Tonight at the Etihad Stadium, Manchester City will grow up. The project is progressing, the club – in its new guise – is coming of age.

The first Champions League semi-final for the blue half Manchester comes just days after Manchester United won a semi-final of their own. It’s always been that way – forever in the shadow.

In 1968, Manchester City won the league title for the first time in 31 years; a few weeks later, Manchester United became the first English team to win the European Cup. In 1999, City pulled off a legendary last-gasp comeback in the Division Two play off final; just a few days previously, Manchester United had pulled off an even better one in the Champions League final.

But this time, United’s late win in the FA Cup semi-final has City all set up to come of age, to surpass their red rivals. Win this game and City can not only come out of the shadow but cast their own over any Louis van Gaal FA Cup success.

But this game is – fairly obviously – about more than that. Why mention Manchester United when City are two games from a Champions League final? There’s a semi-final to be won.

Well, because this tie is about more than simply reaching a final. For Real Madrid, it is about reclaiming what they think is their rightful place at the summit of European football, but there is no glorious struggle, no new ground to be broken. For them it is, purely and simply, a means to an end. Their 27th European Cup semi final. Hardly worth writing home about, then.

But for City, it is very much a new feast, they can consider themselves pioneers breaking new ground for their club. But the club itself has to grow. And that’s why Manchester United are relevant. It’s because City’s successes – prior to 2012 and that Sergio Aguero moment against QPR at least – have been forgotten about by all but City fans and cult hero lovers.

This time they get to write their own story from ahead, not behind. And right down to the small details on the periphery of the club, City are writing a new story.

And it really is about the small details.

Are City considered a big European club? Probably not. Will they be considered as one in the future? That looks fairly certain given the progression of the club. But to get from A to B, something needs to change. Success is, of course, one thing. But that will come. The main thing that needs to change before City are considered amongst the biggest in Europe is the feel of the club and its surrounding details.

Big European nights at the Etihad stadium are notoriously flat. It has become boring to point that out – the empty seats, the polite clapping of the fans. Go to Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion, to the Camp Nou – to Anfield even – on a big European occasion and listen.

But it’s not the sound or the vocal ferocity of a frenzied crowd that makes it special. It’s the little details that you get at every ground, the peculiarities of the support. That’s the difference. There is no famous Camp Nou roar, no famous Real Madrid ‘anthem’ ringing around the Bernabeu. But it just feels like it. The fans are used to it, they create their own aura. As does the ground itself – you’ve seen it on TV enough times to know where the game is being played. They are iconic.

Football, after all, is followed with all the fervour of a religion, and it touches people’s lives in much the same way. The stadiums are the temples and the fans the worshippers – each group does it in its own special way. And that’s what we find so interesting. The culture.

Tonight at the Etihad, City can create their own icons, worship in their own special way. Vincent Kompany wants everyone to play their part tonight. The players need to have the game of their lives, and the fans do, too. It’s the typical kind of narrative you hear from footballers before games – more to do with hype than reality.

But this time they need to create it. In order to become a ‘big European team’, City need success, but the fans need to create their own peculiarities, the thing that makes a game at the Etihad unmistakably ‘Manchester City’.

And they will, it is – slowly but surely – being created. ‘The Poznan’, the booing of the Champions League anthem, it’s all part of a wider whole, the ‘culture’ is being created, watching Manchester City in the Champions League is starting to have its own unmistakable feel. And when the style of football is taken to a new level next season with Pep Guardiola at the helm it’ll evolve even more.

Manchester United can win their first trophy in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, but City can trump it with a Champions League victory. City lived for so long in United’s shadow. They came out of it some time ago, but now is their chance to actually cast a shadow of their own and place themselves amongst Europe’s veritable elite.

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