Monday 21 May 2012

Ten years on, what is the legacy of the Commonwealth Games for Manchester?

David Conn's excellent article on the history of Manchester City since they last won the football league provides one of the best accounts of what the club's success means to its fans and also the vast amount of money thrown at the project by its new owners in Abu Dhabi. Apparently City's move to the 48,000 capacity City of Manchester Stadium in the summer of 2003 was a "crucial factor" in Sheikh Mansour's decision to buy the club five years later. If this is the case then we could argue that City's recent success (winning the FA Cup last year and the Premier League this year) and the sense of excitement in anticipation of success to come is the greatest legacy of the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The Games were awarded to Manchester in November 1995, after failed bids to host the 2000 Olympics (in September 1993) and the 1996 Olympics (in September 1990), and along with the IRA bomb of June 1996, they are seen as having played a major role in the city's subsequent regeneration. Despite not being taken that seriously as a major tournament in its own right, the Commonwealth Games (coinciding with Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee year and coming 25 years after the Sex Pistols had released Nevermind the Bollocks… Here's the Sex Pistols) turned out to be hugely important for Manchester, as has been well-documented. Looking at their legacy ten years on, we can't help comparing it with the London Olympics due to take place this summer (will it have the same impact on London as the 2002 Games had on Manchester?). But we should also look at the background to the Games and the political environment that allowed them to happen in the way they did.

The two failed Olympic bids and the successful Commonwealth Games bid all took place during the long period of Tory rule in Westminster (mainly during John Major's government but also towards the end of Margaret Thatcher's). So whilst Manchester's renaissance coincides with the New Labour era (1997-2010), the groundwork was all laid during the Tory era (1979-1997). As we can see in the diagram on the right Manchester City Council was Labour-controlled throughout both periods and one of the main factors in Manchester's renaissance was the ability of its civic leadership to work with whoever was in power, regardless of ideological differences. This is in marked contrast with Liverpool, where the Militant Tendency gained a foothold on the City Council, which they used as a battleground against the government. (Neil Kinnock made his famous speech to the Labour party conference in October 1985 in which he denounced a Labour council "hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing redundancy notices to its own workers.") Of course we shouldn't forget the impact of Factory Records and New Order, whose funnelling of profits into the iconic Hacienda nightclub played a remarkable role in Manchester's transformation from its opening in 1982 to around the period when the city was bidding for the Olympics.

The Barcelona Olympics in 1992 are seen as the hallmark for a tournament's ability to regenerate a postindustrial city and this was certainly around the time Manchester began to visualise itself as a future "Barcelona of the North." In terms of the scale and global prestige of the event, the Commonwealth Games are no match for the Olympics, but the 2002 Games took place at an exciting time for the city. The damage cause by the 1996 IRA bomb was used to secure further investment in the city centre (at a time when the threat of the Trafford Centre, opened on the outskirts of town in September 1998, loomed large). This was symbolised in the redevelopment of Cathedral Gardens and in Ian Simpson's Urbis building (completed in 2002), but also further afield in Piccadilly Gardens for example. In October 1997, the Guggenheim Museum was opened in Bilbao, creating another model for urban regeneration. Designed by Lou Gehry, the building (located in a previously rundown, industrial part of the city) was instantly hailed as a landmark piece of contemporary design, turning Bilbao into a must-visit global tourist destination. Manchester took note, with work on the Lowry in Salford Quays having begun in June 1997. Outline planning permission for the Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) was granted in October 1997, the same month as the opening of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The Lowry was opened in 1999 at a cost of £106m. Building work began on the IWMN (pictured above) in January 2000. Designed by Daniel Libeskind (set to become one of the biggest names in contemporary architecture), it cost £28.5m and was opened in July 2002, shortly before the Commonwealth Games began.


On 26th May 1999, Manchester United beat Bayern Munich with two late goals to win the Champions League final at the Nou Camp in Barcelona. The club, whose ground is a stones throw away from the Lowry and Libeskid's IWMN, had already won five of the first seven Premier Leagues (this would later become seven of the first nine) and featured young British stars such as Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and Paul Scholes. So the Commonwealth Games arrived on a wave of optimism (sporting, economic, architectural, political) and provided Manchester with the showcase it long needed and been campaigning for. Consequently it's difficult to separate the legacy of the Games with the transformation that took place at around the same time. The one key factor thoughout was the City of Manchester Stadium (now the Etihad). This had been planning stages right from the failed Olympic bids of 1990 and 1993. Construction began in January 2000 (at the same time as Libeskind's IWMN) on a brownfield site in East Manchester. Opened in time for the Games, it cost around £112m and was afterwards converted from an athletics venue to a football stadium. Man City moved in just before the start of the 2003-2004 season and were taken over by the Abu Dhabi group five years later. City's recent success in the league can therefore be traced back to the co-operation between a forward-thinking Labour council in Manchester and a supportive Conservative government in Westminster back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Sunday 13 May 2012

