slide toward the relegation zone. Additionally, City’s American contingent soon was gone, with Claudio Reyna’s contract canceled in January and DaMarcus Beasley’s loan spell ending. The manager was sacked, the former club captain left on a free transfer and rubbed salt in the wound by saying he wanted to win silverware at Portsmouth (Sure, he eventually did, but it seemed ridiculous at the time.), and the team’s best player assaulted a teammate and was flogged to Newcastle after they met the £5.5 million release clause in his contract. Good times.

Then things got very interesting very quickly. The takeover by the deposed Thai prime minister. The hiring of Sven-Göran Eriksson. Six hastily procured transfers. The 100-percent start to the 2007/08 season. The attacking flair of Elano and Martin Petrov. The two draws I took in in person at Eastlands in my first visit to Manchester. The derby double over United. The Riverside debacle in the season finale. The sacking of Sven-Göran Eriksson. The hiring of Mark Hughes. The freezing of the owner’s funding and the accompanying sense of doom at the club. And then The Day Everything Changed.

I was on a friend’s deck on Labor Day 2008, basically just refreshing my phone over and over. I began the day worried about City selling Vedran Ćorluka — one of my favorite players — and suddenly the club had a new owner who made Roman Abramovich look like Peter Swales. Then came word of City beating Chelsea to the signature of Robinho. Then the near capture of Dimitar Berbatov before he eventually settled on a move to the suburbs instead.

You know the rest. Since then, it’s been a fascinating journey as City have aggressively pursued The Project — a plan to turn a mid-table underachiever into a top club and an club largely unknown around the world into a global brand. It’s been alternately thrilling and infuriating, from the two-steps-forward-one-step-back progression on the pitch to the jealous slings and arrows of the media and opposition fans. It’s been by far the craziest experience of a life spent as a sports fan, and I wouldn’t have traded this fascinating experience for anything else.