The long-awaited Manchester City documentary ‘All or Nothing’ has just dropped on Amazon Prime, having had football fans everywhere clamouring for a peek over the past year.
One of the most startling revelations in an eight-part series full of gems and fascinating insights into one of the premier clubs in the world, is all-time top scorer and future Eithad statue Sergio Aguero’s admission that one of his best friends in football is the greatest goalkeeper currently plying his trade in the game today; the Spaniard David De Gea, of City’s fierce foes Manchester United.
Though the two may play on opposing sides, the two ‘hang out a lot’ because of their ‘good friendship’ from their time at Atlético Madrid. It produces a positive perception to undermine the animosity often seen as an intrinsic part of playing on opposite sides of a divided city.
Perhaps the most obvious comparison with the relationship goes back half a century, way to the Swinging 60s when Utd and City were first in their pomp and George Best and Mike Summerbee were the men about town at the two respective clubs.
In the year that Manchester United started their habit of overshadowing their perennial rivals City league title win by becoming the first English team to win the European Cup, Red Devils’ idol George Best held true to his word and helped pal Summerbee celebrate the Blues’ First Division triumph immediately after City secured it with a win over Newcastle United.
The pact they had made earlier in the season saw them meet up at 1am in the morning at the Cabaret Club in Manchester, after Summerbee had travelled back from the North-East.
It turns out that despite their distinctive affiliations that continue to fuel cross-city hatred, the two legends had been close friends. Summerbee played at Maine Road for ten years from 1965, a period enclosed in the time where Best lived up to his name at Old Trafford, and the two struck up a friendship.
Best & Summerbee even went to watch the 1966 World Cup Final together at Wembley.
Shaking up most notions about the relationships players between the two cross-town clubs had, the two co-owned a menswear business together in Manchester, and El Beatle was even Summerbee’s best man at his wedding in the same year of their individual clubs’ triumphs.
It’s really a beautiful Manchester tale that has been given a new lease of life thanks to Aguero’s disclosure.
Despite differentiating career paths that has taken ‘Kun' and DDG to opposing sides of a city that continually requires them individually to help define the oneupmanship over the other, that they shadow Summerbee and Best to show a solid friendship can remain intact, whether red or blue.