Shades of 1968 as City and United complete 1-2 finish

In a blog about the unstoppable rise of Manchester, I couldn't not write about the final day of an exhilerating Premier League season for both clubs. Two weeks ago I wrote that City's derby win was good for Manchester - for all the same reasons, so is winning the league in such dramatic style (with Dzeko and Aguerro scoring two vital goals in injury time). My biggest worry was that such an exciting season would end in a huge anti-climax, with City building an unassailable lead against QPR and keeping possession through the second half, Barcelona-style. [I hadn't even considered the prospect of them not winning the match.] Clearly I needn't have worried. The closer it was, the better for Manchester-as-a-whole. I'd considered comparing the dramatic final moments to a photo finish in what had long been a two-horse race. But, such is the pace and excitement of the modern game, a better analogy would probably be the 2008 Formula 1 season, when Lewis Hamilton left it until the last corner of the last lap of the last GP to overtake Timo Glock to win the drivers' championship by one point. You were left thinking, did that really just happen!?

We've been here before. In 1968, the two teams finished 1st and 2nd (with City winning the league just two weeks before United went on to become the first English club to win the European Cup). But where did they go from there? In the 68-69 season, United finished 11th and City finished 13th (with City winning the FA Cup), the first of many seasons in which both clubs hovered around mid-table. United were relegated in 1974 and promoted the following year; City finished 2nd to Liverpool in 1977; United finished 2nd to Liverpool in 1980. City were relegated in 1983, promoted back in 1985 and relegated again in 1987. United finished 2nd to Liverpool in 1988 and City were promoted back to the top flight in 1989. In short the period following on from Manchester's last 1-2 finish was mixed at best. [It would be 25 years before another Manchester club won the league.] The period from 1976 to 1990 in particular was dominated by the two Liverpool clubs, who won twelve league titles in fifteen seasons. Obviously Man United went on to dominate English football in the Premier League era, but City's success raises questions about what happens next, for the teams and for the city itself.

What next for Manchester United?

United are still the most valuable sports franchise in the world, worth £1.4bn according to Forbes magazine. They are still third in the Deloitte Football Money League (well behind Real Madrid and Barcelona in terms of revenue). Of course, it's expected that they will still be there or thereabouts, but in a Man City-dominated world, will United have to downgrade their goal to a top four finish whilst still hoping to compete in Europe? Personally I'd love to see the young English players come through. Chris Smalling (22), Phil Jones (20), Tom Cleverley (22) and Danny Welbeck (21) should all be looking to break into or consolidate their places in the first team, with Ryan Tunnicliffe (19) and Will Keane (19) also good prospects for the future. Under Alex Ferguson, people have rightly associated United with success but we should also remember the club's longheld commitment to fielding young homegrown players and an attacking style of play. Ferguson's retirement has long been talked about and choosing the right replacement will be key to the club's success. Is it too outlandish to see Paul Scholes as a Pep Guardiola-at-Barcelona figure who can reconnect the club with its roots whilst going on to achieve unprecedented success and playing attractive football at the same time? Or will they just go for Guardiola himself? If the club is no longer successful, will the Glazer family come in for even more criticism (having never been that popular in the first place)?

What next for Manchester City?

City will need to achieve back-to-back league titles to match Chelsea's (relatively modest) success under the management of Jose Mourinho (and perhaps more importantly the financial backing of Roman Abramovich). In order to match United's success they will need to win three-in-a-row (twice) and win the Champions League (twice), possibly under the constraints of UEFA's financial fair play rules. In terms of off-the-field success, they will also be aiming to make their way up the Deloitte Football Money League (which measures revenue) and the Forbes rich list (which measures value). These all seem like realistic ambitions considering the amount of investment being made by the club's Abu Dhabi-based owners (and the return on that investment they've now received). Roberto Mancini's position has been strengthened and this can only be a good thing for the club. We should also remember that the investment also extends to a huge local regeneration project which involves turning rundown parts of East Manchester into a state-of-the-art training complex (and makes Gordon Brown's February 2008 decision to scrap plans for a Super Casino in the area look incredibly far-sighted).

What next for Manchester?

