“They were always arrogant, always horrible. It was the best day of my life.”
Only one player in the City team that day knew the full depth of the Manchester derby rivalry.
Micah Richards had joined Man City since he was a 13-year-old and had obviously played against, and lost to, their traditional oppressors Man United at the junior level, as well as being on the receiving end at Old Trafford time after time even after he had progressed to the first XI.
Understandably, he is still not beyond cringing when watching – not that he willingly chooses to – replays of the footage of Wayne Rooney’s spectacular overhead winner a year earlier, as the United star’s unexpected, obtrusive boot suddenly flashed into view to slam the ball away from what the City defender had thought would be his header for clearance.
Despite the talk that entire day being on how the tables turned revolving around Mario Balotelli’s two goals and T-shirt antics, Edin Dzeko’s punishing late brace, or David Silva’s incredible volleyed assist for one of those goals, Richards was undeniably a force of nature that day, a man unusually obsessed, as he eagerly labored to extirpate every bad memory of having faced United in one emphatic swoop.
Vividly recalling his experience of that particular derby encounter in the Match of the Day podcast, Richards said: “There’s one memory that sticks out – remember that Wayne Rooney overhead kick? It’s always advertised and you see my face, just about to head it and he just comes and scores one of the best goals you’ll ever see.
“I came through the academy at City, they (United) were always arrogant, always horrible.
“Every year we were getting better and better, then the 2011-12 season, with the 6-1 and it was the best day of my life.”
Manchester City were finally able to stand tall and proud after handing out the biggest trouncing in Manchester derby history a decade ago. The Blues had somehow managed to quash that unbearable Red superiority complex that had been honed by the smug, all-conquering Fergie years, shredded it and decisively ground it into the Old Trafford earth.
The ugly stigma from the past had all been finally washed away by a near-epiphanic deluge of glorious goals as gaffer Roberto Mancini and his feisty, fearless Blues proceeded to re-define and redelineate the new boundaries of Manchester football.
Every picture tells a story, it has been claimed.
And one particular such snap, taken at the historic Manchester derby on October 23, 2011 – ten years ago – brings into perfect recall the radical, shocking developments that momentous day that sum up last decade of the most intense football rivalry in the city between the two Manchester behemoths.
The snap shows a broadly-beaming Manchester City striker Edin Dzeko, both arms aloft in celebration – surrounded by Vincent Kompany, Joleon Lescott and Samir Nasri, their faces jubilantly decorated with smiles as they congratulate him – to a starkly-contrasting backdrop of stone-walled and absolutely shell-shocked Manchester United supporters looking more glum than the darkest day in hell.
Poignantly, and perhaps with fitting poetic justice from a totally Blues’ perspective, the epiphany of the situation was somehow reversely-satirised by the cryptic, insulting words in the banner that one of the Reds had earlier pinned before the match to the fence at the front, which read “MUFC – Not Arrogant, Just Better”.
A decade on, this orgiastic derby match is referred to simply as “The Six-One” as everyone in the whole of Manchester possessing even an iota of football knowledge, Red or Blue, knows exactly what is meant when those three cryptic words are uttered.
For United, it was absolutely traumatic and soul-shattering, the day of apocalyptic doom when it was brutally confirmed that the shift of power which had begun six months earlier with City’s FA Cup semi-final win in a Wembley derby was not in the realm of imagination or possibilities anymore, but real.
On the other side of the fence just a short hop away across the city, for the multitudes of City fans that had been waiting in ridicule and anxiety over the years after having been regularly exposed to the snide and even vicious taunting of their bitter rivals, it was the ultimate thrill, a tremendous soul-lifting victory that was nothing short of an exorcism of the toxic Red torment that had been their lot on all but one of their visits in the previous 37 years.
Finally, and most certainly not for the last time, City had gone to Old Trafford with their heads held high. They had earlier succeeded in beating the Reds in a crucial FA Cup semi-final six months ago en-route to ending their 35-year trophy drought and were top of the table, two points clear of their old rivals after a sensational start to their season.
The Etihad team were well aware that many City teams who had made the short coach ride across town for the away derby in the 30 years preceding that had been beaten even before they began, especially when the United doyen, Sir Alex Ferguson, was still comfortably ensconced at the peak of his power.
However, an emboldened Roberto Mancini had brought with him a new edge this time around – he had faced up two-to-toe to the fiery United gaffer on the touchline, and had finally made good on his vow that he would rip down the pointedly mocking Stretford End banner that proudly represented the Reds’ supercilious attitude and claim to superiority and eternal dominion over their traditional city rivals.
And as for the banner that the Red supporter had haughtily put up that read “MUFC – Not Arrogant, Just Better”, it had become in reality “MUFC – Not Arrogant, Just Battered” in the space of 90 remarkable minutes.
(Please wait for our Part 2 of this 3-Part Series)