Sliding Doors meets Biff’s Almanac: City saga stirs up a world of alternate histories

‘What if City couldn’t have afforded John Stones (height: 1.88m) and had settled for, say, Victor Lindelöf (1.87m)?’ Illustration: Matthew Green/The GuardianView image in fullscreen‘What if City couldn’t have afforded John Stones (height: 1.88m) and had settled for, say, Victor Lindelöf (1.87m)?’ Illustration: Matthew Green/The GuardianSliding Doors meets Biff’s Almanac: City saga stirs up a world of alternate histories Max RushdenEven New Romantics have a view but this long story will not be cut short amid endless hypotheticals and split narratives

It’s Wednesday afternoon (UK time) and I find myself interviewing Tony Hadley on TalkSport about his upcoming big band tour. We play a bit of Spandau Ballet, chat about the classics and his career – hanging out with Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. In as much as you can deduce in a 10-minute chat on Zoom, Tony seems like an absolute gent.

We do always try to bring it back to sport – Tony is an Arsenal fan, there’s a bit of Arteta, Leeds at the weekend. Tony brings up Billy Bremner and suggests that my co-host Charlie Baker and I are too young to remember him playing. We are, and how wonderful to be called young.

Read moreRight at the end I go for a slightly cumbersome question/joke about Manchester City. “And I know Manchester City are top of the league, but they’ll probably be bottom of the league by the end of the season?”

Hadley is a pro. Maybe he’s been waiting for this hardball question about the charges. “You just never know what’s going to happen – the world is a crazy place. I’ve got to add to all the big band songs we’re doing … at the end we do a Christmas catalogue which is great fun as well.” What a sidestep.

What am I doing? It’s quarter to midnight in Melbourne, I’m in my shed looking at Tony Hadley on a little box on my laptop asking what he thinks City’s punishment might be. Quick, put a call in to Boy George. What’s Midge Ure saying? Simon Le Bon has things to say, but they are embargoed until Drive Time.

Perhaps this is Enzo Maresca’s best strategy. The City manager’s only way out of answering difficult questions is to organise a 20-date big band tour of the UK so he can do the Hadley pivot and talk about how he really brings the house down with his spectacular Christmas medley.

It would certainly add to the monotony of every Premier League manager giving us their prepared “I’m a football man and all I’m interested in is football – I’ve got enough things to worry about at Coventry/Leeds/Bournemouth, etc.”

But such is the magnitude of the story that even these press conferences are interesting. For the first time since filming players walking off a bus in big headphones became part of the spectacle, I am interested in seeing players walking off a bus in big headphones on Sunday afternoon.

View image in fullscreenEnzo Maresca ponders the Hadley pivot. Photograph: Andy Hampson/PAWe couldn’t ask for a more perfect place or a perfect time for this game to take place. Liverpool away. The side City have pipped to the title by a point or two three times since the cheating began. I know two of the titles came after the cheating officially finished but don’t think I need to mention that. What if City couldn’t have afforded John Stones (height: 1.88m) and had settled for, say, Victor Lindelöf (1.87m)? How vital was that extra one centimetre of Stones in clearing that ball off the line against Liverpool at the Etihad in January 2019?

The hypotheticals never end. Sliding Doors meets Biff’s Almanac. Nicky Bandini explained on Thursday’s Football Weekly that Serie A has two histories depending on where you stand on Juventus and Calciopoli: “I think that’s the truth that English football isn’t ready for yet. Whatever happens with these decisions, whether they successfully end up appealing things or they don’t, you’re going to have one group of supporters who are absolutely certain they didn’t win these trophies legitimately, and therefore they don’t count, and you’re going to have one group of supporters who don’t care and are going to claim those trophies whether or not they get taken away from them.

“I think that’s the grim future that lies ahead for the Premier League. You’re going to have two alternate histories, the same that happens in Italy, where the number of titles that Juventus has won is constantly repeated differently by different sources because one side or another is not going to accept the judgment even after the final appeals are exhausted.”

View image in fullscreenJohn Stones clears off the line from Mohamed Salah in 2019, but what if City had never been able to sign the defender? Photograph: Phil Noble/ReutersI’m minded to side with those who favour stripping City of the titles but not assigning them to anyone else. Not just because it’s fun to see how many people say Asterix. Football just isn’t that simple. If City don’t sign those players, they sign other players. Those other players don’t sign for someone else. Games are different, results are different. Players train in different cities, different managers get hired and fired. People live in different places and move to different countries, meet different people. Different marriages, different children. It’s one thing telling Sergio Agüero that the goal isn’t real, but what about his whole life after 2011? Does he have to redo it all?

And then we get to the reason we fell in love with football: geopolitics. If the sanctions aren’t of the highest severity it’s impossible not to wonder whether anything has happened in the corridors of power, or on one of those benches in Spooks or Slow Horses when two people sit on a bench in Regent’s Park with identical briefcases and walk off in separate directions with the other one. Will the UAE really refuse to scrap investment in a tech hub between Cambridge and Oxford if Manchester City are relegated to League Two? It’s ridiculous that the two are even connected.

And while we all wait for the punishment to drop on a quiet Friday, perhaps during the next international break, City have football matches to play, whether they’ll ultimately mean anything or not. Pundits will say “galvanise” a lot. We will all talk about an “us against the world mentality”.

Who will be the first player to tell Erling Haaland to look forward to Salford away next year? My money would have been on Enzo Fernández until I remembered he’s probably frantically checking whether there’s a relegation release clause in the contract he signed in the summer.

I’d imagine it’ll be hard for Elliot Anderson to spend much time thinking about the possible sanctions while he’s trying to fend off Dominik Szoboszlai and Florian Wirtz. Regardless of the result on Sunday we’ll draw conclusions about what impact this news has had – and we may be wildly wrong.

I do sympathise with most City fans. Perhaps not the guy on a radio phone-in comparing this rule-breaking to Emmeline Pankhurst’s fight for female suffrage. But that complete loss of objectivity is part of the beauty of football and sport – somewhere we all lose all rational sense.

At my most pious I like to think I’d save my ire for the owners. They’ve dragged the club into this, they should go, but even that is an almighty mess to untangle. At the same time, if I were City, would I really swap the journey they’ve given me and these highs for finishing 12th every season for the past 15 years? Am I better than that? Like all moral dilemmas, it’s easy to have a strong opinion when it doesn’t affect you and you’re in a shed talking to a New Romantic.