Manchester City

St Mark's

Manchester City began in a church. In 1880, members of St Mark's Church in West Gorton formed a football team. The rector, Arthur Connell, along with church wardens William Beastow, Thomas Goodbehere, and James Moores, had already set up a young men's association in the 1870s to keep local lads away from the gang fights, the scuttling, that plagued the streets of east Manchester. A cricket team came first. Football followed.

Their first recorded match was on 13 November 1880, a 2-1 defeat to Macclesfield. They played on rough ground in Gorton, moved around several pitches, and in 1887 settled near a railway viaduct in Ardwick and renamed themselves Ardwick Association Football Club. In 1894, after financial difficulties forced a reorganisation, they became Manchester City Football Club Limited. The sky blue shirts were adopted the same year.

It is sometimes claimed that Anna Connell, the rector's daughter, founded the club. The club's official historian, Gary James, has said that while she took the lead on organising men's meetings and activities at the church, there is nothing specifically linking her to the football team. She may have approved of the idea, and she may have been involved in some capacity. But the evidence is not there to call her the founder. What is certain is that Manchester City grew out of a church community trying to give young men in one of the poorest parts of Manchester something better to do than fight.

Maine Road

City's first proper football ground was Hyde Road in Ardwick, but the main stand was destroyed by fire in 1920 and the club needed somewhere bigger. In 1923, they moved to Maine Road in Moss Side, a ground that would become one of the great theatres of English football. It held over 80,000 at its peak. The record attendance, 84,569 for an FA Cup sixth-round tie against Stoke City on 3 March 1934, remains the highest ever recorded at an English club ground.

City won the FA Cup in 1904, beating Bolton 1-0, the first club in Manchester to win a major trophy. They won it again in 1934 and 1956. They won the league in 1937. But the golden era came in the late 1960s, under Joe Mercer as manager and Malcolm Allison as coach. They won the league in 1968, the FA Cup in 1969, the League Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1970. For a brief, brilliant spell, City were the best team in England and one of the best in Europe.

Then it stopped. The trophies dried up. The decades that followed brought relegation, near-bankruptcy, and in 1998 the lowest point of all: relegation to the third tier of English football. Manchester City, FA Cup winners, league champions, European trophy holders, playing in what was then called the Second Division. The fans stayed. They always stayed. That is the part of the story that gets lost in what came later.

The Etihad

The City of Manchester Stadium was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, designed by Arup at a cost of around £112 million. The foundation stone was laid by Tony Blair in December 1999. After the Games, it was converted from an athletics venue into a football stadium, the track ripped out, the pitch lowered, new tiers added. The conversion cost over £40 million, split roughly equally between Manchester City Council and the club. City moved in for the 2003-04 season, leaving Maine Road after eighty years.

The first football match at the new ground was a friendly against Barcelona on 10 August 2003. Maine Road was demolished. The site is now housing. If you walk through the Moss Side streets where it stood, there is almost nothing left to tell you that one of the great football grounds of the 20th century was ever there.

In July 2011, the stadium was renamed the Etihad Stadium under a sponsorship deal with the Abu Dhabi airline. The South Stand was expanded in 2015. The capacity is just over 61,000, and rising. Twelve exterior masts support a cable-stayed roof. The pitch sits six metres below street level. On a matchday, the bowl fills with noise that has nowhere to go but up.

Aguero

In September 2008, the Abu Dhabi United Group, led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, bought Manchester City. On deadline day that same month, City signed Robinho from Real Madrid for a British record fee. The message was clear. This was not a rescue. This was a takeover.

Roberto Mancini was appointed manager in December 2009. In 2011, City won the FA Cup, their first trophy in 35 years. But the moment that defined everything came on 13 May 2012, the final day of the Premier League season.

City were level on points with Manchester United going into the last game. United were winning at Sunderland and would take the title on goal difference. City were playing QPR at home. They were 2-1 down with the clock past 90 minutes. The title was slipping away. Then Edin Dzeko headed in an equaliser in the 92nd minute. And in the fourth minute of added time, Mario Balotelli laid the ball off to Sergio Agüero, who drove forward from the edge of the area and hit a shot past the goalkeeper.

The stadium erupted. Martin Tyler's commentary, "Aguerooo!", became the most replayed piece of football commentary in history. City had won the league for the first time since 1968, in the most dramatic finish English football had ever seen. Forty-four years of waiting, ended in added time, at the Etihad, against ten-man QPR. The league title was back in Manchester, and it was on the blue side of the city.

Guardiola and the Treble

Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016, and Manchester City became something else entirely. Four Premier League titles in five seasons between 2018 and 2022. The 2018 side set a points record of 100. The 2019 side won every domestic trophy available. The football was precise, relentless, and at times breathtaking. Guardiola rebuilt the squad, the playing style, and the expectations of an entire football club.

The peak was the 2022-23 season. City won the Premier League, the FA Cup, and the Champions League in a single campaign, only the second English club after Manchester United in 1999 to complete the treble. Erling Haaland scored 52 goals in 53 appearances across all competitions, including 36 in the league alone, a Premier League record. Ilkay Gündogan scored both goals in the FA Cup final, a 2-1 win over Manchester United, the first of them after just 12 seconds. And on 10 June 2023 in Istanbul, Rodri scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory over Inter Milan to win the Champions League for the first time in the club's history.

City's first European trophy had been the Cup Winners' Cup in 1970. It took 53 years to win another one. And when they did, they won everything else as well.

Guardiola left at the end of the 2025-26 season, having won 20 trophies in ten years. Enzo Maresca took over. The 130 charges of financial rule breaches, levelled by the Premier League in 2023 and covering the period up to 2017-18, remain unresolved. The outcome, whatever it is, will shape English football for years.

But none of that changes what happened. A church team from West Gorton, founded to keep lads out of trouble, became the most dominant force in English football. They went from the third division in 1998 to the Champions League final in 2023. They went from playing in Macclesfield's shadow to winning the treble. They went from Maine Road to the Etihad, from scuttling to silverware, from nowhere to everywhere. Manchester City's story is the most unlikely story in English football, and the most Manchester one: start with nothing, refuse to stop, and see what happens.