The UEFA Champions League final is now upon us, with oil-rich Paris St. Germain somehow a loveable underdog against Bayern Munich in Monday's final.
PSG knocked out another “Cinderella” team to reach the decider — German side RB Leipzig.
RB essentially stands for Red Bull — yes, your favourite energy drink is in the football game, owning clubs in Austria, Brazil, America and Ghana along with Leipzig.
For that reason, RB Leipzig is not a well-liked club — particularly in Germany — so its reasonably-remarkable progression to the Champions League semis has really not been viewed as some sort of emotional journey.
So, in honour of Die Roten Bullen, OTB is taking today to explore five sporting stories that really weren't that romantic after all.
RB Leipzig — 2020 UEFA Champions League semi-final
When Red Bull bought SSV Markranstädt in 2009, it was in the German fifth division; 11 years later, RB Leipzig finished third in the Bundesliga.
This is largely down to the sheer funds available to the club — but that is not the only criticism of this “rags-to-riches” story.
One of them is the ownership structure of the club; supporters of German football clubs, by association laws, must have the majority of voting rights on club decision, but the good folk at Red Bull have found a loophole for it to essentially be run as a dictatorship — totally against the spirit of the code in the country.
Further, to tarnish the name of a football club with product placement to market an (admittedly quite tasty) energy drink is genuinely blasphemous, and not what football is about.
GWS — 2019 AFL grand final
Look, we at OTB are progressive thinkers and we like the idea of expanding our great game to the world — so there's no prejudice here when talking about the Greater Western Sydney Giants.
But if the Giants had won last year's premiership reliant on AFL money, there would have been quite a few p*ssed-off fans across the competition.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported early last year the Giants had borrowed $2.5 million from the AFL on top of a $23 million grant — considerably more than other clubs are raking in from head office.
You've got Melbourne fans having waited 55 years and St Kilda supporters having suffered for 53 years — a GWS premiership would have just been a slap in the face.
LeBron's 2014 homecoming
LeBron James is legitimately better at public relations than he is at basketball, and he's one of the best two ballers of all-time.
After a historically-bad PR move in 2010 when he ditched his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for a star-studded Miami Heat, James feigned regret and a desire to make up for ditching the Cavs when he returned four years and two championships later.
Realistically, getting some positive PR really was just a by-product of what he really wanted to achieve — more championships.
Face it, his Heat team had just been obliterated in the finals by San Antonio and was getting old, so LeBron ditched Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh for younger, hotter models — Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love.
He got his title for the Cavs, but this wasn't a heart-warming, romantic decision, but rather a business-like one.
Anything Lewis Hamilton does
Hamilton's maiden Formula One championship victory in 2008, secured on the final lap of the season, was emotional — but everything he's done since then has fallen flat.
He's going to go down in history as one of the most successful drivers ever — he already boasts the most pole positions and podium finishes of all-time, is one of four drivers in history to win three consecutive titles, and after this year will share the record for the most title wins (seven) with a little guy I like to call Michael Schumacher, ever heard of him.
But Hamilton has also ruined the sport.
His Mercedes car is literally too fast for any others in the field and has been for a while — I'd love to be able to explain the engineering behind why this is the case, but I'm really not that smart.
What I can tell you, though, is Hamilton drives a car that is often half-a-second per lap quicker than his rivals — I reckon if you put me in his Mercedes, I could pilot it to a win.
You never really get the impression Lewis is doing anything any of the other drivers in the field couldn't do given his whip, so his achievements really should be taken with a grain of salt.
Manchester City — 2011-12 Premier League
Don't let the famed last-minute Sergio Aguero goal distract you from the fact there was literally nothing romantic about City's Premier League title win in 2012.
Yes, the Citizens scored twice in stoppage time to wrestle back a title they tried pretty hard to throw away, but they were playing relegation-bound Queens Park Rangers and were hot favourites.
But the larger point diminishing any of City's achievements is the status of its majority owner, Abu Dhabi royal family member Sheikh Mansour, and the United Arab Emirates’ poor human rights record in a country where the royals call the shots.
Amnesty International, for example, has repeatedly condemned the UAE, for — among other things — unfair trials, lack of freedom of expression, a failure to investigate allegations of torture, discrimination against women and the abuse of migrant workers.
So when a wealthy royal comes in and buys a club, drops $821 million on players to try and buy some PR for his questionable country, and then the club wins a league, what does it all really mean?
In my eyes, not an awful lot at all.