City wrong to play race card against Klopp

 

If Liverpool are “back”, just where are newly-crowned FIFA “Club of the Year” Manchester City?

Too bad City’s midweek game against Arsenal had to be postponed or we might have a better idea about the players.

But we didn’t need that game to know where the club hierarchy stands.

It seems they are so touchy about their wealth, they’ve played, of all things, the race card against Jurgen Klopp, for having the temerity to mention their unlimited riches.

Before the Reds’ 1-0 win on Sunday, Klopp had mused about the difficulty of competing with “three clubs in world football who can do what they want financially”.

It’s a fair comment from a manager often accused of not spending enough and a mere statement of facts: City, Newcastle and Paris Saint-Germain are all state-owned.

Even billionaire oligarchs can’t compete with the sovereign wealth funds of nations and you don’t need to be a director of Goldman Sachs to know that.

Spain’s La Liga president Javier Tebas warned of the threat of “state-owned clubs” and “petrol money and gas money” back in 2019.

And met with a similar response.

According to The Independent, City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said: “There’s something deeply wrong in bringing ethnicity into the conversation.

“This is just ugly,” he added. “The way he is combining teams because of ethnicity, I find that very disturbing, to be honest.”

Tebas was “combining teams” because their relevant common denominator is that the three are state-owned. It’s Al Mubarak who is bringing ethnicity into it.

Neither Tebas nor Klopp were anywhere near to being “borderline racist”, “xenophobic” or “ugly”: they were talking a totally different subject.

Twisting rational statements about football’s distorted finances into something sinister is what most right-minded people would call ugly.

It also betrays an exasperation in not always being able to get what they want, even with all their gazillions, in a place they can’t control – a foreign field.

To imply that Klopp, of all people, the most liberal-minded manager in the game, and who, many believe, treats Egypt’s Mo Salah as his favourite son, is anti-Arab is, well, very rich indeed.

Perhaps in the aftermath of a bitter defeat, for all his cleverness, Al Mubarak doesn’t always think things through.

For different reasons, Liverpool don’t come out of the match blameless either.

Their fans have also thrown coins and damaged team buses for which the book should be thrown at them.

But City fans stooped to the lowest of the low making fun of the Hillsborough tragedy as they have the Munich air disaster.

At least they achieved the rare feat of uniting Liverpool and United in disgust.

Liverpool rightly condemned their own fans for their actions, but from City there was no such thing – a raw nerve had been touched and we saw the reaction of the head honchos.

It has to be said the game, although feisty at times, was a wonderful exhibition of English football at its all-action best.

And it’s likely that City’s players were as disappointed as Arsenal’s in not taking the field on Wednesday.

They would have relished the chance to quickly bounce back as true champions do.

Just as the table-topping Gunners would have welcomed a genuine test of their title credentials.

Pep Guardiola’s “This is Anfield” sour grapes were to be expected: great managers are not necessarily great losers.

Fergie, Wenger, Mourinho, Klopp – serial winners all – are not renowned for their grace in defeat.

His players may well have bought into his inference of biased officiating after the way they harangued the referee over the disallowed goal.

But you have to ask how big a part the intimidating atmosphere played in the decision?

After all, the man supposedly cowed by it initially allowed the goal and the one cocooned in a cubicle 300km away felt otherwise.

Liverpool made it back-to-back wins with another one-goal victory over West Ham, and with a visit to Forest on Saturday, will be fancied to make it three in a row.

City and Arsenal will have to wait as the Gunners’ game with PSV Eindhoven had to be squeezed in last night.

The original fixture was called off due to a police shortage following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

It allowed City a longer celebration of their latest award – a strange one in that it was a club award and not just the team.

City also owed their success to the women’s team as it was a joint vote.

Liverpool were second even though no one pretends either Klopp or the club owners are paragons of virtue.

Klopp deserved to be sent off for his aggression towards the fourth official and should be banned – and he knows it.

Fenway Sports Group spoiled their reputation by signing up – along with City – for the Super League.

But they’ve not been accused of human rights violations like City’s owners have.

Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan is City’s owner and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to Human Rights Watch, “the country has moved from limited basic rights to basically full-on no civil or political rights whatsoever, mass arrests of political opposition.”

FairSquare’s Nick McGeehan adds: “The UAE’s approach to criticism of its various human rights abuses and ruinous foreign interventions is to deny or ignore, and to smear and discredit its critics.”

Of course, these are the stains that sports-washing can’t entirely remove.

The Independent’s Miguel Delaney says: “It’s all about an arms race with soft weapons between UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”

Smearing and discrediting Klopp and Tebas is part of it.

Even in football, they’d rather trigger a petty cold war with their rivals than face the truth. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.