The Premier League is back: welcome to the new era of post-verdict unreality | Barney Ronay
As the top flight returns, armed with the knowledge its serial champions have been the authors of a 10-year sham supremacy, the first question is simple: how is it going to feel?
The internet: an apology. It turns out you were right. It was actually a simulation all along. Now, talk to me about chemtrails again. And yes, maybe Vinícius Júnior has been replaced by a handsome, baffled-looking waxwork.
Welcome to the weirdest weekend of them all. We are now post-judgment, post-statement, postlapsarian. As the Premier League prepares to snap back into what must be described, out of habit, as reality, armed with the knowledge its serial champions have been the authors of a 10-year sham supremacy, the first question is fairly simple. How is it going to feel?
Related: Maresca refuses to confirm he will stay at Manchester City if club lose appeal
There is no precedent for this. Even the state of total confusion feels brittle given City maintain their complete state of innocence and deny all charges. We await the release of Irrefutable Body of Evidence, the great lost Madonna erotic thriller sequel, presumably recast around a steamy three-year regulatory tribunal scenario.
City’s appeal defence appears to be based around the government giving them money. This may or may not be related to how you control what the high court considers admissible. But it is also implied confirmation that the club is the propaganda tool of an overseas state, that Kyle Walker, for example, has basically been a civil servant all these years. Maybe the United Arab Emirates should have six stars on the national team jersey, one for each title. They even look like asterisks.
Beyond this there is the more basic issue of how to present this spectacle as entertainment. How do you structure a Match of the Day now? What’s the balance in the edit of bus-rage, taunting banner clips, managerial evasiveness content, versus the trivial stuff on the pitch with the balls and goals and men in shorts?
Mainly the Manchester City affair has created an existential problem. The key questions in English football are no longer things such as who will win the league, or will Tottenham get relegated (although this is still an excellent question). They are instead: what is real now? What was real then? What will be real in the future? Will something that seems real now become unreal later?
The whole experience brings to mind visiting the Yas Marina Formula One track in Abu Dhabi a few years back, a pristine place, all sweeping curves, perfect surfaces, dreamy floral boulevards. At that stage exploring its far reaches, following the curve around the final corner, led to: nothing. Out of sight the hanging baskets stopped dead. The sprinklers cut out. The pavement ended. The next step took you straight into sand and dead space.
Beyond the main stage the Yas track was a set, an imitation of life. And it turns out this is basically what Abu Dhabi was doing to the Premier League in the years 2009 to 2018: creating a product, a simulacrum, a pop-up.
