The judgment on the 115 charges brought against Manchester City has been expected ‘imminently’ for some time. On February 8, City manager Pep Guardiola said it would come in one month. That was nearly six weeks ago.
The whole Byzantine farrago, shrouded in absurd levels of secrecy, scaffolded by threats and grandstanding and mystery, has sometimes seemed eerily similar to episodes from Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Resolution rests tantalisingly and torturously out of reach.
City’s executives and particularly their legal team, like to portray the club as the Josef K of these labyrinthine manoeuvrings, the victim of a shadowy higher power, but the truth is that it is English football fans who are Josef K, increasingly bewildered, increasingly impotent, increasingly disillusioned.