Why Do Man City Fans Boo the Champions League Anthem?

Why do Manchester City fans hate UEFA?

Since being taken over by Sheikh Mansour and the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008 and becoming one of the richest clubs in the world, Manchester City have been regulars in the UEFA Champions League. The club have qualified and competed in Europe’s premier competition for 14 consecutive seasons since 2011-12

After many heartbreaking exits, including losing out in the final of the competition to a Kai Havertz winner in Porto vs Chelsea in 2021, City finally would claim the prize that the middle eastern ownership had targeted for years in 2023. With Spanish midfielder Rodri scoring the only goal in Istanbul vs Inter Milan, becoming champions of Europe for the first time in their history and becoming only the second English team ever to complete the famed treble of the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in one season.

🚨 | @UEFA has released the new anthem for the Champions League. Either way, we won’t hear it because we’ll boo it. 😁🎤pic.twitter.com/FX3XoN5wub

— City Chief (@City_Chief) August 22, 2024

However, the City fans have for a long time have e felt a sense of hostility towards UEFA, with every time the Champions League anthem is played pre-match at the Etihad Stadium, a chorus of boos from the home support meets the iconic music. But why is the the case, and where do the angry feelings from supporters come from?

The Beginning of the Animosity

The most common answer to the question of where the bitterness from Citizens supporters originally came from is a particular match during the 2011-12 season.

City, playing in their first UEFA Champions League campaign, took on FC Porto in Manchester. However, Mario Balotelli was unfortunately racially abused by some of the travelling Porto supporters.

The punishment for the Portuguese side? Just a €20,000 fine. An extremely small penalty for an unacceptable incident. That alone did far from please Manchester City fans, but what angered them even more was when the following month, City went away to Portugal themselves to take on Sporting CP in Lisbon.

During the interval of the match at the Jóse Alvalade Stadium, the City players were judged to have arrived back onto the pitch from the dressing room ‘up to 60 seconds’ later than they were scheduled. As a result, UEFA fined City €30,000. Another relatively small punishment in elite football terms, but the fact it was more significant in value than what Porto received rightly angered Citizens supporters.

A Growing Hatred

But that incident was just the beginning of a long and ongoing feud between City and UEFA. Two years later, in 2014, UEFA ruled that Manchester City had breached Financial Fair Play rules. And this time the punishment was severe.

A hefty fine of £49 million was given to the club, as well as restrictions on their squad size allowance for the Champions League that season. With City and their fans feeling hard done by UEFA, booing of the Champions League anthem directed in anger towards the European football governing body began.

But it would intensify more when, during the 2013-14 campaign, a match away at CSKA Moscow saw City fans banned from attending as part of a punishment for CSKA, who were forced to close their stadium to home supporters as a punishment for racial abuse.

However, despite the ban being intended for CSKA fans, UEFA applied the ban for visiting City supporters as well, despite the fact there had been no wrongdoing, and many had already bought match tickets and travelled to Moscow for the fixture.

To make matters worse, over 500 CSKA fans ended up being allowed entry into the stadium and received no punishment from UEFA for the behaviour of the supporters who ignored the ban and ended up attending.

The incident was another example in a growing list of times City fans felt they had been dealt with unfairly by UEFA. And City defender Vincent Kompany shared supporters’ frustrations at the time of the CSKA clash, stating, “There’s no fairness in it. What have our fans done wrong?”

From then on, heavy hostility greeted the UEFA Champions League anthem whenever City took to the pitch in the competition. With a formal protest, directed by the 1894 fan group, urging fellow City fans to turn their backs during the anthem at the Etihad stadium following the Moscow incident.

But it still didn’t end there; in 2019 UEFA again investigated City’s compliance with FFP, and after finding them guilty, banned the club from competing in UEFA European competitions for the following two seasons.

‘We know we were right’: Uefa chief Aleksander Ceferin sure of Man City’s FFP guilt

Plus, in an EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with @ben_rumsby, Ceferin discusses why players joining Saudi clubs to drive change is a ‘joke’#TelegraphFootball #mcfc

— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) January 23, 2024

However, perhaps motivated by events of the past, Manchester City brought in the strongest lawyers they could, and after a formal appeal managed to get the decision dropped in 2020. The winning of the appeal was seen as a huge win by supporters, managing to get one over UEFA after what they felt was a decade of injustice.

Despite coming out of the case without punishment, City fans saw it as another case of UEFA trying to punish the club for what they believed to be non-justifiable reasons. And it's fair to say that the feelings towards UEFA will not soften any time soon.