“When kings fall, they fall on top of us.” That haunting line from Marlon James’s novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf sticks with me because it captures how empires work. There is something delicate about an empire. Its longevity depends not just on the health of the institution, but on the stakeholders making decisions. Football has always understood this. A club can appear untouchable for years, but the moment the foundation cracks, everyone underneath gets crushed. Right now, no club embodies that fragility more than Manchester City. Across the world of global football, City have become one of the biggest talking points in sports, and not because of anything that happened on the pitch. Last month, an independent commission found City guilty on the vast majority of 115 charges for breaching Premier League financial rules. The most damaging part was the creation of “sham” contracts, hidden funds channeled through the club’s own ownership, the Abu Dhabi United Group, inflating revenue by more than a billion dollars over ten years. They basically invented external revenue, and in a football world built on hierarchy and fair competition, that is existential. When a state-owned club can manufacture money and bend the rules, it triggers a slippery slope. Other clubs, without those resources, simply can’t compete. City are appealing, which means fans will wait until the beginning of 2027 to learn the punishment. But a punishment must come. This was a historic breach that shook the game to its core. When powerful institutions fall, it is not the institution that suffers; it is the community. Until City deal with the consequences, supporters of other clubs will see them as villains. And they should. It will be the football equivalent of Cersei Lannister’s walk of atonement, with the crowd screaming “Shame!” every time they touch the ball. That is the uncomfortable reality hanging over the Etihad right now.
On the pitch, City tried to embrace the villain role. Last weekend, they won convincingly 3-0 at Liverpool. As City fans celebrated, Anfield’s DJ played Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies,” a beautiful, sarcastic soundtrack for the current state of the Premier League. But this week in the Champions League, back at the Etihad, with Pep Guardiola watching from behind the chairman and CEO, City suffered a 4-2 defeat to PSG. It was a performance that shook them. Luis Enrique’s side were incredible, especially in the first half. Désiré Doué, Ousmane Dembélé, and Vitinha all scored in the space of 19 minutes, and City couldn’t escape the wrath of the French giants. City did improve after the break, thanks to Erling Haaland’s brace. Those goals made him the club’s highest scorer in the competition with 60 goals in 60 career appearances. No player has ever done that at his age and at that pace. It was a stunning individual record, but it couldn’t mask the larger story. PSG, the defending champions, simply outclassed City. So what’s next? City host Ipswich Town on Saturday, and they should win, especially since the newly promoted side are showing some fight and sitting in 10th place. But the gray cloud will keep drifting above the Etihad. It won’t lift until the punishment is announced, and we were told not to hold our breath. For City fans, this is a strange, alienating time. Every result is viewed through the lens of the charges. Every win feels tainted. Every loss feels like karma. There is no neutral ground with this club anymore, and that’s a heavy thing for supporters to carry.
Across Manchester, United are dealing with their own chaos, though of a different kind. This week, they lost to Atlético de Madrid in the Champions League in what was once again a flat, naive performance. The Red Devils are now winless in five matches, and after the latest loss, defender Lisandro Martínez gave an interview for the ages. With post-game microphones in his face, the Argentine didn’t hold back. “I expect more investment,” he said. “I expect more from our technical director. As players we have to do more, but it is also important when you make a strong squad to be ready for this kind of night.” It was a stunning piece of candor. Some, including club legend Wayne Rooney, thought it was an outburst in the wrong environment. Others wanted him punished beyond a fine. But to me, it was refreshing. Martínez is in his final year of his contract and probably knows he’s leaving. Like Jerry Maguire’s mission statement, he spoke out about what needed to change in a powerful institution. And he’s right. United are not equipped to handle both domestic and European football against strong opponents. Much of that comes down to executive decision-making that failed to bring in the right personnel. There isn’t enough cover at left-back. The No. 9 position still desperately needs a 20-goal striker. The midfield is a problem. These issues don’t disappear overnight, and they leave the manager, who is entering his first season ever juggling domestic and European competition, with almost no margin for error. The club’s problems are structural, and no amount of spin can hide it. Martínez may eventually say goodbye, just like Jerry dramatically left the agency with his goldfish and Renée Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd. But many fans wish the ownership would go instead. There’s a massive match at Elland Road against Leeds United this weekend. If United lose badly, the temperature will rise quickly, and the manager’s future could be in real peril. It’s a mess, and it’s been a mess for a while.
