The English Premier League resumes this weekend after a hiatus due to the most recent FIFA international window — but although clubs have only been off for three weeks, the landscape has radically changed since a ball was last kicked.
Manchester City was the talk of the Premier League prior to the break thanks to its perfect 5-0 start to the season, which included a win over bitter rival Manchester United at Old Trafford. Now, Man City remains the major talking point, but for completely different reasons.
Sunday’s contest between Manchester City and Liverpool at Anfield will be the Blues’ first match since the publication by an independent commission that ruled the club artificially inflated its revenue by more than $1 billion from 2009 to 2018 and was guilty of 100 breaches of the league’s financial rules.
Man City was also found guilty of three out of four charges regarding failures to co-operate with the investigation, which lasted three and a half years. The club has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and filed an appeal against the independent commission’s verdict.
“(Our) firm position is that, on multiple grounds, the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe,” Manchester City said in a public statement.
Man City’s appeal will be heard by an independent, three-member panel which, among other things, can either dismiss it, uphold it, or refer the case back to the commission.
If Manchester City loses the appeal, its fate will rest squarely in the hands of the Premier League, which can impose a fine, suspension or points deduction. The nuclear option would be for the Premier League to expel Manchester City, which would be unprecedented, as no team has ever been kicked out of the English top flight. Man City would be able to appeal any sanctions.
The main point of contention centres on the issue of how Man City’s Abu Dhabi-based sponsorship deals were funded.
The commission found that sponsors in Abu Dhabi paid only US$158.4 million of the $1.26 billion stated in club accounts and that the remaining $1.1 billion was paid by the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private company owned by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who bought Man City in 2008. Essentially, the commission ruled that the owner’s personal money was secretly put into the club via sponsors from Abu Dhabi.
City maintains that no part of the sponsorships was funded by the Abu Dhabi United Group, while at the same time saying the Abu Dhabi government, which owned the sponsors, simply helped fund some of the deals.
The panel didn’t buy that explanation, concluding it was “concocted well after the event” as a cover-up for the source of the funding. It went so far as to say Man City signed several “sham contracts” with sponsors and entered into “sham commercial deals” and other “sham arrangements” to manipulate the financial figures so that that club would still be able to splurge huge amounts of money on transfer fees and salaries without breaching league spending rules.
“Sham FC” is already trending on social media, and you can bet that rival supporters will be screaming that at Manchester City players when the club visits their ground, starting at Anfield.
Make no mistake about it: this is the biggest financial scandal in the history of the sport. Man City has been accused of cooking the books, and while that might not seem like a big deal, or something on par with other roguish behaviour in the modern game — the famous “spygate” controversy that tainted the Canadian women’s team during the 2024 Paris Olympics comes to mind — it’s a blatant form of cheating. Plain and simple.
This isn’t a case of a referee being bought off in one instance in order to influence the result of a single match. In many ways, what Man City is accused of is far worse.
The commission ruled that City was guilty of “extremely serious, significant, sustained and intentional or reckless breaches of rules” and did so by “misstat(ing) accounts and conceal(ing) the true state of its finances from auditors and football regulators.”
The commission’s detailed report paints a telling picture about how Man City stacked the odds in its favour and against the Premier League’s clubs, who tried in vain to keep up.
The alleged financial chicanery not only allowed Pep Guardiola, one of the club game’s best managers, to be lured to Manchester City; it also let it buy some of the best players in the world (Sergio Aguero, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva, to name but a few) and sign them to massive contracts.
Man City plundered top stars from its top English rivals (Manchester United and Arsenal) as well as Aston Villa, which ultimately had massive sporting consequences — the Blues won three Premier League titles, an FA Cup, three League Cups and a pair of Community Shields during the time frame that was investigated by the commission.
And keep in mind, the commission’s investigation was for events between 2009 and 2018. One can justifiably ask the question: what financial foul play has taken place at Man City since 2018? If, as the commission contends, City breached over 100 rules during the time period in question, then one wonders just how sticky its fingers have been over the past eight years.
Unless its appeal is successful, Man City will have to be kicked out of the Premier League and relegated to a lower division. The Premier League might not have the stomach to take such a drastic measure, but it may have no choice.
The integrity of the Premier League was compromised by Manchester City’s brazen actions. A dark cloud hangs over the competition as results of past seasons have rightly been called into question. Those clouds won’t part and will continue to hover unless the Premier League throws the book at Manchester City.
Editor’s note
John Molinaro is one of the leading soccer journalists in Canada, having covered the game for over 27 years for several media outlets, including Sportsnet, CBC Sports and Sun Media. He is currently the editor-in-chief of TFC Republic, a website dedicated to in-depth coverage of Toronto FC and Canadian soccer.
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