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European football’s governing body has been, at best, clumsy in its handling of City’s FFP efforts and supporter issues, but the club will need to embrace the Champions League.

As far as Manchester City and its fans are concerned, UEFA’s rap sheet is a long one.

The 2014 announcement that the club had fallen foul of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations came as a shock, given it had worked closely with the governing body to avoid any breaches. When it was discovered UEFA had moved the goalposts and changed the all-important Annex XI, which City had expected would get it out of jail, it did not go down well at the Etihad Stadium.

The application of Annex XI, a clause that meant wages paid to players signed before 2010 (when FFP did not exist) would not count toward the 2012 financial year, was altered only once City already had submitted their accounts. Having previously been on course to stay under FFP’s maximum deficit, City was now around 80 million pounds over.

Rather than pursue legal action – despite standing on solid ground – the Blues accepted a number of sanctions that included, among other things, a reduction in their earnings from European competition for two years, a 60 million euro fine (later reduced to €20m) and restrictions on transfer and wage expenditure.

A burning sense of injustice endures, but that is not the only reason the Champions League anthem will be booed ahead of Wednesday’s game against Dynamo Kiev.

Just four months after being hit with those sanctions, City fans were shut out of a group stage clash with CSKA Moscow, despite many having already booked up their flights and accommodation. UEFA, three weeks before the match, closed the Arena Khimki for three matches as punishment for racist chanting. City fans who had made the trip were turned away at the gates, and even barred from an office block that overlooked the stadium, but a crowd of around 650 people – many of them vocal CSKA fans, drinking beer on the terraces (itself a UEFA rule breach) – were let into the ground and watched the match from the main stand. Worse, UEFA declined to take any action after City, again furious, wrote a letter of complaint.

“Why the hell do we not have any fans here? What have our fans done wrong? There’s no fairness in it,” Vincent Kompany fumed after the match, summing up the feeling around the club.

So there was little wonder City expected similar when it was pitted against Kiev in this season’s competition. The Ukrainian champion was halfway through a two-match stadium closure, again for racist abuse, when the last-16 draw was made back in December, meaning there was little point in City fans booking time off work for a February trip to Kiev.

UEFA eventually overturned the stadium ban, allowing both home and away supporters to attend, but City believes it is yet another botch job. With the announcement coming on Feb. 2, three weeks before the game, it was too late for many to make it and only around 700 fans are expected to travel.

It was the handling of the situation in Moscow that sparked a protest from the 1894 supporters group, one that urged fans to turn their backs on the iconic Champions League anthem but quickly evolved into the loud booing and whistling that continues to this day.

That farcical story in October, when UEFA was forced to investigate after a particularly tetchy delegate had noted booing ahead of the home game against Sevilla in his official report, was met with bemusement from both club and fan base. To the governing body’s credit, it did not lead to further sanctions.

But despite everything, it is surely time to bury the hatchet. Yes, ineptitude in Nyon has seemed to hit City harder than most – many would say too often to be a coincidence – but the Champions League will be integral to the plans this club has for the future.

Pep Guardiola has been brought in to make City a serious contender at the top level during the next three years, and big European nights, when the Blues will be expected to stand toe-to-toe with the very best teams, should become a regular event.

By now, City is no stranger to facing Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, clubs it would have only faced in preseason friendlies before Sheikh Mansour’s takeover. But the Blues always have been underdogs on the pitch, a situation not helped by the general apathy toward UEFA in the stands that has ensured the crowds have been relatively low and the atmosphere relatively flat. City is still the outsider.

Dramatic turnarounds against Sevilla and Borussia Monchengladbach this season have provided thrilling moments of late drama, but in terms of the big events that have captured the imagination, there have been few of those fabled European nights that have graced Old Trafford, Anfield and even Stamford Bridge over the years.

As City enters a new era, one with designs on domestic domination and success on the continent, the Champions League will play a major role in the club’s future. Despite everything, it’s time for fans to embrace it

Robert Litan is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and has directed economic research at the Brookings Institution, the Kauffman Foundation, and Bloomberg Government. His most recent book is “Trillion Dollar Economists.” He is on Twitter:@BobLitan.

So far, the principal narrative in the presidential race, in both parties, has been the insurgents vs. the establishment. If Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each can build on the momentum from their Saturday victories in South Carolina and Nevada – and there is a good chance each will – then the narrative eventually will switch to: which dealmaker do Americans want to be their president?

Mr. Trump makes a virtue out of his deal making, trumpeting (pun intended) his book “Art of the Deal” as guideline of how he’d lead the country. Mrs. Clinton’s main campaign theme, aside from her extensive resume, is that she “can get things done,” which is just another way of seeing that she’d try to make deals, too. (I count Gov. Kasich and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as dealmakers, too, but both their candidacies face uphill climbs).

I underscore the word “try” since it is likely that both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton would have problems with Congress. As a Republican, a President Trump would not only face partisan opposition from Democrats, especially if they take back the Senate, but on a number of issues from establishment Republicans in Congress. Given the high likelihood that the House will remain in Republican hands, Mrs. Clinton would have to try to find common ground with at least one, and possibly two, Congressional chambers. It is far from clear that even with the best of charm offensives with members of Congress a President Clinton would be any more successful at reaching deals on her spending and tax proposals – which Republicans strongly oppose — than President Obama has been.

Of course, there is still a slim chance that at least one of the parties will nominate a philosophical “purist” likely to be more resistant to compromise: Sens. Cruz and Sanders.

Mr. Cruz wears his “no compromise” status proudly. Mr. Sanders claims, implausibly in my view, that there would no need to compromise since his election would only be possible with a “political revolution.” That may well be true, but even with such a revolution, it is highly unlikely that the House will turn Democratic, and the Republicans there almost surely would be even more opposed to Mr. Sanders’s proposals than Mrs. Clinton’s. So far, Mr. Sanders has given little hint he would be prepared to accept much less ambitious versions of his ideas.

Sen. Marco Rubio appears to be more of a wild card. He was one of the “Gang of 8” Senators who drafted a compromise immigration proposal, but subsequently withdrew his support after opposition to the idea emerged within his own party. Mr. Rubio might be able to find common ground with some Democrats on his proposals to subsidize low wage workers, which he discussed in speeches before the campaign, but has not stressed during it. It is even conceivable he would seek middle ground on his tax proposal, which is not as sweeping as those of his now principal Republican rivals.

On the other hand, Mr. Rubio has taken a harder, no compromise line on social issues and on national defense. If he manages to gain the nomination, as now many in the Republican establishment appear to want, it is difficult to assess how much deal making he would attempt and on what issues. Perhaps that ambiguity could work in his favor: attracting the support of both the ideological purists within his party, and those who want the next president to show flexibility, at least some of the time.