Netflix recently released a six-episode docuseries titled Together: Treble Winners that delved into the historic 2022-23 season of the famous English soccer club, Manchester City. IMDb‘s synopsis of Together: Treble Winners reads, “Follows the chronicling of Manchester City’s 2022-2023 season, following the team through preseason, new player arrivals, and their journey to a historic treble.”
Founded in 1880, Manchester City has competed in the top flight of the English league system. They have won numerous accolades throughout their reign, but winning the continental treble last year might be their greatest achievement. As such, they became the second English club to achieve this feat. Before them, their rivals, Manchester United, managed to win it back in 1999.
Winning the continent for a club means winning three trophies in a single season. Interestingly, in the 2022-23 season, Manchester City won the Premier League, the FA Cup, and the UEFA Champions League.
The Premier League is the highest English soccer league system level, and the FA Cup is the country’s annual knockout competition. Meanwhile, the UEFA Champions League is a competition where top-division European clubs come face to face. By beating Arsenal on May 20, 2023, Manchester City confirmed their historic seventh league title. On June 3, 2023, they beat Manchester United 2-1 and lifted the FA Cup. Furthermore, on June 10, they lifted their first-ever UEFA Champions League trophy by defeating Italian club Inter Milan. The final match was held in Istanbul, Turkey, where Manchester City won 1-0.
Throughout UEFA’s seven-decade-long history, apart from Manchester City, only seven clubs have won the treble: Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Celtic, Ajax, PSV Eindhoven, Manchester United, and Inter Milan. Interestingly, Barcelona and Bayern Munich have won it twice.
Can Manchester City possibly win the treble this year too?
Like the previous season, Manchester City’s 2023-24 season has been fruitful. They are currently third in the English Premier League table, just behind Liverpool F.C. and Arsenal F.C. In the ongoing FA Cup competition, they will face Chelsea in the semi-finals on April 20, 2024. A victory here will take them to the final, where they will face Manchester United or Coventry City.
Manchester City is also competing in the current season of the UEFA Champions League. In April, they will face the Spanish soccer giant Real Madrid in the quarter-finals. Since the English team is doing well in all three competitions, there is a probability that they can win the treble once again. If they can manage to do so, they will become the first-ever English club to achieve this feat.
Pep Guardiola, the team’s manager, stated that winning back-to-back trebles is close to impossible. According to ESPN, he said, “This is a fairytale, it’s more complicated than that.” He continued, “We have 99.99% possibility that we are not going to win the treble because never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever has [anyone] done it. If it was easy, another team — Manchester United in that time — would do it again. It’s not easy. Everything is so difficult in this business, what we did in the past doesn’t guarantee anything. You have to do all the things again every three days to stay there until the end.”
Pep Guardiola has been managing Manchester City since 2016. So far, he has led them to win five Premier League titles, two FA Cups, a UEFA Champions League trophy, a FIFA Club World Cup, and more.
