One of the greatest things about Manchester is its pure ambition – its ability to defy perceptions and doggedly build incredible, beautiful, world-beating things.
On Saturday Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City squad finally proved they were capable of perfection, shrugging off the biggest names in European football to secure the much-coveted Treble. FA Cup + The Premiership + The Champions League, in a single season. It’s only ever been done once before.
To celebrate this historic event The Sculpts has produced a brand new illustration and tile featuring all three trophies. Perfect for any City fan, especially Fathers deserving of something extra special this Sunday.
Pep Guardiola’s contribution to this latest chapter cannot be understated, but the story of their rise doesn’t really begin at his trophyless first season. To tell the full tale you have to go back to 1999 – another symbolic year for Mancunian football – when Paul Dickov scored (another) last minute equaliser. Not in the Champions League, or even the Premiership, but in the Division Two playoff final. Back in the top tier after five years away, it was the first season in future legend Shaun Wright-Phillips’ career and while they couldn’t manage to stay up Kevin Keegan arrived in 2001, fresh out of the England managerial role, and began the process that was to eventually transform 21st Century Premiership power dynamics.
Three years later the club had left its iconic Maine Road stadium and taken up residence in their present home, the suitably spectacular Etihad. A steady flow of managers and money failed to yield the rewards that City fans knew their club was capable of, but their patience was rewarded. In 2011 the presence of Agüero and Balotelli helped them end the season with one of the most dramatic moments in footballing history – stealing from the Ferguson playbook to score two stoppage-time belters against QPR and snatching the Premier League on goal difference.
By this point they were an undeniable superclub, comfortably mentioned in the same breath as European royalty. When Pep took over in 2015/6 the scale of the ascent was incomprehensible. But it still took eight years of passion, grit, blood, sweat and tears to claim the holy grail of English football.
The only other team to do it, way back in 1999, was of course Manchester United and the fact that City beat them in the FA cup final this year. But in the next hundred years it will be the city as a whole, not one or other club, that will be remembered for doing on the football pitch what very few ever will.
For now, though, it’s City’s moment. And they’ve definitely earned it. Congratulations all of you.
