For 15 years, Manchester City have had one ambition above all others. Since Sheikh Mansour acquired the club, the Champions League has been their goal. They’ve quested over high mountains and through dark forests. They’ve lost in quarter-finals and semi-finals, once in the final itself, thwarted by heroes and monsters, undone often as much by themselves as by external opponents. They stand again one game from glory and in their way stands the ultimate test: Inter, the team lying third in Europe’s fourth-best league.
It’s often said at particularly dramatic moments in sport that you couldn’t write the script. Well, you wouldn’t write this one. The narrative demands the final stage, the apotheosis of Abu Dhabi’s City project, should have a finale rather grander than this, that the final boss to be overcome should be rather more intimidating than a ragtag squad of things that were popular in England several years ago: Edin Dzeko, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Romelu Lukaku, Goldie the Blue Peter dog and social democracy.