Let’s talk about Real Madrid, another giant navigating fragile ground. Their incredible 4-3 comeback against Roma at the Olimpico was a testament to their undying reputation. In the spirit of October, Kylian Mbappé and company are the football equivalent of Halloween’s Michael Myers. No matter how many times you think you’ve escaped, he always comes back. You cannot kill him. That’s Real Madrid, even in this version that is still trying to find itself under a manager under pressure. The issue is that there is quite a distance between Madrid and Barcelona, and the manager has to find a way to help the most valuable club in the world rediscover its identity. It doesn’t help that the midfield is chaotic, and a star like Vinícius Júnior is giving subpar performances. He is also suspended for pulling an opponent’s hair in a domestic match, which means he’ll miss four matches, one of them El Clásico on October 25th. That might be a blessing in disguise. Without Vinícius on the pitch, Real Madrid might be able to breathe a little more going forward and focus on the truly important area: midfield. The balance of the team depends on sorting that out. All I know is that the manager has to figure out consistency sooner rather than later, because in the end, Jamie Lee Curtis did overcome Michael Myers. Real Madrid can fall deeper and create an even larger gap between themselves and Barcelona, who, alongside PSG, are currently the best team in Europe. That would not just be a bad season; it would be a shift in the football landscape. And for a club that defines itself by immortality, that’s terrifying. But their comeback against Roma showed they still have that pulse, that refusal to die. It just may not be enough if structural problems continue.
Allow me to spend a moment on Inter Milan. The Italian champions lost 4-3 to Club Brugge in the Champions League this week, and despite leading Serie A, the league table is incredibly tight. Inter’s advantage is only on goal difference over Lazio, with Roma and Cagliari creeping behind by just a few points. If there are any more mishaps, the Nerazzurri could lose their grip at the top. What’s made matters worse is that their legendary striker and leader Lautaro Martínez, who scored a brace against Brugge and is the team’s top scorer, suffered a hamstring injury after the match. He will miss significant time, including the Milan derby on Halloween. That is a brutal loss. And when I think about Inter right now, the horror movie analogy that comes to mind is Scream, specifically Ghostface chasing Drew Barrymore in that opening scene. We know how dangerous the masked figure is. We know the threat and the terror as it runs up the stairs after the desperate victim. But at every opportunity to attack and finish the job, it just keeps tripping. That’s Inter. A threatening opponent who can beat anyone, but also a team that keeps stumbling because of its own undoing. They are their own worst enemy. There is still time to fix things, but injuries, inconsistency, and mental mistakes are piling up. In a league as competitive as Serie A, that’s a recipe for losing a title you thought you had under control. Inter’s season is far from over, but right now, they are making every step harder than it needs to be.
What do we take away from all of this? The football empires that seem so untouchable are actually built on shaky ground. Manchester City face the consequences of financial rule-breaking. Manchester United are lost in a fog of bad decisions. Real Madrid are surviving on adrenaline rather than control. Inter Milan are tripping over their own potential. In all these cases, the clubs will continue to exist, the brands will keep growing, and the money will keep flowing. But the people who truly carry these institutions—the fans—are the ones caught underneath when the kings fall. They are the ones who feel betrayed when a club cheats, humiliated when a player speaks the uncomfortable truth, heartbroken when a star gets suspended, and anxious when the manager can’t stop the bleeding. The game is supposed to be a release from ordinary life, but it reflects all of our fears and failures. Maybe that’s why the quote from Marlon James hits so hard. When kings fall, they fall on top of us. There is no way to separate the fate of a club from the fate of its supporters. And yet, we remain. We buy the shirts, we refresh the news, we argue with friends, we hope. That is the beautiful, ridiculous thing about football. It can expose every flaw in a club’s structure and still leave us desperate for the next match. Here, only a few months into the season, we can already see cracks forming across Europe. The next few months will reveal who can adapt and who will tumble. But no matter what happens, the fans will be there. We always are. And maybe that’s what makes us the real kings, even when the empire around us is falling.
