Triumph of the City Family: Celebrating Manchester City's Historic Treble Win and its Impact on Supporters

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Hello and welcome to the Squeaky Bum Time podcast, presented exclusively on the Chop Sports channel of the Premier Streaming Network. We are recording this on Monday, june 12th. I am your host, laurent Cortines, in this episode. The season has ended. Manchester City are Champions League winners and have won the treble as English champions, fa Cup champions and European champions. It's a big deal. I'm here in New York with my family. Just thought I wanted to get something out to you guys. So if the sound is a little bit weird, that's where it comes from. If the video is a little bit weird, that's where it comes from. We have to do what we have to do and the show must go on, and I know that you guys understand. So thank you so much Again. Before I get into it, please like, share and subscribe. This is the last episode of the season. This is the last episode for at least a month. I may pop in to talk transfers, but please, i want to have a great season and I thank all of you guys from the bottom of my heart and it means everything if you can share, subscribe and join the show so that we can grow. Now Manchester City are Premier League champions. I know you really just want my feelings.

So I watched this game in the beer house on 45th Street in Manhattan, new York, with 20 of some of my dearest friends. We have Fred Serasso Thank you for hosting the 20th annual soccer hooligan day and for all the boys who always show up in their kits, for Pablo showing up from Ukraine, for Bramlage for showing up, for Egg for always showing up, and Brian and the rest of the team, joe Maniac so many good times, josh Harold, just fantastic. And you know, it means the world to be able to spend the greatest sport moment of my life with my friends. And if I'm emotional, it's because this is what football does It connects you through space and time to moments. I'll always know where I was when City won the trouble. I'll always know who I was with, i'll know who I hugged. I know everything that happened. And this game is not about the X's and O's.

For me today, it's more about what it means to be a city supporter, what it means to have gone through all the times, all the attacks, all the jokes, all the 115 accusations all the year ruining football. All the attacks, everything that anyone can say about Manchester City or oil, chester, shake man's stores or fraud. All those things Now in the moment. You cannot take them away from us. You cannot take it away from city supporters. You cannot ruin this moment, because I felt it, i saw it, it was real. So, on the rational front, yes, they can take the moments away by law. You cannot take away what was felt, how much joy and relief there was, how much joy and relief the players have had. I've spent the last three days kind of processing it and taking it all on and figuring out what it means to be a city supporter, what it means to do football content when your club is the club that's on top. I'm sure historically there were other clubs that did things like this, but today and this weekend has been city's day And it means everything. You put everything into supporting your club. If you're doing it the right way, if you're just doing it like a fan, like an American or whatever, i do have a deep sort of hopeful belief in you.

Connection to Manchester City, part of my personality is the sort of darkness that the traditional city supporter had, the typical city, the. Never us the. Why are we always gonna lose? Why are we living in the darkness? And that's part of what connects me to city, which is that older ethos, pre-takeover ethos, of what can go wrong will go wrong. We will lose. We will spend a half a season not scoring a goal under Stuart Pierce. We will blow the FA Cup. We will get knocked out. We will find ways to lose and end up in the first division and end up with Jillingham and end up buying the wrong players.

Having the wrong owner from the prior Srinivasa or, sorry, the Thai owner, who really didn't have the money, was just a fraud and ended up going to jail and tried to hide his money in Manchester City. All those things are real and all those things are part of being a city supporter. And if you're new, that's fine. I don't have any of that. You're new, you're old, whatever.

y watched city regularly from: 2010

The game itself was a Champions League final. The last five have finished one nil and this one was no different. It finished one nil first half. You know city were bad. They weren't good. I thought Inter were great. They showed the fight and tenacity of what you'd expect from an old club that is a European champion, that has a treble under their belt, that has a way support that understands what a Champions League final means. A nil nil. They play like they're winning and gonna win a title, and so city had to overcome that And I think the players it got to them.

The first half was rough. Kevin De Bruyne goes off after a half hour. His hamstring, he said, had been hurting for a month and there it went. Goodbye, kevin De Bruyne. And so that's where city were just sort of getting through the half, not really creating anything. Kyle Walker's not in there. Not much is really happening. Second half a bit better, not a tremendous amount better.

And then, i think 10 minutes before the Rodgery goal, there was a big chance for Inter, and Inter were great and played this as well as you can on our worthy opponent and probably didn't deserve to lose. This would be a great regular season result where they got a draw and they probably deserved a draw. But this is a final And city did create a chance. It came on an attack from a Kenji run through the midfield, sort of breaking the lines of Interstout and tight defense. They were starting to get tired. It's on to Bernardo Silva, who jinx and jinx and causes problems and the space opens up At the in the top of the 18 yard box, into the box. Rodry, come at the time, come at the moment. Rodry fires it in, as we've seen him do several times before the Aston Villa game comes up. I think there's a Lester game where he's scortable like that and it goes in and scenes.

