Few managers can ever expect to gain the love and admiration City fans have for Roberto Mancini.
The Italian who turned the tide in Manchester and set us up for sustained success turns 60 today.
When Mancini walked through the doors at the Etihad Stadium in December 2009, City were on the way up but there was still a long way to go.
Manchester United were the dominant force in English football after three successive Premier League titles, while City were now 33 years on from our last major trophy.
By the time of his departure in 2013, we had been crowned Premier League champions and FA Cup winners and all of Europe was aware of the coming force that was the blue side of our great city.
Effortlessly stylish in that classic Italian fashion, Mancini immediately struck a chord as a man who demands the best.
His tireless work ethic and fierce defence of the club and his players on the touchline meant a lasting, deep connection with the faithful who follow City home and away.
Etihad arrival
18 months on from the takeover that changed this Club’s fortunes forever, City needed silverware.
Mark Hughes was overseeing the transition but progress had stalled with seven straight league draws in October and November.
At that point, our hierarchy spotted an opportunity to get in a manager with seven major honours from his most recent job at Internazionale and grasped it.
At the very top of the Premier League, the margins are fine. Every side has a talented squad, but the intangibles are often what decides who lifts the trophy and who doesn’t.
Mancini had won a lot as a player as a creative and technical attacker before taking that mentality into management.
He used his first interview as City’s manager to outline how he would take the Club from nearly men to champions.
“I think the most important thing I try to instil in my players is that they must always believe that they can win – we need a winning mentality at this club because eventually, it pays off.
“It doesn’t happen overnight and can take maybe six or eight months to really be absorbed, but if you are prepared to work hard every game, you will always have a chance of being successful.
“It’s a simple observation, but very true - you can’t win anything without working hard.”
With English football stalwart Brian Kidd by his side, Mancini had all he needed to get used to our league as quickly as possible.
It may also have helped that his term began with a Boxing Day home win over Stoke City.
In those days, Tony Pulis’ Potters were perhaps the team that most typified the Premier League’s physical and combative nature but City more than held our own.
Stoke would be landmark opponents for Mancini later in his Etihad stay, but we’ll come to that shortly.
Our sprinkling of star quality at that point largely came from Carlos Tevez, who had arrived from Manchester United the previous summer in City’s first major blow to our rivals as part of the new era.
Tevez and Mancini’s relationship wouldn’t be without its dramas during the pair’s time together, but there was never a doubt that both were desperate to win.
Wrapped up warm
Perhaps the first symbol of Mancini’s affection for the Club came through the blue and white scarf he donned in the dugout.
A classic, simple style with two bold, beautiful colours that truly represent City, the neckwear made the manager an instantly recognisable figure for anyone in the stadium.
Within days of its first wear, City fans were clamouring for their own replica and it wasn’t long until the Etihad stands were filled with Mancunians trying to match the Italian’s style.
Its origin story is fairly simple.
“I usually wear a scarf on the side-lines because I get pain in my neck if it’s cold,” grinned Mancini at the end of his first term.
“I arrived in December and it wasn’t so warm, so before my first game, our communications executive Vicky Kloss gave me her City scarf and that was that. I’m very happy that it became something of a fashion item.”
Spurs heartbreak
Mancini immediately improved City with 11 wins and five draws in the remaining 21 Premier League games of the 2009/10 season.
That left us within touching distance of the very top table of European football – the Champions League.
Our rivals for fourth spot and that ticket to the Champions League were Spurs and whether by quirk or design, we would play Harry Redknapp’s side at the Etihad in our penultimate game of the campaign.
A tense affair was decided by one nod of Peter Crouch’s head, with the England man scoring in the 82nd minute to silence the Etihad apart from one corner of travelling fans.
The disappointment was palpable in the Etihad that night but reflections quickly turned to the excellent foundation laid by the new boss.
Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak used his summer interview to stress the faith the organisation had in Mancini.
“Roberto is our manager,” he began.
“He’s done an excellent job coming in mid-season, organising the team. I’m very happy, and Sheikh Mansour’s delighted with the way he’s organised the team.
