Manchester City FC
Manchester City play in the Premier League at the Etihad Stadium (53,400) in east Manchester, England.
The Etihad was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games as the City of Manchester Stadium, then handed to Manchester City at the end of the Games. City had spent the previous decade at Maine Road, a ground they shared for a season with Manchester United after Old Trafford was damaged by an IRA bomb in 1996. The stadium move coincided with the beginning of a slow financial recovery that accelerated completely in September 2008, when Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan purchased the club for £210 million.
What followed was not a simple story of money buying trophies. City spent heavily and failed at first: the team finished fifth in Mansour’s first season, then third. Roberto Mancini delivered the first Premier League title in 44 years in 2012, with Sergio Aguero’s goal in the 93rd minute and 20 seconds against QPR on the final day recovering a 2-1 deficit to win 3-2 and take the title from Manchester United on goal difference. The sequence of that afternoon, from QPR equalising in the 90th minute to Aguero receiving the ball and running at goal, occupies a particular position in Premier League history. It is the most watched moment in the competition’s archive.
Pep Guardiola arrived from Bayern Munich in 2016. He won six league titles in eight seasons. The 2022-23 Treble, which included the Champions League final against Inter Milan in Istanbul, was the most complete season any English club has produced in the modern era.
Erling Haaland scored 36 Premier League goals in his debut season (2022-23), the record for a single season in the competition. Kevin De Bruyne, the Belgian midfielder who has operated as the engine of Guardiola’s system since 2015, is the best player to have played in England in the Premier League era by many analytical measures.
Manchester City play on GMT in winter and BST (UTC+1) in summer. A Tuesday 20:00 Champions League night is 04:00 in Tokyo and 15:00 in São Paulo. Supporters checking Manchester time for midweek European fixtures will find them at the same time as every other English club in UEFA competition.