Question: What happened yesterday that has not happened for 44 years?

Answer: Manchester City Football Club became the champions of the English Premier League.

Yes, they finally did it. For almost a half-century, their fans, and indeed the children of their fans have hung their heads whenever confronted by the fans of that other Manchester football club which yesterday thought for a few minutes at the end of their game with Sunderland, that they had won the Premier League for the 12^th time. But it was not to be, MCFC scored 2 goals in the time added on for injuries and stoppages; the winning goal was scored with the penultimate kick of the game-at the death, as they say! It was interesting to watch the reactions of the crowd as the match see-sawed back and forth. At half time City were leading 1 to 0 and the 40,000 or so fans in light blue were laughingly confident that their team was on the way to an easy victory. But just after the re-start of the game the crowd was stunned to a shocked silence when the opposition scored an opportunist goal following a defensive blunder. Then after 65 minutes play City were 1 to 2 down due to another opportunistic goal; now the crowd was in tears, were City flattering to deceive as they had so consistently done over the years, nay decades? At 90 minutes City were losing and everybody thought that the other Manchester club-the one that wears red shirts-would be champions again?  But an ugly incident during the second half had stopped the game for several minutes and so the officials provided City with another 5 minutes to get the job done, and they did just that. By now the fans in light blue were delirious with joy!

In the post-game ceremonies many of the players came out draped in their national flags, which brought home the fact that this squad (and its coach) has been assembled from around the world through multi-million dollar purchases, thanks to the bankroll of the billionaire Abu Dhabi owner. The scorers of the three goals yesterday were an Argentinian, a Bosnian and another Argentinian. Of the first-team squad of 28 players only 8 are home-grown and thus eligible to play for the England team. I have not yet found the composition of the squad that won the championship in 1968, but I would wager that they would all have been eligible to play for one of the countries of the United Kingdom.

Sic Transit Gloria…