The chant was inspired by Pink Floyd. “We don’t need no Phil Scolari, we don’t need no Mourinho; hey Thaksin, leave our Sven alone,” chorused the Manchester City supporters to the tune of Another Brick in the Wall.
Beneath a bright Teesside sun the Riverside Stadium’s away end were urging Thaksin Shinawatra, City’s Thai owner, not to sack Sven-Goran Eriksson.
As football protest songs go it can rarely have been bettered but 11 May 2008 was not City’s day. Lacking even a semblance of their fans’ defiance, they concluded the season by surrendering 8-1 to Gareth Southgate’s Middlesbrough.
Almost seven years on, and having taken somewhat divergent paths, the teams reconvene in FA Cup fourth round combat at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday. Remarkably, Joe Hart, an unused substitute during what was to prove Eriksson’s final game in charge before his replacement by Mark Hughes, is the only player involved in 2008 still at either club.
Driven by globalisation, the pace of change has been so radical and so rapid that, in many ways, the whole extraordinary match almost feels part of a much earlier era. Although a few of the principal players remain household names, others are earning livings in the Middle East and Asia while several are no longer professional footballers.
City began unravelling when Richard Dunne was sent off for fouling Tuncay and Stewart Downing converted the resulting penalty. Suitably encouraged, Afonso Alves began teasing those Teessiders who had dismissed him as a £12m Brazilian misfit by shooting the first goal of a technically accomplished hat-trick.
Downing’s sublime volley dispatched with the outside of his left boot boosted the scoreline, Alves registered a second and, courtesy of a deflection, the substitute Adam Johnson got in on the scoring act.
Fábio Rochemback’s vicious, high-velocity, free-kick preceded Jérémie Aliadière’s low shot and, after Elano claimed City’s consolation, Alves completed that treble. It revived memories of the previous month when Boro’s record buy had deconstructed Rio Ferdinand while scoring twice against Manchester United but such cameos were to prove cruel chimeras.
Alves, recruited from Heerenveen, would score only four league goals as Boro were relegated the following season. With his wages a millstone, the striker moved onto Qatar where he represented a handful of clubs before dropping out of the game in 2013.
Another Brazilian, Elano, had been the early star of a season which, bolstered by Eriksson’s appointment and the acquisition of overseas imports (many sourced by Graham Carr, now Newcastle United’s chief scout), promised a top-five City finish. A collision with a mid-winter wall saw them limp to the Riverside en route to finishing ninth. Even so, the dramatic capitulation to a team four places below them suggested they had already adopted the languor demanded by the 40C temperatures awaiting on assorted holidays in Dubai and Las Vegas the following week.
“When you lose like this it’s awful,” Eriksson said. “Mentally we had nothing left. We were not even on the pitch – the team had totally gone. It was embarrassing for everyone. I’m living in the unsecure and it’s not very nice.”
Greater embarrassment was to come later that summer when Garry Cook, City’s then chief executive, described Shinawatra – a former Thai prime minister with a less than impeccable human rights record – as “a great guy to play golf with”.
Coincidentally, Steve Gibson also had golf on his mind. Boro’s rather more gentlemanly owner was helping preside over the construction of one of Europe’s longest courses in attractively undulating parkland adjacent to the club’s training ground south of Darlington. Alongside it, a £60m investment was turning Rockliffe Hall, a 19th-century mansion house, into one of the UK’s finest five-star hotels and, potentially, a guarantor of Boro’s future prosperity.
Ranked second in TripAdvisor’s 2012 list of UK luxury hotels, it represents one of Gibson’s proudest achievements. “Rockliffe Hall is fantastic, a gem to this area,” he says. “It’s special. We believe it will eventually create an income equal to our gate revenue. Middlesbrough FC represents a town of only 120,000-125,000 people so we’ve got to punch above our weight.”
Seven years ago this task was complicated by the international credit crunch which forced Gibson – who, over the years, has poured more than £100m into Boro – to find new ways of restructuring the club’s then £85m debt.
That sum has since been eliminated but, with Rockliffe Hall gobbling cash, Southgate confronted austerity. The most expensive squad in Boro’s history was swiftly dismantled with the manager trimming £7m from the wage bill before relegation was confirmed in May 2009.
One hundred and 12 miles south-west across the Pennines, the horizon looked appreciably brighter. Eight months earlier Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi United Group had bought City. No matter that their first vanity signing, Robinho, would prove virtually as ineffective as Southgate’s purchases of Alves and Mido, Mansour was writing off City’s £305m debt while spending countless millions more in pursuit of two titles secured by Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini.
With the appointments of the soon-to-be-sacked Southgate’s successors, Gordon Strachan and Tony Mowbray, lacking similar impact, Boro seemed consigned to Championship anonymity but Gibson was quietly forging strong links with Jorge Mendes, the international football agent and Peter Kenyon, the former Manchester United and Chelsea chief executive.
Formulating a new blueprint based broadly around Moneyball principles he began establishing relationships with assorted European clubs including Atlético Madrid, Juventus and Chelsea involving scope for future loan arrangements.
Most importantly, Aitor Karanka replaced Mowbray. José Mourinho’s former assistant at Real Madrid will most definitely not be underestimated by Pellegrini. It is no fluke that Boro’s well-coached team of homegrown products, bargain overseas imports and smart loan acquisitions, travel to the Etihad sitting second in the Championship. “Appointing Aitor was a real change for us,” Gibson says. “In the past I’ve been accused of being a little Englander but football’s global now – we’re all one.”
