You know, one reason I cast my lot with City (and you probably remember the thread from way back when, DLew) was because I didn't want to be regarded as being your typical American frontrunner. Root for an old Big Four club and you could be cast as a glory-hunter (which was unfair, of course). "Why would I root for United? They had a marketing partnership with the Yankees. They are one and the same!"
And now here we are ... More fodder for the haters, I guess. Except I don't even know if the haters are out there. I was at the Phoenix Landing on Sunday, stylin' in a freshly pressed '04-'05 away kit (always let 'em know that you were following your favorite club before they were purchased by that billionaire oligarch/oil sheik/Elton John), alone amid a sea of Gerrard, Agger, Walcott, Giroud, and Scholes jerseys. I asked the bartender twice if he could put City-Norwich on the tiny corner television that was playing Chelsea-Everton (nobody was watching it). He never did. I left around halftime.
Anyway, there's probably a Bill Simmons-like analogy that could be useful here. Something like how City is that girl from high school who isn't unpopular by any means, but at the same time, isn't very popular, and how over the course of a school year she goes to great lengths to improve her looks, her image, her overall standing, etc., and all the other girls at school -- both popular and unpopular -- are like, "Really? She's still at it?" They don't resent her; they're generally ambivalent. But they also can't understand why she wasn't content with her previous place and wonder how crestfallen she's gonna be when she realizes nothing is going to change for her.
I don't want to give off the impression that even with the billions of dollars being pumped into the club, the ridiculous stadium naming rights agreement, co-owning an MLS club, the new kit deal with Nike, etc., that I believe my favorite club was and still is a "people's club" -- and maybe even more so than your favorite club. That's dumb. I just wonder more and more, as City's aspirations to enhance their "global brand" become bigger and more complex, how it's all gonna shake out. How does a club with a crap history and a relatively crap stadium and no true world superstar gain equal footing with Europe's biggest clubs?
All I know is, rooting for Antoine Sibierski feels like a lifetime ago. Bring on the '13-'14 season.