Why this Champions League campaign feels very different for Manchester City

Enzo Maresca has an idea of how, to borrow a phrase adapted from an Inspiral Carpets song, this is how it feels to be City. It has changed in the last three weeks, with a guilty verdict returned in the case of 114 Premier League charges, with an official judgment that they benefited from more than £900m in disguised, and thus illegitimate, funding, with the word “sham” attached to their contracts and, for some, their achievements.

Maresca has talked about how he and his players have had to block out the “noise”, as he terms it. They did it very effectively at Anfield on Sunday, shrugging off chants about cheating to beat Liverpool 3-0.

He accepts it is harder for the Manchester City faithful to ignore it, and not merely because the subject matter goes beyond the usual back-and-forth between followers of competing clubs.

“It probably has been more tough for our fans than for the players or for me because it’s probably more complicated,” said the Italian. “Because if I am an Arsenal fan or a [Manchester] United fan and you are a City fan, I can tell you, ‘Hey, my friend, you cheat,’ or this kind of thing.”

And if that creates an image of Maresca not as a manager, but as a rival supporter, calling City cheats, his captain endured a similar soundtrack for 90 minutes on Sunday and sounded unruffled.

“I feel like when you build yourself as a player, you build yourself against any kind of noise. So be it the word you just described, or any other kind,” said Ruben Dias. “Personally, and I really feel like I speak for the whole group, we’re very calm.”

How does it feel to be City, though? Top of the Premier League with a 100 percent record, having won the two away games that tend to mean most to their supporters – United and then Liverpool – and with Maresca looking a worthy successor to Pep Guardiola, they face the champions of Europe on Wednesday. Paris Saint-Germain could provided a barometer of the progress of this new-look City side.

Dias was asked if Luis Enrique’s team will win a third consecutive Champions League. “Hopefully they cannot,” he replied, speaking to his own ambitions. Yet this is more than a duel of the nouveaux riches, the last two first-time winners of the competition. They have been bracketed together for other reasons: Middle Eastern ownership from oil-rich states, heavy spending, questions if it fell within the parameters of the rules. It was not City who spent a world record €222m on Neymar.

While PSG seek to cement an era of dominance, City’s spell as Champions League ever-presents could be nearing an end: not because of their Premier League form but because of the possible sanctions for their rule-breaking; deduct enough Premier League points or expel them and their only route back into the Champions League is to win it.

“If this is the last Champions League for a while, I don’t know,” said Maresca. The annual trips to the Bernabeu may be no more. PSG, beaten by City in the quarter-finals in 2016 and the semi-finals in 2021, might not be on the fixture list again for quite some time. Perhaps, after City supporters booed the Champions League anthem for years, they may enjoy its sound this season. They may not hear it again in the immediate future.

City started buying before they qualified for the Champions League – for Yaya Toure, David Silva and Carlos Tevez, their European debuts in sky blue came in lesser competitions – but for many a more recent arrival, it has provided part of the attraction.

And, while the sources of City’s income are a reason why they are imperilled, some of their revenue has come from the Champions League: more than £100m in 2022-23, when they won it. A club has been built with a financial model that entails expectations of competing at Europe’s top table.

“For sure, the Champions League for this organisation is so, so important,” said Maresca. It has formed part of their identity, especially during the long quest to win it. The last couple of seasons have marked a regression, with exits in the round of 24 and 16 respectively.

“We’re going to try to improve compared to the last two, three years, where the team struggled a bit,” said Maresca. And if that scarcely feels the main issue confronting the club at the moment, it is the only one he can address. “We know how serious the situation is, but at the same time, it’s not something that we can do. Where we can do things is inside the pitch,” said Maresca.

Their fate will be determined elsewhere. “We trust the club, we’re very calm,” said Dias. “We have full confidence in the club. We will defend the club. We will fight for it.”

The bigger battle is not to stop Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. It is not to secure a top-eight finish in the league phase or even, given City’s 4-2 defeat in Paris in January 2025 that left them 25th, to avoid an ignominiously early exit.

There is the chance that, after 16 successive seasons in the Champions League, City’s time rubbing shoulders with the elite will reach an abrupt end. Because it is not merely in friendly banter that they are being branded cheats.