There was a time – 13 years and 18 trophies ago – when Manchester City[1] were a little bashful about their early success.
For example, the first time Manchester United[2] visited the Etihad Stadium after Sergio Aguero[3] had stolen the title from their grasp in the very last seconds of the 2011-12 season, the Premier League[4] trophy was nowhere to be seen.
‘That year we always had it on display in the Chairman’s Suite,’ a long-standing City source tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘But when United came, we moved it. We felt we didn’t want to flaunt it. We still had a long way to go.’
Back then, the margins between the two Manchester clubs were fine. City – awash with new money – had finally broken through but United – driven by Sir Alex Ferguson[5]’s lust for vengeance – were not quite done.
They regained the title immediately and when asked if City could ever hope to be considered favourites for a derby or be viewed as the bigger club, Ferguson had been classically dismissive.
‘Not in my lifetime,’ was a quote that has lingered.
Sergio Aguero’s last-second goal snatched the title away from Manchester United and into City’s hands in 2012
Sir Alex Ferguson and his United players were shellshocked at Sunderland as the news of Aguero’s winning goal filtered through
Ferguson, 83, is still around and has already been proved half-wrong. When the teams meet at the Etihad on Sunday, City will be favourites and we are now used to it. Progress in their quest to be the biggest club in Manchester is much harder to quantify but at least it’s now a conversation of layers.
For United’s history, legacy and embedded worldwide appeal is currently having to do an awful lot of heavy lifting in the face of a rival that now wins more and currently makes more money.
If there has indeed been a degree of levelling up, to steal a phrase from this city’s mayor, Andy Burnham, then nobody saw it happening this quickly.
Back when the modern City was taking its first steps, one senior executive used to take a diversion on his way home from work just to drive past Old Trafford.
‘He wanted to remind himself what we were aiming for,’ explains our City source. ‘And yes, it seemed a long way off.
‘Catching United was absolutely talked about. United were the best, on and off the field. And they just happened to be our neighbours who had looked down on us for years. In the early days of Abu Dhabi we approached them about doing a pre-season thing. They laughed us out of town.
‘Then one of our execs was on a train with one of theirs. He said we wanted to be like them and it just drew this long snort of derision.
‘We would be at the Champions League draw wondering what we were doing there. The council house kids. And the 2011 Wembley FA Cup semi-final against United was the same. Our car carrying the exec team actually got lost. We ended up at the wrong bloody entrance.
United’s history, legacy and embedded worldwide appeal is currently having to do an awful lot of heavy lifting in the face of a rival that now wins more and currently makes more money
The two rivals will lock horns again on Sunday, with United this time above City – though neither is off to a flier this season
‘In the tunnel, the United players wandered straight into the dressing room on autopilot. Our lot were standing around taking photos!
‘And, yeah, I set a bookmakers alert on my phone after that Ferguson comment about us never being favourites. When, one day, it finally turned to odds in our favour, I sent it to a few people.’
Today, City see their main commercial competitors as Liverpool and some numbers do their talking for them. Rivals are suspicious of things like affiliated sponsorships but their 2023-24 revenues of £715million nevertheless broke their previous record for the third year running. That figure is also a Premier League high and more than £50m in excess of United, who themselves had posted their best ever numbers.
United expect this year’s revenue figures to be similar even though they remain hindered significantly by an enduring lack of Champions League football. They still make much more money than City on match day, almost double in fact. They have a bigger stadium, by around 20,000 seats, have record membership levels and still sell out every single game. But it’s the gap between the clubs commercially that is interesting.
For so long United – led first by David Gill and then Ed Woodward – were market leaders in the art of ringing tills. City copied them and now sit second only to Real Madrid on the 2025 Deloitte Money League. United are fourth.
‘We did see what United did well,’ admits our Etihad source. ‘The three official shampoo suppliers in the Far East kind of thing.’
Between 2005 and 2015, United’s commercial income quadrupled to £200m per year. They remain immensely powerful and their current £60m-a-year deal with shirt sponsors Snapdragon and a £900m, decade-long arrangement with kit manufacturers adidas exceed most. But some trends speak differently.
