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Manager Pep Guardiola and legend Francis Lee have both asked Manchester City supporters to stop booing the UEFA anthem … but the dislike and mistrust seems to run too deep for that to happen anytime soon.

It seems that whenever there seems a chance of the animosity dying down, European football's governing body comes up with another move that is deeply unpopular with Blues fans, causing backlash in the stands leading to even louder boos.

Plenty of fans think that there is a lobby within UEFA which actively works against their interests, and in favour of the established elite.

But the problem stems back to the 2011/12 Europa League, when Porto fans racially abusedMario Balotelli and received a paltry 20,000 euros fine.

The following month City played Sporting Lisbon and were fined 30,000 euros for being around 30 seconds late getting back onto the pitch in the second half.

That set the outrage rolling, but it was Financial Fair Play that really convinced City fans that Uefa were the enemy.

An initiative that set out with the good intention of stopping clubs from spending beyond their means evolved into a means to stop clubs like City and Paris St Germain, with rich owners, from benefiting from investment.

City fell foul of the new rules in 2014 and were hit with a £49million fine as well as restrictions on their transfer spending and Champions League squad size.

That was when the booing really began, and it was compounded later that year by the dismissive way in which City fans were treated when they played a group game at CSKA Moscow.

CSKA had their stadium closed after persistent racial abuse and bad behaviour by their support, and that ban included City fans, many of whom had already bought flights and hotel rooms for the game.

Uefa refused to listen to their pleas – and on the night of the game CSKA made strenuous efforts to stop the few Blues who had travelled out of the stadium, while hundreds of CSKA fans, some drunk, and many wearing colours, were allowed in, and in full view of the Uefa match delegates. That passed without sanction - in fact CSKA subsequently had the length of the stadium closure REDUCED on appeal.

To make sure they kept waving a red rag in front of a Blue bull, in 2015 Uefa considered charging City after fans booed the anthem at a home game.

Common sense finally prevailed, with no charge forthcoming – and they changed their rules to allow such criticism to continue unpunished.

That might have mollified some, but then Uefa did an about-turn on the financial fair play rules, relaxing the tough guidelines in 2016, just as traditional European powerhouse AC Milan announced the were receiving lucrative Chinese investment.

The new rules applied to new investment, like AC Milan, but forbade it from City and PSG as they had already been punished under the FFP rules, fuelling the feeling that FFP is simply a ploy to try to stop the new rich from outgunning the traditionally rich.

If they needed another reason, it came last year, as Uefa announced a change to their coefficient points system, upon which the seedings for Champions League and Europa League draws are made.

The old system awards points depending on a team's involvement and success in the European competitions, and it meant that City – after six consecutive seasons in the Champions League – had moved ahead of United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

Uefa changed the allocation of coefficient points, factoring in a club's historical success – so clubs like United and Milan would get points for having won it three times in the past.

In February 2020, UEFA handed City a two-year expulsion from the Champions League for a "serious breach" of FFP regulations, starting in the 2020/21 season. The club remain adamant that they have a "comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence in support of its position" and have appealed to the Court of Arbitration to Sport in the hope that the decision can be overturned before the summer.

Such blatant working of the system to favour flagging elite clubs has further fuelled the anger – don't expect the boos to stop any time soon.