Manchester's global brand has been enhanced in a way that will make other European cities look on with envy. With not one but two teams battling it out at the very top of the English Premier League, Manchester can be confident of its place alongside Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Munich (and I would also argue the Ruhr) as one of the undisputed football capitals of Europe. This will of course help with marketing the city as a football tourism destination. On a small level, it vindicates the decision of the National Football Museum to relocate to the city's Urbis building (which will open its doors on 6th July). On a much bigger level, I feel it also vindicates the BBC's decision to relocate to Salford Quays. You could argue that this is only relevant for their football coverage but, for me, it symbolises the fact that Manchester is the only city really challenging London for supremacy, and this is good for Britain-as-a-whole.

A thought for Lancashire's smaller clubs.

Paul Wilson wrote earlier in the season that the Premier League has become a tale of two cities, Manchester and London. A consequence of this is that clubs from smaller (or at least more peripheral) towns and cities yo-yo between the first and second tiers or fall down and don't come back. Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers, who both came up in 2001, were both relegated this season (with QPR, a London club, staying up). [One of the most eye-catching moments in the madness of the post-match celebrations at the Etihad was a warm embrace between Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the chairman of Manchester City (and a member of the Abu Dhabi United Group private equity company), and Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian founder of AirAsia and chairman of QPR - both of whom have invested heavily in the squads of the two teams.] Wigan Athletic managed to avoid the drop for another season but may struggle to sustain their success. It remains to be seen whether Blackpool can make it six rather than five Premier League sides from the North West by beating West Ham in the Championship Play-Off Final on Saturday. If West Ham win then there will be six London teams in the Premiership (with West Ham's potential move to the Olympic stadium likely to provide financial stability in the years to come, perhaps in the form of a high-profile take-over like the one City themselves were subject to when they moved to the City of Manchester Stadium in 2003).

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Manchester's architectural debt to the man accused of 'bleeding Valencia dry'

It has the fifth busiest container port in Europe; it hosted Formula 1's European Grand Prix from 2008-2011; its football team reached the finals of the Champions League in 2000 and 2001(but later had to sell David Silva to Manchester City, David Villa to Barcelona, and Juan Mata to Chelsea); it's Spain's third biggest city and it's the birthplace of one of Europe's top architects, Santiago Calatrava. Now leftist critics of Valencia's local government are accusing Calatrava of 'bleeding the city dry' after it was revealed that he has charged €100m to design a futuristic culture zone. The City of the Arts and Sciences certainly looks impressive but, as Spain struggles to cope with rising unemployment and huge public debt, such ambitious projects risk looking out-of-touch and over-priced.

The scale of Calatrava's latest project is huge compared to the bridge he designed to cross the River Irwell, which opened in 1995. Trinity Footbridge (pictured above), which connects Manchester and Salford, was the city's first example of showpiece 'postmodern' architecture, and laid the groundwork for everything that followed: the Hulme Arch (1997), The Lowry (1999), The Lowry Hotel (2001), Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North (2002), Ian Simpson's No. 1 Deansgate (2002) and Urbis (2002), Tadao Ando's Piccadilly Gardens pavilion (2002), the Manchester Civil Justice Centre (2007), the Beetham Tower (2007), 1 The Avenue in Spinningfields (2009), MediaCityUK (2011), and 1 Angel Square as part of the Co-op's 'NOMA' development (2012). Salford Quays and Manchester City Centre itself have changed beyond recognition in the last fifteen to twenty years and whilst there are many factors involved (the failed Olympic bid, Euro 96/the IRA bomb, the Commonwealth Games in 2002, strong civic leadership), we can credit Calatrava's simple design in this quiet corner of the city with providing the impetus for the glass-and-steel renaissance we see around us today. Manchester has been described by architecture critic Owen Hatherley as 'the archetypal New Labour boomtown', a place that's lost its cultural edge. But with its two football clubs about to finish first and second in the Premier League, the National Football Museum about to open in the Urbis building, and tourist numbers rising as a result, things are looking good for the city (even if there is an increasing amount of nostalgia for how things were, as the success of the Stone Roses reunion has shown). One wonders whether Valencia (or indeed Liverpool) will be able to match Manchester for the sustainable progress it's made so far.

Sunday 6 May 2012

Was the Football League founded in Manchester in 1888?

