Photograph: James Manning/PA QUOTE OF THE DAY FURTHER READINGĮverything you could need to set you up for Big Cup final: a tactical breakdown from Jonathan Wilson on how Inter can cause Manchester City bother Nicky Bandini picks the Inter players to watch Karen Carney looks at the current spell of Premier League dominance Jamie Jackson on how Manchester United’s 1999 vintage compare with City’s Treble-chasers and Nick Ames reflects on the “pioneer” Norwegians who transformed the Premier League.Ĭity fans outside a pub in Istanbul. Join Barry Glendenning from 8pm BST on Saturday for hot Big Cup MBM coverage of Manchester City 2-1 Inter (aet). At which point, all that’s left will be for the riveting “which team was better” debate, punctuated by net spends and all our other old friends why, it’s enough to make a person pine for the glory days of Porto v Monaco.

Should City triumph on Saturday, they will become the second English club to win the Treble – the first was, apparently, Manchester United, but Football Daily isn’t certain as they don’t often talk about it – which will anger the countless people still convinced that Alex Ferguson’s success was actually their own personal accomplishment. Of course, there’s far more at stake than the resting place of ol’ Big Ears. Then there’s Inter, 19 times champions of Italy and three times champions of Europe, plucky small-fry who’ve suffered from the unfortunate ill of other clubs having even richer owners than them.

And really, who could possibly have foreseen that pivot? Poor Uefa, it’s always the ones you least expect. Manchester City are the feelgood story of this and every summer – a paean to more innocent days when Gazprom was just a cuddly fossil-fuel provider embezzled from the Russian people that absolutely loved the soccer, rather than the financier of a mercenary army in an illegal and mass-murderous war.

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