In the last six seasons, United’s commercial income has grown by just 10 per cent. City’s – helped by the doubling of retail revenues in just three years and a record-busting £1bn Puma kit deal – has rocketed by more than 50 per cent over the same period. Tottenham – propelled forwards by a new stadium – have seen theirs grow by 89 per cent.
Today, City see their main commercial competitors as Liverpool, rather than United
‘United need to start winning trophies again,’ says football finance expert Kieran Maguire. ‘To a degree, it’s that simple. When you win everything, sponsors want to be associated with you. City have discovered that.
‘Things started to go wrong the moment Ed Woodward said United didn’t need to win games to be commercially successful. Turns out that they did. Winning gets you prize money, sponsor bonuses and people wanting to wear your special edition shirts and buy your merchandise.
‘City are really good at what they do. Ten years ago I didn’t see this shift but then I didn’t anticipate Man United would simply stop winning. I do think it could flip back in time. United have extraordinary size and potential. But for that to happen, United need to get it right on the field and they can’t wait forever.’
In February 2011 Wayne Rooney scored one of the derby’s most iconic goals, a sizzling overhead kick in a 2-1 win at Old Trafford. Less than six months earlier City thought they were about to sign him.
City and camp Rooney sat round the table as the United forward said he would consider a blockbuster career move across town.
‘We knew exactly what we were doing,’ a source close to the negotiations tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘It would have been dynamite, a way of saying the big names wanted to play for us. People can say what they like. But it happened.’
Maybe Rooney was just playing City to feather his United nest. Ultimately he stayed on a new contract. But the story illustrates now how things have changed.
Across the world in 2025, it is star names as much as history and legacy that draws fans to certain football clubs. Back in 2010, City were trying to steal that kind of cache directly from their rivals, as they had done a year earlier with Carlos Tevez. They no longer have to.
Wayne Rooney nearly followed Carlos Tevez across town from United to City in 2010
This week the influential EA Sports video game franchise (formerly known as FIFA) released their 26 highest rated men’s players. They did the same for the women’s game. City have five in total and United have none.
Michael Tiron of the USA-based Footy Travelers podcast says: ‘Young people here attach themselves to players and not clubs. They want (Kylian) Mbappe or (Erling) Haaland. They follow the player as a brand.
‘Haaland has pretty much transformed City in our eyes. All of this – along with the expansion of digital media – has created a new kind of City fan.’
United tried to walk this road in the past. Paul Pogba arrived in 2016 as one of the world’s most marketable footballers. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was a team-mate. And then, in 2021, Cristiano Ronaldo returned.
Then, as has too often been the case, it was the football that failed them so, as they try to inch forwards under coach Ruben Amorim and a new behind the scenes structure that relies in part on staff lured from City, United must combine their own vision of the future with a weight of tradition that still counts for an awful lot.
Rebecca Lowe, the influential and respected English face of NBC’s Premier League coverage in the USA, tells us: ‘Man United are still – alongside Liverpool – very much some way out in front of City. Their hold on the American public is still very strong but the question is for how long.
‘Some of that may depend on whether City get back to where they were on the field a season or so ago, as they were starting to gain a little ground. Man City fans here tend to be newer fans who have jumped on board since NBC got the TV rights 12 years ago. United fans all tend to pre-date that.
‘United are safe right now. There is opportunity here for City but they are a little late. United and Liverpool just had such a headstart.’
Younger fans are keener to follow faces rather than clubs, such as Erling Haaland
Someone who understands all that is Charlie Stillitano. Co-founder of Relevent Sports, Stillitano was at the heart of hosting big pre-season tournaments for European teams in the US for two decades and is now co-host of the Football Show on New York-based radio station SiriusXM.
‘I could once sell four summer Man United games out in two or three hours and it hasn’t really changed,’ Stillitano says. ‘When they lose, we don’t have to do anything to push the radio show. The calls just flood in. They are huge.
‘Chelsea came with a bit of an explosion on the back of the Jose Mourinho success. With City it’s been more steady.
‘I will say this, though. Young kids love stars and United haven’t got any. Old Trafford has become the place where players go to die and I think that does threaten them. All the United shirts I see still have Ronaldo on the back.
‘What happens when the kids who support City now get older and start to dress their kids in blue? That’s the danger for United I think.’
Last season’s FA Cup semi-final between City and Nottingham Forest saw the sky blue end of the stadium peppered with empty seats. Some saw that as an excuse to bash City, while the club pointed to the fact that it was their 30th visit to the national stadium in 15 years.
