Roberto Mancini and Manchester City: A love story

A match made in heaven?

Manchester City, a club which had a sensational form in the late 60′s and the early 70′s era with Joe Mercer as their manager. Under Joe Mercer, the club won each and every title it could during his 6 year tenure at the club. Mercer whole-heartedly supported the club owners but his assistant, Malcolm Allison, having promised to be made the next manger by the upcoming club owners and the greed to secure Mercer’s post mercilessly betrayed them. This event started the decline of the club.With the new owners taking over next season, the club’s position in the league fell lower and lower until they got relegated in 1981 to the second division. But in the following years, they fought hard and came back to the Premier League once again in 2001-02 season under the leadership of Kevin Keegan with the Bermudian striker Shawn Goater scoring 32 goals in the first division to secure 1st position for the team. Even though the club had come to Premier League , it remained in the bottom 10 of the league until the ownership of the club changed hands from Thaksin Shinawatra to present club owners, Sheikh Mansour of the Abu Dhabi United Group. Since the advent of Roberto Mancini, the club has once again started enjoying the success that they had enriched during the times of Joe Mercer. With Mancini getting full support from the club owners, he has changed the club’s face completely in just 3 seasons. With so many expectations from Manchester City, let us c find out how and what has brought about this major upheaval in the club.

Roberto Mancini, this name hasn’t just become popular with Manchester City’s Premier League win, but had already been tipped long ago to become one of the finest managers in the future. To know when and how this happened, we need to go back in the history when a young and fresh talented stiker was bought by a not-so famous club Sampdoria for a whopping £ 2.2 million (atleast 20 years ago, it was whopping). But this man turned truly turned around the fortunes of the club by winning them a Serie A and a Supercoppa Italiana, 4 Coppa Italia and a UEFA Winner’s Cup which is the club’s only European title that the club has won till today. Serving this Club for 15 long years, he truly is this club’s legend. You must be thinking how he started his managing career here and here’s the answer. Mancini was a born-strategist and creative game planner with excellent oratory skills.Due to these skills, he was more than often asked by his manager to give team-talks and speeches. With his brilliant reasoning skills, He was highly respected not only by his team-mates and Manager, but also by his club owners. This is known from the fact that he was part of many board meetings and transfer signings and when the club was looking for a new manager, Mancini who was just 27 then, sat on the interview panel that selected Sven-Goran Eriksson as manager. In 2011, when asked about Mancini, Erikkson said, “I took him to Lazio with me and he wanted to be a manager even while he was a player. He was the coach, he was the kit man, he was the bus driver, everything. At Sampdoria, he wanted to check that everything was in place before training. Sometimes I would have to tell him: ‘Mancio, you have a game to play on Sunday, you will be exhausted if you have to control everything.’ But he was like that.”

After scoring more than 200 goals in his 20 year old career, Mancini retired from his playing career and in the next season, became assistant manager for Fiorentina. After winning Coppa Italia with Fiorentina and then as a full-fledged manager and another one with Lazio, he came to Inter. Here too, his love for Coppa Italia grew as he won it on four occasions. Not just that, he also made a record of winning Coppa Italia. With Inter, he won the Serie A for 3 consecutive years and 2 Supercups. With all this achieved in his 4 year spell at Inter , he was still sacked by the club due to no success at UEFA Champions League. And just 6 months after, he was invited by Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City.

Even in his first two years at Manchester City, even though he didn’t win the Premier League, he won FA cup in 2010-11 and signed David Silva, Aleksander Kolarov, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Yaya Toure, Edin Dzeko, Mario Balotelli, Sergio Aguero in the following seasons. All of the above names have mentioned above have not only been impressive but also had a huge contribution in the City’s Premier League title win in 2011-12. One may say he spent a lot, but the returns can not be over-shadowed as they will be serious contenders for the title even if they don’t sign any new players for atleast the next 3 seasons to come.

With Joe Hart, currently England’s best goalkeeper protecting their goal, the defense consisiting of Kompany (certainly the best defender in 2011-12 season), Lescott, Kolarov, Richards, Clichy and Zabaleta, the midfield consisting of the talismanic Yaya Toure, and the young and dynamic Jack Rodwell along with the likes of Samir Nasri, David Silva, James Milner and Gareth Barry and finally one of the most formidable strike forces consisting of Aguero, Tevez , Balotelli and Dzeko, this team will give tough time to the Gunners, the Blues and the Red Devils in the upcoming seasons.

Certainly the club’s win in the Premier League last season has silenced many critics who had criticised the club for spending an average of 100 million euros in the last 3 seasons in the transfer season by at last winning the coveted Premier League last season with their rebuilt squad under the managership of Roberto Mancini. But this is not the end. The citizens will be aiming at the Europe this season having under performed last season and also recover the losses that the club had been suffering all this while.