A level of relief that I had that was beyond a Level of trust that I had in City, that I knew we could see out a 1-0. I knew it, it was in me. This team is different. This is a defensive City. This is a solid City and they did have to suffer Enter towards the end or towards the end.

There City did have better chances. Phil Foden was in on goal also in the first half. Erling Holland had really only one chance and he was almost the decoy. Things were cagey. It was a tactical game, trying to find space, trying to battle through, and when you're in the group bar environment With the TVs on and people yelling and beers coming in and shots flying in, you can't really feel the technical Nuance of it. But I listened to overall and I could see what was happening. It was that really clogged center that that the midfield of inter really put on a show. We're able to stop everything. They really pressed City high and City weren't able to get into their stuff, especially with the Jitters and nerves. City are very much about precision and feel and flow and in that stadium, in that environment, city just couldn't get going.

For the first half and we're able to control a large part of the game still had more possession, but Inter really had the better chances and were more composed. They did not create much until the end. Lartaro had a shot when he was on a side goal probably could have squared. It didn't took the shot. Edison pretty much saved it pretty easily. There was a shot later on off the bar scramble in the goalmouth That went off the bar off a shin. Of course Diaz was there. There were some mistakes in there.

And then in the terms of control And who the standout players for City were, of course again, john Stones, johnny Johnny Stones. Come with the man, come at the time. What a mature player, what a player who's suffered and had hard times under Pep. I don't think he's ever played 30 goals, 30 games in a season under Pep. Always would have really good runs, then get a hamstring and miss 15 games and La Port would come in and he'd be a bit Part, he'd be part of the Automandy Stones pairing. And then that season didn't quite work and, he see, always seemed to be Five steps forward, three steps back, three steps forward, one back. Ten games in, then a hurt.

And this season, after Pep sort of discovered the beckon the barnsley beckon, bowerness of John Stones, he was able to take over and really be city's best player in the second half, along with Foden. I thought everyone else was really Pretty poor. This might have been City's worst performance of the year, but it doesn't matter. This is what finals are like. This is why I was afraid. This Really brought in all the fears and worries that had about what could happen in a city game and all of it did. But it was still fantastic. It was still a dream, and full-time I wept, i cried. The suffering, the relief, the fact that we've done it, that it wasn't gonna be another season of saying you can't win the Champions League. There wasn't gonna be another season of are you the best, are you the worst? all that's left is you cheated, we cheated, we cheated. Okay, we cheated. Cheated to do what? Cheated to do what really folks think about.

What the accusations are against city? It's Inflating revenue so that they can spend the money they inflate because of a rule that is designed for regulatory capture. You can fight about whether it's right or wrong, whatever Ultimately city-bent rules, so that they could dethrone Manchester United and spend money to win trophies, just like this. And from being in league one 25 years ago, city are In the conversation for the greatest team in European football and And definitely the greatest team in England. Over this period, city will represent what dominance means. City will represent what precision, passion and mentality are.

This is city's time. This is what football looks like now And you can hate it and that's up to you, but you shouldn't begrudge city fans because, if anyone has been here since before the takeover, this is a local club. This is a club that is loved. This is a club that is cared for. This is a club that means everything to the people of East Manchester And when people attack the club and the players, you're really hurting people. It's real, the club means something And it's not their fault that the process that happened this way and that Manchester City got swept up in global politics of oil and who gets to be wealthy and who gets to spend money and when they get to spend it and whose atrocities are worse depending on when they did it, and who gets to say that they're the good guys or the bad guys.

And right now it's the Middle East, but it was England and it was the Cologne. Whatever it is, i'm not here for that. But city fans get to have their moments and the players are swept up in that, and the players get to have their moments and we should appreciate the football that we've seen and acknowledge that this is the best team anyone's ever seen for a generation. It's Pep Sparsa and now it's Pep City. There's really not something in between in terms of influence, in terms of power, in terms of precision, in terms of mentality. You know Real would be the other club of the decade in terms of they're winning all those Champions League under Zidane, but they weren't really great in the league and they really didn't tactically innovate and they really sort of just lived for moments with great players, which is what Real should do. But this is something else. This is a collective spirit, a single focus of us against the world and City taking it on.

I don't really want to talk too much more today because I'm on the road in New York with my family, but I wanted to reach out and make sure that we connected to each other for a final episode of the season. I'll probably do another one, but I'm just going on my phone just because I don't want to blow the exit of the show. Thank you to every single person who's listened to the show, every single person who's listened to the WhatsApp Room, every conversation I've had on Twitter. Thank you to Karthik Krishnair and the Gaffer, chris Harris, on the World Soccer Talk Show. Thank you to the Totally Football Show James Richardson, ollie Saylor, all the guys on there. Thank you to Robbie Musto and Robbie Earl, whose podcast is an inspiration, and I take your shows and I try and put them as part of my shows And if you want to listen to great shows, please feel free to do it, because the two Robbie's podcasts the Totally Football Show, world Soccer Talk, let Me Talk podcast, the Blue Moon podcast with Dave Mooney Just great.

e for the season. That is the: 2023