Manchester City fans again booed the Premier League and Champions League anthems at the Etihad Stadium, with the protest taking on extra force after the club was found guilty of breaching Premier League financial rules.
The boos have become a familiar part of City home games, and Sport quoted season-ticket holder Dave Wilson as saying he could not remember a Premier League or Champions League home match where the anthems had not been booed. It is a clear sign that this is not a one-off reaction, but a long-running dispute with both the Premier League and Uefa.
Why the protest has lasted so long
Wilson said the Premier League anthem has been booed by City fans for many years, and that the noise was probably heightened on Saturday because it was the first home game since the guilty verdict announcement. That matters because it shows the reaction is tied both to history and to the latest flashpoint.
There has been hostility toward the Premier League for a long time, and the current boos at City are best understood as part of that wider grievance. The latest verdict has simply sharpened it.
The Uefa disputes are part of the backdrop
The protests also carry a separate edge when Uefa is involved. City fans have long reacted angrily to what they see as unfair treatment, and the list of flashpoints stretches back years.
In 2012, Uefa handed Porto a fine of around £17,000 after City made a complaint of racial abuse towards Mario Balotelli. That same year, City were fined around £24,000 for being one minute late back on to the pitch for the second half of a game against Sporting. Then in 2014, Uefa fined City £49m and capped their squad size for the Champions League after they failed Financial Fair Play rules.
Six years after that ruling, the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned City’s two-year ban from European club competitions. Taken together, those episodes help explain why the boos around Champions League occasions have become such a regular feature.
Saturday's boos were not the first
The latest reaction came last Saturday against Ipswich, after the club was found guilty of breaching Premier League financial rules. Wilson said there was not much love lost between City and the Premier League for a long time, and that for certain games the boos would be louder than others.
He also said it definitely was not co-ordinated for the Ipswich game, but rather a symptom of everything coming together. That makes the anthem boos feel less like a single protest and more like a continuing expression of anger.
There was also audible booing before Tuesday's Champions League fixture against AEK Athens, underlining that this remains a live issue both domestically and in Europe. For City, the next question is not whether the boos will return, but how often they will grow louder when the club steps out at home again.