“We believe he is definitely the right manager for this club for many years. What he needs this summer is time to prepare and really organise ourselves.
“We know the areas that need to be improved within the club. A good pre-season followed with a good start to the season and I’m really excited for next year.”
“It’s been a wonderful season. We’ve gone a long way as a team and I feel very good about next year because we’ve crossed an important milestone as a club. Next year’s going to be a very important year for us.”
Revenge and FA Cup triumph
The aims of the 2010/11 campaign were clear – Champions League qualification and some silverware.
The summer additions of Yaya Toure, David Silva, Aleksandar Kolarov, Mario Balotelli, James Milner and Jerome Boateng made it perhaps one of the best, and most transformative, transfer windows in the club’s history.
Toure, touted by media and pundits as a limited defensive midfielder upon signing, and Silva, immediately dismissed as too lightweight for English football, would go on to become two of the finest players in our history.
Mancini gave them the platform to shine by tasking Gareth Barry with the dirty work in midfield and providing the firepower to make the most of Toure and Silva’s creative talents.
It was defensively that City excelled, conceding just 33 times in the Premier League as Vincent Kompany came to the fore as perhaps the Premier League’s leading central defender.
He was partnered by Joleon Lescott in a duo that would form the basis of all of Mancini’s successes.
We found the net just 60 times in total in the league, with much of that burden falling on Tevez – who tied with Dimitar Berbatov for the Golden Boot on 20 strikes each.
With 71 points, we finally qualified for the Champions League with relative ease – nine points ahead of fifth placed Tottenham Hotspur.
It was in the FA Cup that the most memories were made and the real psychological blow on our local rivals was dealt.
City needed replays to get past Leicester City and Notts County early on, with Edin Dzeko’s first City goal rescuing the Blues in the first tie in Nottingham.
A 3-0 cruise against Aston Villa and Micah Richards header against Reading sealed a Wembley date with Manchester United, who were eyeing a European Treble.
Yaya Toure was the difference maker on a day of extreme tension in London, capitalising on a slack Michael Carrick pass, knocking it around Nemanja Vidic and sliding home under Edwin van der Sar.
It’s a moment that City fans in attendance will never forget and without it, it’s hard to imagine the rest of what happened still coming to pass.
City, and Toure in particular, backed that up with a 1-0 win over Stoke City in the final to earn our first major silverware since 1976.
Reflecting on those goals, Toure said: “It’s always important when you come to a new team and score important goals.
“When you talk to the newspapers before you come to do it, they don’t believe you – but when you make it, it’s something special.
“It’s the way I always wanted things to happen. When I was coming here, it was quite difficult because City was in the shadow of United and my target was to change that.
“Me coming, and Silva, Aguero, Mario Balotelli – all those players – we try to make something big happen here.
“From winning the FA Cup, everything started and after that the players start to believe. The staff, the management, everybody start to believe it.”
Trophy parades through the streets of Manchester have become annual occurrences in recent years, but this silverware gave us the first opportunity to paint the city centre blue for 35 years.
And so, with the trophy drought over and Champions League football coming to the Etihad, Mancini’s City marched onwards.
Stunning success
Three key additions ensured City were ready for a serious title challenge.
Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri both came from Arsenal, who had finished three points behind City in the previous term.
The pair would be pivotal in City’s growth over the coming terms, especially in their first season at the Etihad, but no-one could envisage just how crucial the final piece of the jigsaw would be.
Sergio Aguero came from Atletico Madrid as a 23-year-old who had already played six full terms in senior football and netted more than 120 goals.
His motivations for joining Mancini’s ever-improving side were obvious.
“I think we are a team that in future will be fighting every year to win major trophies,” he said in his first interview as a City player.
“When we were talking I asked my agents to do everything they could because this was a good club and I’d always wanted to play in the Premier League. It felt right.
“I don’t think I’ll have too many problems settling into the team. I’ll obviously be doing my best to do what the manager asks and try to work the way he wants me to.”
He got his first taste of the Etihad as a second-half substitute against Swansea City on the opening weekend and gave the best first impression possible – scoring twice and assisting the man who he would be intrinsically linked to throughout their City stays, David Silva.
