It is at least pertinent that I bring this series that was instigated by Manchester City to an end by making pointed references to the club, her owners, supporters and other people who have a stake in the club in one form or the other.

The young millennial who has what can be regarded as unlimited access to football and other items of entertainment has no idea of the level of deprivation his counterpart in the sixties and seventies had to cope with. The first time that the World cup was televised almost live was the 1970 edition. And what a vintage edition that was! The Brazilians with Pele at the absolute peak of his powers sparked,sparkled and sizzled to acquire not just the World cup but also the title of GOAT. The greatest national team ever assembled. Every genuine lover of the game of football should at least watch all the games played by Brazil in that competition, not just for the games themselves but to get up close and personal to the driving spirit of the game. The importance of the 1970 World cup is that my choosing to become a Manchester City supporter and the exploits of Pele and co have somehow become conflated in my mind. It seems that as far as I am concerned, one cannot exist without the other if only because they came together in space and time. Manchester City were the English club champions in 1969 and Brazil won the World cup in 1970.

One of the matches, or perhaps the match that can be said to have defined that pulsating World cup tournament was the clash between England, the defending champions and contenders, Brazil. The match itself was played at such a high tempo that it seemed to have been crammed into no more than one hour. No quarter was offered by either side and the tie was decided by Jairzinho, the Brazilian maestro who scored in every round in that tournament. That goal decided the tie but it could not overshadow, the most outstanding moment of the match; the blinding save of Gordon Banks, the English goalkeeper off Pele. It was a point blank header which for added difficulty was directed at the goal line so that Banks had to dive towards the ground in order to scoop the ball off the line and over the bar. Pele had been so sure that he had scored as soon as that ball left his head that he had wheeled away in the triumph of having scored. But Banks had denied him spectacularly and emphatically. At that time of my own football baptism, I could not separate my love for the game played at such a level with what at that time could only have been my infatuation with Manchester City. That has obviously ripened to the kind of love you find in a long marriage, a soothing glow which is able to accommodate virtually anything.

My unlikely early relationship with Manchester City was always in the background in those early days when the opportunity to see the team play was severely limited. I must confess that I was not sure that my early enthusiasm was going to be sustained by the little snippets of information filtering into the news concerning my team all the way in Manchester. A couple of years of this and fate stepped in to settle matters. I was swept into a bag labelled The University of Ife Staff Development Scheme designed to beef up the staff of the University of Ife within the shortest possible time. The university was prepared to sponsor anyone in that back up to doctor level in any approved university anywhere in the world. All you had to do was turn up with the appropriate letter of admission from your university of choice. It was when I was thinking of which university to apply to that I met Professor Bean of the university of London who was in Ife for external examination duties. I put my case before him in the hope that he would invite me to study his laboratory in London. Unfortunately, he was going to be away on leave that year and so, he advised, given my stated interest in drug preservation that I applied to Manchester University and Strathclyde in Scotland. I could not believe the coincidence. Admission to Manchester University meant  access to Manchester City! The rest as the saying goes is history. I was offered admission by both universities but there was never any doubt that my destination would be Manchester. I duly arrived there in September 1973, found my way to Maine Road at the earliest opportunity and spent many happy hours there watching whatever fare was available for the next three years. Fortunately, City was one of the most exciting teams in the English First division all throughout the period of my stay in Manchester. As at now all members of the team were internationals and new ones were coming in all the time. To make life all the more worth living, our greatest rivals only a few miles away at Old Trafford were in the doldrums, struggling to come to terms with the rising tide in Maine Road.

All too soon however the tide began to turn and United began to acquire a dominance over City which soon became as intolerable as it was suffocating. By 1981 when we lost the FA cup final to Spurs, we had started to lose our best players to the clubs which only a couple of years before, we regarded as direct rivals. We soon began lose grounds among the elite

clubs but clung tenaciously to our first division status until we dropped into the third tier of the English league and began visiting Port Vale and other such unglamorous football venues. Even then, our support stayed loyal and the club took crowds in excess of 25,000 to grounds which could hardly find accommodation for them. And yet through thick and thin, we worked our way back to the Premier League where we were no better than a midtable team on our return from football exile.

Then, right out of the blue in 2008 City was taken over by Sheik Malcolm of the Abhu Dhabi royal family. To show intent, Robinho, a dyed in the wool galactico was signed from Real Madrid and from that point on, there was no stopping the charge of the newly created juggernaut. Other famous footballers kept arriving at the club and the toga of a midtable club was soon ripped to shreds and thunderous applause began to roll down the stands as delirious fans began to realise that they had won a magnificent lottery, one for which they had not even bothered to buy a ticket. Unlike some other clubs which had been taken over by mainly wealthy Americans, the new City owners were pouring money into the club rather than taking out any money. There was a rapid improvement in the quality of infrastructure in and around the club and a solid foundation for a world class academy was laid. Today, not only are more than six of our first team are graduates of our academy, other clubs, notably Chelsea are stocked with academy products from Manchester and several former footballers have enrolled their sons in the City academy. To cap it all up, the City group which owns Manchester City have spent more than a billion Pounds on social infrastructure in the area around the Etihad campus since they arrived in Manchester and they are ready to spend even more. As a long term City supporter, I am not willing to look this gift horse in the mouth.ong may the gentle rain of their generosity continue to fall on the city. The good people of Manchester are forever grateful for the continued presence of the Manchester City Group in their community and for this reason, that moon over Manchester will forever be sky blue.