AFTER six years of investigations, delays and behind-the-scenes battles, a hearing finally began last week into allegations that Manchester City used a years-long cheating scheme to transform themselves into a global football powerhouse and a serial Premier League champion.
The hearing is among the most consequential in British sports history, the culmination of a case that has been the talk of English football since the Premier League charged Manchester City with more than 100 violations of their financial regulations last year.
The charges – that City corrupted the world’s richest football competition for a decade or more – threaten to rewrite years of Premier League history.
And the repercussions might go well beyond the football field.
In accusing City’s owner, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, of presiding over years of rule-breaking, the case could veer into the highest levels of international diplomacy.
Manchester City’s Phil Foden lifts the Premier League trophy after the presentation ceremony at the Etihad on May 19. — AFP
And then there are the fans. With the suggestions that cheating helped to deliver trophies to City while wealthy rivals were left empty-handed, the hearing has incited the passions of tens of millions of football followers around the world.
Their manager Pep Guardiola has welcomed the start of the trial, saying that City are innocent until proven guilty.
“It starts soon and then hopefully finishes soon. An independent panel will decide, and I am looking forward to the decision,” said Guardiola.
“We’re going to see. I know what people are looking forward to, what they expect. I know what I read for many, many years.
“I am not a lawyer. Erling (Haaland) is not a lawyer. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”
He added that there are those who want the club wiped “from the face of the Earth.”
The Spaniard has claimed previously that some of the club’s rivals hope to see them found guilty and he appears in no doubt they would expect punishment to be severe.
City’s lawyer David Pannick is seen outside the International Dispute Resolution Centre as the hearing into alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules starts. — Reuters
“I want to defend my club, especially in these modern days when everyone is expecting us not to be relegated, to be disappeared off the face of the Earth, the world.”
According to The Sun newspaper, City are understood to be convinced the Arsenal hierarchy led a group who wanted to stop them playing in the Champions League in 2020 while they appealed a two-year ban from European football.
Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham, Leicester, Newcastle, Wolves and Burnley were other clubs in what City saw as a ‘gang of nine’ after UEFA found them guilty of “serious breaches” of FFP rules between 2012 and 2016.
But the Court of Arbitration for Sport later overturned the ban after clearing City of disguising equity funds as sponsorship.
In 2011, then Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger accused City of trying to bend rules over a £400mil (RM2.2bil) deal with Etihad Airways.
“It raises the real question about the credibility of financial fair play,” Wenger told The Sun.
“They give us the message that they can get around it by doing what they want.”
Whatever is decided will shape the Premier League for years to come: Either Manchester City will have been found to have corrupted the world’s richest football competition, or the league will have been unable to enforce their rules against one of their most powerful members.
What is the Manchester City case about?
It is now 19 months since the Premier League announced a set of charges against Manchester City so wide in scope that the reputational damage to the team’s decade of success will most likely be stained even if it prevails.
The charges date back to 2009, a year after City’s purchase by the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
That acquisition began a turbocharged era of spending – and success – for a club that had not won a championship since 1968.
The Premier League have accused City of 115 specific rule breaches.
With the suggestions that cheating helped to deliver trophies to City while wealthy rivals were left empty-handed, the hearing has incited the passions of tens of millions of football followers around the world. — AP
The bulk are related to violations of their financial regulations, including failing to provide accurate financial information; submitting inflated figures for sponsorship deals involving Emirati companies, such as the airline Etihad Airways and the telecoms company Etisalat; and hiding off-the-books payments that supplemented the salaries of managers and players.
Other charges accuse City of not co-operating during the investigation, which took almost four years and millions of dollars to complete.
The case has done little to slow City on the field: The club have won the past four Premier League championships as well as, in 2023, their first Champions League trophy.
How long will the hearing take?The hearing, which some news outlets have described as the “trial of the century,” will take place out of view, inside a building in London’s financial district that is home to the International Dispute Resolution Centre – a privately owned facility for businesses to untangle conflicts away from prying eyes.
Manchester City, who have long leaned on lawyers to defend themselves or to delay any reckoning, have assembled a cast of some of Britain’s most expensive legal minds.
Their defence is being led by David Pannick, a lawyer whose hourly rate puts him in the same wage bracket as Erling Haaland, the Norwegian striker whose goals have carried City to their most recent titles.
Last Tuesday was the second day of a hearing that is expected to last 10 weeks, and a verdict is not expected until early next year.
That means the case will shadow more than half of the current Premier League season, in which Manchester City are already atop the standings as they pursue a record-extending fifth successive domestic title.
What are City saying?
Manchester City have consistently denied all of the charges, even before they were enumerated by the Premier League last year, and have said that their case are supported by a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence.”
They have never provided that evidence publicly, however, saying the claims are based on “illegal hacking and out-of-context publication of City emails.”
City could face being expelled from all competitions, not just the Premier League, if they are found guilty. — AP
Wait – illegal hacking?
The City case has roots in the publication of a trove of documents called Football Leaks.
They were released by a Portuguese computer hacker, Rui Pinto, after he gained access to the internal files of some of the biggest teams in global football.
His supporters called him a whistleblower; the clubs labelled him a thief.
The thousands of documents, messages and emails he uncovered, though, pointed at an ugly underbelly to the multibillion-dollar football industry and led to embarrassment and, in a few cases, legal fallout for some of the biggest personalities and institutions in football.
But it is the City case that has always seemed to have the most ramifications, given the size of the Premier League and the owner of Manchester City, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who, apart from his political clout in the UAE, is one of the richest men in the world.
Pinto has been imprisoned in Portugal and faces other charges related to his activities targeting the football industry.
The City case, he said in a statement released by his lawyer, “clearly demonstrates once again the importance of the Football Leaks revelations, its public interest and its generalised value that outweighs other interests.”
What could happen to City if they lose?
There is no precedent for a punishment on the array of charges City faces. Everton, a team that were found guilty of only one charge of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, was initially hit with a 10-point deduction in the standings last year, the biggest penalty in the league’s history. (The punishment was later reduced to six points on appeal.)
The range of potential punishments Manchester City faces includes huge fines, a significant points deduction or even the ultimate sanction: expulsion from the Premier League.
Any penalty could lead rival clubs to press claims for honours they feel were denied them.
And a significant sporting punishment – such as banishment from the Champions League – could lead to the breakup of the dominant, star-studded roster assembled by Guardiola. The hearing even has high stakes for international relations.
The British government appeared to confirm discussions between the Foreign Office and the United Arab Emirates when it declined freedom of information requests about talks regarding the case, arguing that “detailing our relationship with the UAE government could potentially damage the bilateral relationship between the UK and the UAE.” — NYT