Where the previous term had been more about defence than attack, the start of this campaign saw City plunder goals aplenty in the early months.
Mancini’s team were averaging around 3.4 goals per league game when the first Manchester derby of the season came around – a trip to Old Trafford on 23 October.
The goals most certainly didn’t stop – with City putting six past Alex Ferguson’s defending champions in perhaps the most iconic meeting of the sides ever from a City perspective.
While fans quite rightly revelled in the occasion, Mancini himself refused to get carried away.
“It isn’t important that it was 6-1, it’s important that we have beaten a fantastic team,” he said calmly in his post-match press conference.
“It’s important for our confidence - it’s not easy to come here and beat United. Now we have one game less to play, we have three more points, and we have been to Old Trafford.”
One man not present that day was Carlos Tevez, who had been absent without leave since a Champions League trip to Bayern Munich at the end of September.
Tevez and Mancini had something of a disagreement on the touchline at the Allianz Arena, with Mancini believing he had requested Tevez to warm up and the striker refusing to do.
The boss has since said he tried to make reparations the following day.
“I remember the day after Munich I called Carlos and I said say sorry to the team and for me it’s finished now,” he said.
“Carlos said ‘No, no I don’t want to play anymore.’ This situation went on for two or three months and we lost to a lot of teams because we were missing his quality and character.”
It wasn’t until the 21 March that Tevez was again in action for City, coming on and setting up Nasri for a vital winner in a home clash with Chelsea.
Speaking years later, the striker said he was keen to do all he could for the Club the moment he returned.
“I came back, apologised for the mistake I made at that moment,” said Tevez.
“For me it was a problem with an easy solution but with the Italian, Spanish and English that were shouted in the dressing room it was a complete mess.
“We [Tevez and Mancini] just had that moment, but afterwards our relationship was always good. As a coach he is so talented and I appreciate him as a person as well.”
With the finishing straight now approaching and City in the driving seat, Kompany – who had been made captain by Mancini the previous summer - reflected on the way Mancini was rallying the troops for the final push.
“He’s a very passionate man - there’s no mistake about that. What you see on the touchline is the man you get. He knows his football,” he said.
“He’s obsessed - in the same way a lot of players are in our team - with victory and getting better and making sure that even when we win we’re not looking back on the positive things but also on the things that went wrong so we can improve.”
Two draws and a defeat at Arsenal followed, with City seemingly feeling the pressure.
Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak was there the day that City lost at Arsenal – with current Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta firing the winner.
That’s when he delivered a vital intervention that reinvigorated Mancini and his squad in a way that saw us home.
“As Chairman you need to choose your moments. There are moments that you need to do something. I wanted to see Roberto first,” said Al Mubarak.
“After his interviews I grabbed him, Roberto was very upset, physically and emotionally drained.
“We went to the side, and I remember telling him that ‘We’re going to do this. Don’t worry, just take it one game at a time. Don’t worry about United, just worry about us. We’ll take three points from the next game and go to the next game.’
“I remember Roberto looking me in the eye and we had a moment, both of us, where it just clicked.
“I went into the dressing room, the players were all down. I was just shaking hands and chatting with some of them. It was the same message.”
We got back on track with a 4-0 thrashing of West Brom and a glorious day at Norwich in which Tevez and Aguero linked up to devastating effect, netting five times between them in a 6-1 thrashing.
A 2-0 win at Wolves set up another tense derby, where Mancini and Ferguson came to blows before captain Kompany rose highest to give us the edge going into the final two games.
Yaya Toure scored twice at St James’ Park to beat an in-form Newcastle United the following weekend to all but guarantee City the title. Victory over relegation threatened QPR was all that was required.
Toure had envisaged he would play a starring role in that win at Newcastle, with Kompany vividly remembering a conversation between the pair before kick-off.
“After the pre-match dinner, Yaya said to me ‘Vinnie with the heading and elbows, you did well this season. Now it’s my time,” began Kompany.
“He goes into the game scores two goals and I’m like ‘How does he predict this?’. It was Yaya at his best. There was no other way to win it that day.”
Victory over relegation threatened QPR was all that was required for City’s first top-flight title since 1968.