It’s expensive, and difficult to get there when the trains down from Manchester are what they are, and it wasn’t even a final. Just as pertinent is that it highlighted a state of play that only time can fix.
Whereas clubs like United and Liverpool have thousands of fans in the south ready to gobble up tickets not taken by the rank and file, City do not. Not yet anyway.
The empty seats for City’s FA Cup semi-final last season were a symptom of their success
Fifteen years of winning has bred a generation of young City fans across the UK but it takes time – and will require more trophies – for that to bed down into a generational hard core of support.
With that in mind, the 2023 Treble winners sit at their own crossroads. At some stage, the 115 Premier League charges that remain outstanding may place everything in fresh context. On the field, last season’s struggles have seen a team turned on its head. The current campaign is hardly off to a flier, either.
When manager Pep Guardiola goes – in the summer of 2027 at the latest – the depth of City’s structures and relevance will be stress-tested like never before. If they don’t keep winning, what happens?
Inside the club they feel things are in place. The new North Stand at the Etihad will soon take capacity to over 60,000, while a 401-bed hotel will open next year and sit alongside the 23,500-capacity Co-op Live music venue, in which the club has a significant stake.
United’s plans for a new Old Trafford continue to exist only on paper, a frustration given a season-ticket waiting list that exceeds 100,000. Only one of the Manchester stadiums will be used when the UK hosts Euro 2028 and it won’t be the red one.
‘Spurs now get an extra 50 minutes per fan per visit compared to White Hart Lane,’ explains financial expert Maguire.
‘Modern stadiums equate to money. United can put up prices. Turfing out the old boys and girls from behind the dugout is an option. They can make it more Disney and they are. But Old Trafford catering is a dump. I go there as an away fan. I am 6ft 3in and literally can’t sit down.’
On social media, United’s are market leaders and their reach remains vast. They have 233.6m followers across X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
The Etihad Stadium will be the lone Manchester host of Euro 2028, with Old Trafford’s future still up in the air
City now sit second on that UK list with 179.5m. Their social media monthly engagement currently increases at a rate of 60 per cent year on year and it’s this that they in part credit with their increased popularity in places such as America and particularly Asia.
When City played in Seoul last summer, tickets sold out in half an hour and 23,000 people turned up to watch them train. United have known that feeling for almost three decades but City – doubtless helped by their multi-club ownership model – feel they are starting to get the edge in places like South America and some parts of Europe.
There are now 24 leagues across the world featuring players who started out at City’s academy.
At Old Trafford, insiders believe City may have already reached the top of their commercial and sporting mountain. They, on the other hand, can see where their own next steps forward could come.
Ahead of Sunday’s game United sit higher in the Premier League table. It’s rare, and no real reflection on United given they have just four points from three games. But the picture feels bigger for both.
Perhaps the challenge for City will come when they experience a prolonged slump. One season without a trophy does not count. United have been there for a decade and more, and perhaps their greatest mistake was not to see it coming.
City sources claim now that they had anticipated United’s drift before it became obvious, whereas the day after that Aguero moment more than 13 years ago, there was a conversation at Old Trafford that ended with one executive urging calm.
‘Don’t worry, we will be on the back pages again before long,’ he said. ‘It is where we live.’
It took Ferguson 12 months to knock City back off their perch, but that was the last time United won a Premier League title
City have gone from strength to strength in the last decade, even matching United’s Treble of 1999 with one of their own in 2023
That has indeed proved to be the case, just not always for the right reasons. City’s advancement has not been free of controversy but it has been linear and, unexpectedly, has come on the back of a lower net player spend than United. Ferguson’s confidence, for once, was misplaced.
‘Everybody had an opinion on us at the start and we heard it all,’ says our City source. ‘Arsene Wenger accused us of financial doping. There were snidey comments from German chief execs.
‘United didn’t do it, to be fair. David Gill didn’t do it. But Ferguson was always Ferguson and of course we noticed. Of course we listened.
‘Have we proved him wrong? Let’s just say we have come quite a long way.’
References
- ^ Manchester City (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Manchester United (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Sergio Aguero (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Premier League (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Alex Ferguson (www.dailymail.co.uk)