Manchester City

Lore & Background

The club joined the Football League in 1892, and won their first major honour, the FA Cup, in 1904. Manchester City had its first major period of success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, winning the league title, FA Cup, League Cup, and European Cup Winners Cup under the management of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison. After losing the 1981 FA Cup final, the club went through a period of decline, being relegated to the third tier of English football for the only time in their history in 1998. They regained promotion to the top tier in 1999–2000 and have remained in the Premier League since 2002–03. Manchester City received major financial investment after its August 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan through the Abu Dhabi United Group, starting a new era of success, winning the FA Cup in 2011 and the Premier League in 2012. Under the stewardship of Pep Guardiola between 2016 and 2026, the club won 20 honours, including the Premier League in 2018 with a record 100 points, becoming the first English men's team to win a domestic treble, claiming the three main domestic trophies as well as the Community Shield. The club also won a continental treble in 2023, and four consecutive league titles between the 2020–21 and 2023–24 seasons – an English football record.

In Their Own Story

The air in the Etihad on 13 May 2012 was thick with a particular kind of dread. City needed a win over QPR; United, across town at the City of Manchester Stadium, needed a result against Reading. The clock ticked past the 89th minute. 1-1. Every sky-blue shirt in the stands had stopped breathing. Then the ball found its way to the edge of the box, a scramble, a tap-in — and the stadium detonated. Strangers embraced in the concourse. A woman in row 142 wept openly, her phone clutched to her chest, watching the United game on the big screen flicker to a draw. The title was theirs. Forty-four years of silence, broken not by a single thunderclap but by a quiet, almost accidental goal on a warm May afternoon. In the tunnel, players in sky blue and white couldn't stop laughing, as if the enormity of it hadn't quite landed. Outside, the Manchester rain had finally stopped, and the sky over the Eastland Road looked, for just a moment, the exact shade of their shirt.

Reader's Guide

Manchester City topped the Deloitte Football Money League at the end of the 2021–22 season, making it the football club with the highest revenue in the world, approximated at €731 million. In 2022, Forbes estimated the club was the sixth-most valuable in the world, worth $4.250 billion. Manchester City are owned by City Football Group Limited, a holding company valued at £3.73 ($4.8) billion in November 2019 and majority-owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group.

Did You Know?

• City gained their first honours by winning the Second Division in 1899.
• The club broke the record for the highest home attendance of any club in English football history in 1934, with 84,569 fans at Maine Road.
• City won the First Division title for the first time in 1937, but were relegated the following season despite scoring more goals than any other team.
• The 1956 FA Cup final saw goalkeeper Bert Trautmann play on after unknowingly breaking his neck.
• City became the second English team to win a European trophy and a domestic trophy in the same season in 1970.