The long-awaited trial of Manchester City, which begins on Monday and has been framed by many as a quest for retribution against the best team in England, is more than just the pursuit of one football club.
It is a case which will draw us a map of where the Premier League lost itself in its giddy pursuit of untold riches.
It is a case that will remind us of the way we were and the way we are, a case that will scream in our face even from the midst of its concealment and its secrecy and demand that we take a good look at what has become of the top echelon of our national game.
Whoever wins football’s trial of the century, nobody wins.
Whoever loses, football loses.
Manchester City's hearing over 115 alleged financial breaches is set to begin on Monday
The case is set to be a long one and an expensive one as Manchester City await a verdict
City have allegedly breached the Premier League's financial rules an alarming 115 times
The modern game, twisted by greed, is so afraid of us finding out its dark workings that everything that transpires will be hidden from view lest its misshapen features should ever be exposed to the light. But in the end, some time next year, we will be told the conclusions.
And whether City have been found guilty of some, or all, of the 115 charges of breaking the Premier League’s financial rules the case will open English football’s portal to Hell.
Some might say our top flight strolled through that gateway some years ago when it began to emasculate the lower leagues, concentrate the vast majority of the game’s wealth in its own hands, turned the exploitation of fans into an art form and invited nation states with vast financial resources to take over its clubs.
The Premier League encouraged and endorsed a loadsamoney, might-is-right culture that deified obscene expenditure on player wages and agents’ fees and whose myopia was epitomised by Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish disdaining the idea that the top flight and the lower leagues represented one eco-system.
Parish got his own rude awakening when the Big Six made a dash for cash and tried to kill English football by joining a European Super League in April 2021. It was a sign of just what had been unleashed.
And when it was already too late and the Premier League realised that a financial free-for-all would turn most of the clubs into lemmings hurling themselves over a cliff in the pursuit of rivals rich beyond their dreams, English football’s top flight decided it had created a monster and that monster’s name was Manchester City.
Now we are left with this. Now we are left with this trial, this tableau of dysfunctionality and excess, this picture of league turning in on itself as it tries to police a competition where its members — and I am not talking about City here — turn to all kinds of writhing ruses to try to spend more and more and still beat the rap.
We are left with a Premier League which has become, by one metric, the least competitive major league in Europe, a league dominated more completely by City, who have won the last four titles in succession, than any other top league has been dominated by any other team in those four years.
City's trial is set to have wide-ranging impacts that will case long-term effects for the game
Guardiola remains adamant the club he manages has done nothing wrong with their finances
We are left with the knowledge that, over the last four years and more, we have been treated to the kind of football that many of us have never witnessed before in England, football created by the genius of Pep Guardiola and executed by David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Phil Foden, Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland.
And we are left with the fact that this trial is holding out another possibility. It is threatening us with the idea that none of the beauty we have seen City teams produce since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008 was honestly earned.
The financial charges against the club relate to the period between 2009 and 2018, but if City are found guilty of some of the 115 counts, it will taint everything that has come to pass since as well. It will taint the magic of the four in a row. It will tell us that, actually, all of it was built on lies. It will tell us that none of it was real.
City have never wavered from their insistence that they are innocent of the allegations and that they are confident they will be cleared in a case which has been such a long time coming.
And if they are found to have been in breach of the rules, if they are punished, if they are stripped of titles, you will have to forgive me but I will not find any joy in that verdict, only sadness for an ideal that has been lost. If that is the outcome, English football will have to come to terms with the idea that the greatest club side ever to grace our game was constructed on the shifting sands of deceit. There is not much innocence left in our top flight but what little remains will be trampled underfoot if City are cast out into the wilderness.
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak (left) profusely denies any wrongdoing
Guardiola and Al Mubarak are confident Manchester City will walk away without punishment
If City are found guilty, who would we say won the league in 2011-12, 2013-14, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24? Would it still be City, or would they be stripped of those titles? Would another team inherit their glories or would there just be an asterisk next to their triumphs?
And if the evidence proves City to be guilty, then many will rejoice that justice has been done. If the evidence proves it, they will be right to rejoice. But if you love football, then there would also be an immense regret about the defrocking of a side that has brought fans so much joy.
Take football’s tribalism out of the reaction, and to be told that the greatest club team we have ever seen in this country was a false idol would take some getting over.
Many of City’s rivals can smell blood, of course. There has not been much vulnerability about the Abu Dhabi-owned champions in recent years, but everything they stand for is in the balance and other clubs sense opportunity.
‘I know what people are looking for, I know what they are expecting,’ Guardiola said on Friday. ‘I know it because I have read it for many years, but as I’ve always said, everyone is innocent until guilt is proven.
City have dominated the domestic game and have won four Premier League titles in a row
Guardiola has been the mastermind behind City's sheer dominance in the Premier League
‘The Premier League teams need to wait for the independent panel. I don’t know if they are lawyers, so all I ask for is everyone to wait. I’m happy it starts on Monday. We believe that we have not done anything wrong.’
City could be deducted points or relegated if they are found guilty by the three-person panel.
Perhaps Guardiola would leave if the case goes against the club? Perhaps not. Perhaps Abu Dhabi would withdraw their investment?
That is before we talk about the other repercussions of a guilty verdict. City would almost certainly appeal. Other clubs would sue them for compensation for what they would see as points unjustly lost, relegations unjustly suffered, trophies unjustly lost. We would enter an era of litigation, uncertainty and mistrust.
And what if City are completely exonerated? What if their protestations of innocence are borne out?
City have swept up trophy after trophy on the domestic and continental scene over the years
The club's crowning moment came in the 2022-23 season when they won the treble
There would be some relief that the doubt that has lain over the wonderful achievements of such a brilliant side for so long could finally be dispelled and that the titles they won and the records they set would remain unchallenged and that, Guardiola, the greatest coaching talent of his generation, would be vindicated.
But such a finding would sow disquiet, too. The credibility of the Premier League as a governing body would be destroyed. And even if its greed has done little to win it affection, its demise would create a vacuum of power.
The most powerful clubs would step into that vacuum. The profit and sustainability rules so detested by those who see nothing wrong in English football becoming an arms race between Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia would be holed below the water, and the likelihood of a new era of domination of the Premier League by nation states moving into club ownership would grow stronger.
Should City be significantly fined, Haaland and a host of other stars could lead a mass exodus
There will be questions of Guardiola's future as well if City are found guilty of 115 breaches
A crushing defeat for the Premier League would also bring the possibility of the resurrection of the European Super League much closer. If the top flight was discredited, opposition to its dismantling would be diminished and the prospect of the secession of six or seven English clubs would be much more real.
The Premier League woke up too late to the danger it had created but at least with PSR, it has been making attempts to cap the obscene levels of spending. If it fails in its case against City, PSR would be dead and the power of the big clubs would run unchecked.
This trial’s subtext is the battle for power between individual clubs and what remains of the idea of a collective.
One way or another, its outcome will change the face of the game. When it is over, someone will claim victory, because someone always does. But ugliness and avarice and the enemies of football will be the only real winners.