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The happiness that Manchester City's billions can't buy

The happiness that Manchester City's billions can't buy

It is hard to feel sorry for a team that has more financial resources than any other and spends them lavishly, a practice soccer's authorities think so poorly of that they levied a fine of $75 million.

The "punishment” laid out to Manchester City for investing too high a proportion of its revenue on new signings was a blueprint in modern soccer absurdity, and the message was this: Dare to spend too much money and we'll make you spend even more of it.

Such is the sport's current reality. Everything can indeed be fixed with pots of cash, and it is indeed structured, by development rather than design, to keep the status quo firmly entrenched in its ivory tower of superiority.

And here is where City, which lost a Champions League group stage nail-biter 1-0 to Bayern Munich on Wednesday, finds itself in an oddly unique position.

Five years of investment from the ownership group controlled by members of the Abu Dhabi royal family has given the longtime poor relation to local neighbor Manchester United two English Premier League titles in three years and a squad packed with superstars. However, the club has not yet been at elite level long enough to fully profit from the arcane carve-up that consolidates wealth, power and success in the hands of a chosen few.

You might think that as a national champion, Man City would have the benefit of a preferential seeding in the Champions League, the elite club competition in the world and the competitive flagship of soccer's strongest continent. Not so.

Despite winning the Premier League and scoring 102 goals, 34 more than fourth-place Arsenal, it is the London team currently enjoying the spoils of being a Champions League top seed on the basis of past performance. That is why City got lumped in with 2013 champion Bayern along with Roma and CSKA Moscow. Arsenal was grouped with Borussia Dortmund (which dealt the Gunners an opening-game defeat on Tuesday), Anderlecht and Galatasaray.

City has pitfalls waiting at every turn. Arsenal, on the other hand, can trip over its own feet and still probably make the round of 16.

The seeding process has survived some criticism before, and while City's billions mean it can never be a sympathetic figure for neutrals, some form of equity would surely make common sense. But it should be noted that common sense is always a dangerous concept in soccer.

Seeding the champions of the strongest leagues would be a natural progression. After all, this tournament emanated from the European Cup, a competition exclusively for national champions, before the powers that be realized there was much profit to be made from expansion, followed by more expansion, and then just a little bit more.

That is why we have 32 teams now and why 28 clubs have appeared at least nine times in Champions League history. Once you are in the club, especially the upper reaches of it, it is hard to be left out.

There have been some rumblings about a seeding change, but none is guaranteed. Nothing ever is with political factors a rumbling with permanence in soccer's corridors of power.

The inequality is merely a manifestation of soccer's political ethos. Nothing about the game promotes surprise or intrigue.

The Champions League reward system of prize money benefits those who make it, giving them even more money to get back there again. So too does the prize allocation of leagues like the Premier League, which is utterly top heavy.

A mediating remedy to even the field such as the draft in American sports could never work, but this is the opposite of it. The likes of City and Chelsea are better than their rivals, have more money to begin with and have squads so stacked that Chelsea could afford to rest star striker Diego Costa in its 1-1 tie with Schalke on Wednesday.

The staggered prize money piles even more on top, and thus the gap gets a little wider, year after year, until it becomes a chasm. Oh wait, that already happened.

Soccer's relationship with money isn't complicated. Money owns the game, even at its most global level. The World Cup, which tries to position itself as the most international and democratic of sporting events, demonstrates the mirage, with 31 of this summer's 32 contestants having also made the field in 2010.

You can't transfer players between national teams for cash in international soccer, but you can buy rights to stage the whole tournament, at least if recent allegations of misappropriation are valid. That is why we are going to Vladimir Putin's backyard for the next World Cup and the tiny and sweltering gulf state of Qatar for the one after that.

They've got the oil you see, the black gold that flows underneath the elite fields of the game that still pretends it is beautiful. It is – but only for a select few.