It's the oldest professional football league competition in the world. Under its modern guise as the Premier League, it has the highest revenue of any football league in the world. But can we say that it was founded in Manchester in 1888? Or is this claim, as one commenter on the When Saturday Comes website argues, 'disingenuous'?
'The Football League was founded in the city [Manchester] in 1888.' This is just about correct but omits the background. William McGregor, an Aston Villa director, was the first to propose a league. A meeting of interested parties was held in London (before the FA Cup Final) and the formalities were completed in Manchester. Notably no clubs from Manchester were included.
The Football Association held its first meeting at a pub in London on 26th October 1863. The first FA Cup final took place on 16th March 1872 and the first England international (vs. Scotland) took place in Glasgow on 30th November in the same year. Professionalism was legalised on 20th July 1885, shortly after the formation of Newton Heath L&YR FC in 1878 (later Man Utd) and St. Mark's (West Gorton) FC in 1880 (later Man City). With professionalism came financial pressures, leading to the creation of the Football League.
William McGregor, the founder of the Football League
On 2nd March 1888 William McGregor, a director at Aston Villa (founded 1874), wrote to Blackburn Rovers (1875), Bolton Wanderers (1874), Preston North End (1881), West Bromwich Albion (1878) and Stoke FC (1863) with his suggestion. The first meeting was held in London on the eve of the FA Cup final on 23rd March with the formalities completed in Manchester on 17th April. In addition to the six teams already mentioned, the founding members also included Accrington FC (1876), Burnley FC (1882), Derby County (1884), Everton (1878), Notts County (1862) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (1877).


So whilst no clubs from Manchester itself were included, the inaugural league had six teams from Lancashire and six from the Midlands, with Manchester (then the centre of the global cotton trade and a huge transport and business hub) the obvious place to hold any meeting of the twelve clubs. Newton Heath joined the first division for a brief spell in 1892, with Manchester City making their first appearance in the top flight in 1899. It wasn't until 1904 that a London team were represented at this level (Woolwich Arsenal).


What's most interesting about the early years of the Football League is how relatively provincial it was, with small towns such as Bury achieving greater success. No team from Manchester or London won the league until Man Utd in 1908. This is in marked contrast with the current Premier League, which is dominated by teams from the two cities (as Paul Wilson noted earlier in the season).

Thursday 3 May 2012

An overview of the top 20 biggest football derbies in Europe (based on combined average attendances)



Introduction

I’ve written previously about the huge Manchester derby match that took place on Monday 30th April 2012, where Vincent Kompany’s goal just before half-time was all that separated the two sides (allowing City to leapfrog United at the top of the Premier League with only two games to go). Should City go on to win the league for the first time since 1968 (as they’re more than capable of doing), this result will be seen as the one which best represents the shifting of the balance of power between the two sides – something which can only be good for Manchester’s global brand (in so far as it can now market itself as the capital of English football, boasting not one but two of the world’s best clubs and, from 6th July, the National Football Museum). Kompany was right when he said that the Manchester derby is now the most important match in the world after La Liga’s El Clasico, watched by a global TV audience of around 650m and attended in person by Diego Maradona himself.

Of course, in terms of European footballing success, all one-city derbies pale in comparison to Milan, a city whose two teams have amassed a grand total of ten European Cups/Champions League titles between them (Madrid alone are not far behind with nine; Manchester/Liverpool have eight). In fact Milan is the only city in Europe with more than one winner of the competition, making any objective success-based comparisons of European footballing derbies difficult. An easier and in many ways more appropriate method for comparison would be to combine the average attendances of each derby team throughout the 2010-11 season and list them accordingly. Whilst it’s based on the most objective criteria available, such an approach still poses problems in terms of how we define a ‘local’ derby, which I’ve outlined below:

The top 20 derbies in Europe based on combined average attendance


Team
Avg
attendance
Team
Avg attendance
Total
1
Borussia Dortmund
80,478
Schalke 04
61,248
141,726
2
Manchester United
75,109
Manchester City
45,778
120,887
3
Real Madrid
70,736
Atletico Madrid
44,684
115,420
4
Bayern Munich
69,000
FC Nuremberg
42,019
111,019
5
FC Barcelona
79,390
RCD Espanyol
27,736
107,126
6
Milan
53,528
Internazionale
50,578
104,106
7
Arsenal
60,025
Tottenham Hotspur
35,689
95,714
8
Celtic
48,968
Rangers
45,305
94,237
9
FC Köln
47,752
B. Mönchengladbach
45,676
93,428
10
Hamburger SV
54,445
Werder Bremen
37,464
91,909
11
Newcastle United
47,718
Sunderland
40,011
87,729
12
Ajax
47,750
Feyenoord
39,676
87,426
13
Liverpool
42,775
Everton
36,039
78,814
14
Sevilla
36,000
Real Betis
31,095
67,095
15
Benfica
39,784
Sporting CP
27,003
66,787
16
Chelsea
41,435
Fulham
25,043
66,478
17
Aston Villa
37,220Birmingham City25,46262,682
18
Roma
33,623Lazio27,84261,465
19
Athletic Bilbao
35,815Real Sociedad25,28961,104
20
Lyon
35,266Saint-Etienne25,09660,362




Notes

-     All figures are based on Wikipedia’s top 70 clubs by average attendance. I haven't included any clubs that are outside the top 70, e.g. 1860 Munchen (whose average attendance of 20,000 would put the Munich derby in the top ten). This is because I'd like to source all the figures from the same place. However I don't think the list would change dramatically if this was the case. Fenerbahce (39,542) vs. Besiktas (26,249) would have made the list but the figures given are not for the 2010-11 season (and the Besiktas figures is unsourced).


