MANCHESTER, England — Erling Haaland called on everybody at Manchester City to “stick together” in the striker's first public comments since the club was found guilty of large-scale financial rule-breaking in the Premier League.
City manager Enzo Maresca also spoke for the first time about English soccer's biggest modern-day scandal, expressing his “trust” in the club's ownership and saying his players “don’t care too much about the noise."
City will play Liverpool on Sunday in its first match since the publication of an investigatory panel’s verdict that City artificially inflated its revenue by more than $1 billion from 2009-18 to circumvent financial fair-play rules that restricted rival clubs in that period.
City was found guilty by the panel of all 80 of the serious financial charges brought by the Premier League and could be hit with severe sanctions — including being expelled from the top flight. City has lodged an appeal against the findings.
In an interview with Sky Sports published Thursday, Haaland — City's most high-profile player — said: “We have to stick together and we have to spread the love to each other. So yeah, stick together, enjoy the ride and smile.”
Asked what his message would be to City fans traveling to Anfield, where a potentially hostile reception awaits the team, Haaland said: “We have to stick together, we have to stay with each other and we have to stay positive.
“No matter what happens in life, we have always have to have a smile. So we have to stay positive, look ahead and try to win football games and then try to enjoy the situation and the game.”
City later published an in-house interview with Maresca, who gave his first remarks on the matter with domestic soccer having been on hold for the past three weeks because of an extended international break.
“Personally I’m very calm to be honest,” he said of City's situation. “The club has been quite clear. We trust completely the club. We understand the noise but the focus for us is just what we can control and we can control just the football side."
Maresca said the feeling in the squad was “fantastic” ahead of City's next two games — against Liverpool and then Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League on Wednesday.
City has won all seven of its matches this season in all competitions and is top of the Premier League.
“The players are just focused on that. They know what we can control is the football side – they are not worried at all about different things," Maresca said.
“They know their profession and they know that the noise is there but they don’t care too much about the noise."
Maresca is likely to face more severe questioning Friday when he holds his pre-match news conference with reporters.
Lampard and other managers speak about City case
The return of the Premier League offers rival team coaches a first opportunity to react to the City case that has rocked the world’s most popular soccer league and is likely to have a major impact on the remainder of the season.
They weren't rushing to judgment on Thursday.
“We’ve all seen the news. It’s obviously big news,” said Frank Lampard, the Coventry manager who played for City for one of the seasons — 2014-15 — that has been under investigation.
“Man City are appealing the situation so I guess my reaction is that: what can you say when an appeal is going on? I’m not inside the story, I’m outside it completely — I played for Man City a long time ago, for one year — so we’ll wait and see what the result of the appeal is.”
Bournemouth manager Marco Rose preferred to stay away from the matter, saying: “I’m a football coach, not a politician,” while Newcastle manager Matthias Jaissle said he was “not able to judge” as a manager of another club and “there are authorities taking care of it.”
In a similar vein, Leeds manager Daniel Farke said there were “more qualified people ... able to speak about it.”
Speaking at the Leaders in Sport conference in London, Leeds chairman Paraag Marathe – president of the club’s U.S.-ownership group, 49ers Enterprises – said he believed “the most just result, I’m sure, will be delivered.”
“In any sport, you know, everybody wants to play by the same rules,” he added, without mentioning City.
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