Along the way Adam Clayton’s world has been turned upside down. In May 2008 a midfielder expected to start for Karanka’s side on Saturday afternoon was ending his first year as a young professional at City.
“I grew up in a house 10 minutes from Maine Road,” Clayton says. “I was seven when I joined City’s Academy and I watched the first team every week. I went eight or nine years without missing a single home game.”
He was there when City dropped into English football’s third tier and, at one point, counted five managers coming and going in bewilderingly swift succession. “City’s a completely different club to the one I joined as a kid,” he says. “Now there’s no one there I know player-wise except Joe Hart.
“But I’m really looking forward to going back. I’ve played at the Etihad loads of times for the reserves but being involved in a top-class game will be special for me as a City fan and for Boro as a club. We want to prove ourselves against the best.”
Where are they now?
Manchester City
1 Andreas Isaksson – now 33. The Swedish goalkeeper moved on to PSV Eindhoven and now plays for Kasimpasa in the Turkish Super League.
2 Sun Jihai – now 37. The Chinese right-back, who had a spell with Sheffield United, has retired.
3 Vedran Corluka – now 28. The versatile Croatian defender is in Russia, playing for Lokomotiv Moscow.
4 Richard Dunne – now 35. The rugged centre-half is still going strong at QPR. Earlier proved a mainstay of the Aston Villa defence.
5 Michael Ball – now 35. The left-back has not played professionally since being sacked by Leicester in 2012 for making homophobic comments about the Coronation Street actor Antony Cotton on Twitter.
6 Stephen Ireland – now 28. Ireland is on the fringes of the first team at Stoke City. In terms of ability, arguably City’s biggest talent at the time.
7 Gelson Fernandes – now 28. The midfielder is earning a living in France with Rennes. Has also played for Saint-Etienne, Sporting Lisbon and Freiburg since leaving City.
8 Martin Petrov – now 36. The Bulgarian winger has retired. Went on to play for Bolton and Espanyol before concluding his career back home with CSKA Sofia.
9 Javier Garrido – now 29. At Norwich City as an overlapping left-back but has made only three Championship appearances this season. Had a stint with Lazio after exiting City.
10 Darius Vassell – now 34. Has not played since suffering a bad knee injury at Leicester City. Moved on to Turkey’s Ankaragucu before returning to the Midlands.
11 Benjani – now 36. The Zimbabwean striker is now playing for Bidvest Wits in South Africa’s Premier League. Turned out for Blackburn and Portsmouth before returning to Africa.
Substitutes: Dietmar Hamann (on for Vassell) – now 41 and a media pundit, had a brief sojourn as manager of Stockport County; Nery Castillo (on for Benjani) – now 30 the Mexican striker – then on loan from Shakhtar Donetsk – is an unattached free agent. Elano (on for Petrov) – now 33. The Brazilian creator was on a par with Ireland in terms of touch and vision. Departed for Galatasaray but is back in Brazil embarking on another stint with Santos.
Manager: Sven-Goran Eriksson - now 66. The former England coach is managing Shanghai in the Chinese Super League. His route from City has taken him via Mexico, Notts County, Ivory Coast and Al-Nasr in the UAE.
Middlesbrough
1 Mark Schwarzer – now 42. Recently joined Leicester City as No2 goalkeeper after stints at Chelsea and Fulham.
2 Luke Young – now 35. Left for Aston Villa and QPR. Released last year and has not played since.
3 Chris Riggott – now 34. Forced to retire because of a back injury in 2012 while playing as a centre-half for Burton Albion.
4 David Wheater – now 27. The bingo-loving centre-half – “the Redcar Rock” to Boro fans – is still going strong in the Championship with Bolton.
5 Emanuel Pogatetz – now 32. The booking-prone Austrian dubbed “mad dog” – although he could not have been more charming off the pitch – is now with Columbus Crew in the MLS following a stint in the Bundesliga.
6 George Boateng – now 39. Was always seen as management material. The Dutchman is the head coach of Kelantan in the Malaysian Super League.
7 Fábio Rochemback – now 33. The gifted Brazilian midfielder is without a club after leaving China’s Dalian. This was his final Middlesbrough appearance before a return to Sporting Lisbon.
8 Julio Arca – now 33. Injury forced him to retire at The Riverside but Arca is still so in love with football he pays £3.50 a game to turn out for Willow Pond, a second division pub side in Sunderland’s Sunday League. Arca plans to return to his native Argentina later this year to forge a new career in the media while qualifying as a coach.
9 Stewart Downing – now 30 – and arguably the star of West Ham’s season. Had spells with Aston Villa and Liverpool after leaving Teesside.
10 Tuncay – now 33 and at Umm Salal SC in Qatar, the former Turkey forward, left, moved on to Stoke, Wolfsburg and Bursaspor.
11 Afonso Alves – now 33. Gareth Southgate invested Boro’s record £12m transfer fee in the Brazilian striker, who has been a free agent since 2013. Previously played for a series of clubs in Qatar.
Substitutes: Adam Johnson (on for Downing) – now 27, Johnson moved on to City and is currently at Sunderland; Jérémie Aliadière (on for Tuncay) – now 31 and playing alongside Tuncay at Umm Salal in Qatar; Tony McMahon (on for Young). Now 28 playing right-back at Blackpool, having originally left Boro for Sheffield United
Manager: Gareth Southgate – now 44. Sacked by Middlesbrough in October 2009 and has not managed a club since. Appointed coach of the England Under-21s in 2013.
