Manchester City Ruined My Life

Book excerpt: Colin Shindler has previously written of his deep love for Manchester City in the bestselling Manchester United Ruined My Life and three other previous books. Now he tells the story of his sorrowful disenchantment with his home town club as, on the instruction of its new foreign owners, it turns itself remorselessly into a global brand. Trophyless since 1976, in 2011 Manchester City won the FA Cup and set off on their quest for the Premiership and the Champions League. In their zeal to win every competition the new Manchester City has spent money with wild abandon, signing outstandingly talented players as well as a few ordinary ones but in almost every case at hugely inflated prices. From the nail-biting win over Gillingham in the League Two Play Off final at Wembley in 1999 to the climax of the 2011 season, Shindler watches his team get steadily more successful and, to his own bewilderment, feels steadily more alienated from it. This is the story of a frustrated romantic who finds in the glitz and glamour of the current media-obsessed game a helter-skelter of artificially fabricated excitement. As he details how football courses through his veins Shindler tells how it intersects with his own life, a life that has been marked by family tragedy, and how he finally found personal redemption even as his team lost its soul.