-     I'd like to make very clear that the average attendance figures are for all games throughout the season - not for the individual derby games themselves.

-     The top ten teams without representation in the list are Marseilles (51,081), Eintracht Frankfurt (47,335), Napoli (47,210), FC Kaiserslautern (46,378), Hertha Berlin (45,761), Hannover 96 (43,948), Valencia (41,599), VfB Stuttgart (38,847), Porto (36,404) and Shakhtar Donetsk (33,897). I considered classifying Eintracht Frankfurt vs. FC Kaiserslautern as a derby (which with a combined total of 93,713 would’ve made the top ten) but decided not to (see below).


-     Any list of teams based on average attendance will always be dominated by Germany, where competetive one-city derbies are uncommon. I’ve chosen to include the four biggest regional ‘derbies’ and exclude all the others – although I think the Ruhrgebiet still has to be classed as a single agglomeration (as of course does Greater Manchester).


-     No team has been included twice. This means that Arsenal vs. Spurs is classed as the biggest London derby, with Chelsea vs. Fulham second. It should be stressed that there is a lot of overlap when it comes to the London derbies. These four teams have been chosen purely because they have the highest average attendances, not (at least in the case of the West London derby) because they have the fiercest rivalry.


-     The closest distance between two stadiums is of course Milan vs. Inter, where the two teams share the San Siro. The distance between Anfield and Goodison Park is 0.6 miles; between Estadio Da Luz and Estadio Jose Alvalade in Lisbon it is 1.4 miles. The longest distance between two clubs in the list is between Munich and Nuremburg (the two largest cities in Bavaria), which are around 100 miles apart, raising inevitable questions about how we define a derby. The distance between Hamburg and Bremen is around 60 miles, between Bilbao and San Sebastian around 50 miles, between Amsterdam and Rotterdam around 35 miles, between Lyon and Saint-Etienne around 30 miles. The distance between the Westfalenstadion and the Veltins Arena is exactly 17 miles, whilst there are exactly ten miles between St. James' Park and the Stadium of Light.

-     The smallest difference in ratio between the two average attendances are those between Milan vs. Inter, Köln vs. Borussia Mönchengladbach and Celtic vs. Rangers. The largest by a long way is Barcelona vs. Espanyol (although the difference between Bayern Munich vs. 1860 Munchen would have been bigger still).

Conclusion

I think the list above gives us a better insight into European football than the list of average attendances itself or the infamous Deloitte Football League, in showing where the real football powerhouses of Europe really are. On a personal note, it’s no surprise to see the Ruhrgebeit topping the list. I’ve only seen the Revierderby on TV but the atmosphere inside the stadium looks amazing.

The Manchester derby is of course growing in importance but we should stress that in domestic success terms it is still trumped by the Mersyside derby with only 21 league titles to their combined total of 27 – although this will of course soon be 22 (whichever way the Premier League goes this season) and that number will continue to increase whilst the other won’t. People from either side of the red/blue divide should be able to celebrate Manchester’s new-found role as the football capital of England, although we should also remember the city's role in the founding of the Football League in 1888 and that the top two record club home attendances in English football were both set at Maine Road: Man City vs. Stoke City in March 1934 (attended by 84,569) and Man Utd vs. Arsenal in January 1948 (83,260).

The list above also reflects Manchester’s and the Ruhr’s role as the two historic centres of the industrial revolution in Europe. I’ve written previously about how Manchester was the ninth biggest city in the world in 1900 with a population of 1,435,000 (the only provincial European city in the top ten), whilst the Ruhr’s population grew from 766,000 in 1900 to 4,900,000 in 1950 (making it the ninth biggest city in the world at that time). The imperial capitals of pre-War Europe fare poorly on the list of European football derbies: London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg may have been the biggest cities in the world in 1900 but it was in Manchester, the Ruhr, Barcelona, Madrid, Munich and Milan that football captured the popular imagination – something which is still reflected today in the list above.