There’s a lot for a team to think about at that stage, especially a team that hadn’t won something of this magnitude before.
Speaking in 2022, Kompany said: “A game like QPR even today would make me nervous. The preparation was different.
“As captain I didn’t plan for us winning the league, after Arsenal I think most of the lads were planning holidays.
“We won at St James’ Park and now we are thinking ‘Teams that win, what do they do? Do you book a hotel? What venue do you party at?”
Mancini himself was accustomed to success, winning Serie A as a player with Sampdoria and a manager with Inter but this was pressure on another level, as the man himself remembers.
“The pressure was very difficult in that moment and we probably didn’t play well for this reason,” he reflected.
What follows is perhaps the most dramatic day on the pitch in the history of English football.
Having gone 1-0 up through Pablo Zabaleta, City conspire to blow the lead as Djibril Cisse and Jamie Mackie turn the game on its head in the second half.
Mancini’s fury knows no bounds as the second goes in, with the fiery boss rushing to the touchline to tell his players in no uncertain terms they risk losing what they have worked for for so long.
He turns to his bench and selects Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli – a decision that would ultimately lead to glory.
When all hope seems lost, Dzeko meets a David Silva corner to get City level in the 92nd minute.
Then Balotelli, a striker keen to shoot from all angles, supplies Aguero to score the spine tingling, jaw dropping winner and in doing so, registers the only assist of his City career.
Mancini can’t contain himself, sprinting back to his coaching staff – including former England midfielder David Platt for a deep, lasting hug as the Etihad Stadium itself goes wild.
What follows is clearly a blur – Mancini performs his media duties draped in an Italian flag and with a sense of wonder in his eyes.
“After today, I think maybe I am 90 years old!” he begins his Sky Sports interview by saying.
Years later, Mancini clarified everything rushing through his mind that afternoon.
“My emotion in that moment was for all the City supporters, for Khaldoon, for Sheikh Mansour because they invest a lot of money for City and we work very hard for many years to build this team,” he said.
“To win the first title is always very difficult, after it can change when you win for many years.”
Farewell
After such elation, City struggled to reach those heights again in 2012/13.
Manchester United reclaimed the crown in Alex Ferguson’s final year – a success that remains their most recent top-flight title.
It was in the FA Cup where we shone, scoring 15 times in five matches to reach the final for a second time in three years.
However, a shock defeat to Roberto Martinez’s Wigan in the final proved to be Mancini’s final outing as City boss.
We completed the league season with assistant coach Brian Kidd in interim charge.
The Manchester football legend cut a lonely figure on the bench at Reading - a stark moment that told City fans the ride with Mancini really was over.
The Italian did have one final heart-warming moment to share with City fans, taking out a page in the Manchester Evening News to deliver a simple but touching message.
“Three unforgettable years. You will always be in my heart. Ciao.”
City fans responded in kind with a page in Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport that read “Grazie Mancini: Once a blue, always a blue.”
Al Mubarak perhaps summed up City’s gratitude to Mancini best.
“Roberto’s record speaks for itself and he has the respect and gratitude of Sheikh Mansour, myself and the Board for all of his hard work and commitment over the last three and a half years,” he said.
“He has clearly also secured the love and respect of our fans. He has done as he promised and delivered silverware and success, breaking the Club’s 35-year trophy drought and securing the title in 2012.
“I would like to personally and publicly thank him for his dedication to the progress that he has overseen and for his support and continued friendship.”
Since City, Mancini’s career has taken him to Turkey, Russia and Saudi Arabia but without doubt the outstanding moment came in Euro 2020, when he led Italy to glory by beating England in the Wembley final.
While Manchester-born City fans may have had some disappointment that night, the sight of Mancini in tears in the arms of his beloved former team-mate Gianluca Vialli still struck a chord.
We have since gone on to ever higher summits, with Pep Guardiola in particular breaking records aplenty and hoovering up major honours in an unprecedented fashion.
Our current boss is the greatest manager in the club’s history and shares a beautiful connection with the fans but is always quick to praise the work of Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini in developing the club before his arrival back in 2016.
Grazie, Roberto.