Manchester Citys stay-away fans are an unintended consequence of FFP
There were roughly 10,000 empty seats for Manchester City’s first home game of their Champions League campaign. Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA
Manchester City struggled once again with the first home match of a Champions League campaign on Tuesday, but at least Paul Scholes (on television) and Rio Ferdinand (on Twitter) enjoyed themselves counting the empty seats at the Etihad.
There were roughly 10,000 missing fans for the Roma game, making City's "We're not really here" song seem unusually appropriate and giving United supporters and former players endless opportunity to make unfavourable comparisons between the shallowness of the Etihad atmosphere and the boiling cauldron of excitement that is Old Trafford on European nights.
That is exaggeration, of course. There have been many memorable European nights at Old Trafford, though the first home game of the group stage is not generally an occasion to get the juices flowing, even when the opposition has been respectable. By the same token, Liverpool's return to Champions League football after an absence of nearly five years produced a riot of flag-waving and impassioned singing at Anfield this month when Ludogorets were the visitors, but in terms of actual atmosphere the night was nothing to write home about, and will quickly be forgotten when (if?) Liverpool progress to the knockout stages.
But at least Old Trafford and Anfield were full, is the point Scholes and Ferdinand were making. If your stadium holds 48,000, and you only get 38,000 for a game against the second best team in Italy, what is the point of expanding the Etihad to a capacity of 60,000? What if you build it and they still don't come, to misquote what was already a misquote from Field of Dreams? Over at the Theatre of Dreams there always seemed to
Related Posts
Fernando and Stevan Jovetic join Manchester Citys training for Roma- Manchester Citys under-21 match is abandoned over alleged racial abuse
- USA's World Cup campaign: conflicting feelings over Klinsmann effort
Melbourne Victory fans to blame for violence, claim Wanderers- Balance sheet bantz; and Adriano
- Peter Lim to buy 50% stake in Salford City from Class of 92