Maresca Says Man City Fans Have Suffered Most Over the 115 Charges Case

Manchester City’s manager has said the supporters are carrying the heaviest part of the club’s guilty verdict. Enzo Maresca told reporters on Tuesday that the fallout from the Premier League’s 115-charges case has probably been tougher for City’s fans than for the players or for him, Reuters reports, three days after those fans watched their team booed through a 3-0 win at Anfield in the club’s first match since the verdict.

What did Maresca actually say on Tuesday?

Something managers in his position almost never say. Asked about the case at his press conference before Wednesday’s Champions League match against Paris Saint-Germain, Maresca conceded the force of the rival taunt rather than dismissing it: if he were an Arsenal or a Manchester United fan talking to a City fan, he would say, in Reuters’ rendering of his words, my friend, you are a cheat. His point was about who absorbs that. Players are insulated by the dressing room and the next fixture. Supporters live with the verdict in every argument, at work, online and in away ends, with no appeal hearing they can point to and no result that settles it. It is a different register from the two-games-to-save-his-job pressure Fulham’s Alvaro Arbeloa is working under, where the scrutiny is at least about football.

Why were City’s celebrations at Anfield questioned?

Because Sunday was not a normal away win. It was City’s first match since an independent commission found the club guilty in the charges case, and Liverpool’s supporters marked it with signs and banners aimed at the club and chants of going down, going down, Reuters reports, a reference to the relegation sanctions being speculated about while City’s appeal runs. City won 3-0 anyway, and the players celebrated on the pitch in front of the travelling support, which drew criticism of its own. Maresca’s answer, in zerozero’s account of the press conference, was to ask what the team was meant to do instead: they work every day to win games, they were happy on the pitch, and the dressing room matched it. Captain Ruben Dias backed him, describing the celebrations as a reflection of how significant an Anfield win is, Green White Green reports. The match itself had already produced the weekend’s loudest officiating argument, Ryan Gravenberch’s red card in the same fixture, which is partly why the celebrations were still being litigated on Tuesday.

What is the state of the charges case itself?

Verdict delivered, appeal lodged, punishment undecided. The commission found City guilty in a case covering nine seasons, from 2008-09 to 2017-18, zerozero reports, and QNC News reports the finding covered the majority of the 115 charges. City have denied all wrongdoing throughout and have appealed the decision, Reuters reports. Nothing about a sanction has been announced, and that gap between verdict and consequence is the space the Anfield chants were aimed at: rival fans are treating relegation as a live possibility, the club is treating the verdict as a wrong to be overturned, and until the appeal is heard both stories run at once. English football has a recent template for a punishment arriving in two stages, the FA closing Southampton’s spygate case with a suspended ban months after the EFL punished the club, but the City case is orders of magnitude larger and its second stage has no date.

Why does Maresca say the fans carry the heaviest burden?

Because they are the only group in the story with no role in it and no exit from it. The players named in no charge sheet can win the next match. The manager can point to a perfect league start and a three-point lead at the top, Reuters reports. The club’s lawyers can work the appeal. A supporter cannot do any of those things, and the supporter is also the one who hears the cheat chant in person, which Maresca acknowledged by repeating it in the first person rather than complaining about it. There is a calculation in saying it this way, it disarms the taunt by agreeing with its logic, but the admission is still unusual enough to be the story: a manager of a club under a guilty verdict, saying the rival fans’ insult makes sense from where they sit. Managers under fire usually reach for defiance, as the sack-and-return cycle at Osasuna showed this week, not for an explanation of why the other side’s fans have a point.

What happens next for City and the case?

Football first, because it is the only timetable anyone controls. City host Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday night in the Champions League, having opened the European campaign with a 2-0 win at Porto, zerozero reports, and they return to a league where they are three points clear with a perfect record, Reuters reports. Maresca also welcomed the possibility of Pep Guardiola, his predecessor, being in the stands for it, zerozero reports. The case itself moves when the appeal process moves. Until it does, every big City away day will run the Anfield script: banners, chants, a result that answers none of it, and a manager explaining why the people in the away end are the ones paying for a verdict none of them had a hand in.