Converted in a few years into the showcase of English football, Manchester City before him an uncertain future due to suspicions that he committed financial irregularities, a case that affects the entire Premier League, origin of the investigation and that now he must solve this thorny case. The Citizens, owned since 2008 by the wealthy Abu Dhabi United Group consortium, They are now exposed to sanctions that can range from a simple reprimand to exclusion from the championship.
The Premier League caused a cataclysm by announcing that it will commission an independent commission to examine whether City committed more than a hundred breaches of financial rules between 2009 and 2018, as the organizer of the English championship suspects. The northern English club was further accused of failing to cooperate with British league authorities in their preliminary investigations.
Recognized as the richest club a month ago by the Deloitte cabinet, City was confident, assuring that they have “irrefutable evidence” that would demonstrate that the suspicions of irregularities are unfounded. Nevertheless, It is not the first time that the entity has been immersed in a similar case, but until now it has always been successful. However, he might become the scapegoat for the discrepancies in the world of football that many denounce.
The club in which the Argentines play Julian Alvarez y Maximo Perrone of was sanctioned in 2014 with a fine of 60 million euros for not having respected UEFA’s financial ‘fair-play’. In 2020, he was close to being suspended for two years from European competitions, although finally the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS) invalidated the sanction imposed by UEFA for the same reason. Last year, Coach Pep Guardiola was already very clear when he assured that he would leave the club if it is shown that its leaders lied to him. So many reasons that the daily The Times wrote on Tuesday that City acted “on an industrial scale.”
“If all this is proven, the sanction that will be applied should dissuade all those who try to follow the model developed by City ”, wrote Henry Winter, a well-known newspaper columnist. This investigation, therefore, should be placed in a more global context that would protect City and that puts the Premier League in an awkward situation, he argues. Simon Chadwick, professor in sports economics and geopolitics at the SKEMA Business School in Paris. According to this specialist, the british government is regarding to publish a white paper to support the creation of an independent soccer regulator.
“The Premier League is once morest it,” he told the BBC the expert Kieran Maguire, for whom the organizer of the championship “wants to show everyone that he is capable of maintaining order at home”. Summarizes Chadwick: “The Premier League is between a rock and a hard place.” And contextualize: “She is under pressure from the government to increase control in terms of financing and governance, but at the same time is fully aware that the government forces her to do the dirty work.”
And the threat of administrative relegation or exclusion from the championship seems extreme, this economist believes that the probable way out of this thorny issue would be a compromise that is far from seeing the day, since the Premier League has no interest in shooting itself in the foot, harshly sanctioning one of its most faithful ambassadors throughout the world.
”During this very delicate economic period, even more so following Brexit, The British government and the Premier League cannot afford to snub potential foreign investors.” and “applying draconian rules to foreign investors”, it adds. “For a national body to make an effort to enforce its rules to multinational organizations, often supported or helped by States, is a bit of the war of our time,” says the economist, aware that Paris Saint-Germain, the French emulus of the Manchester City, in which Lionel Messi plays, is owned by Qatar. “At the end of the story, I think the government and the Premier League will find a way to protect their asset making respect for certain principles of good governance prevail”, concludes Chadwick.
Guardiola is in his seventh campaign with City and that is quite a revelation: he has never stayed at the same club for so long since he began his managerial career. While the tabloid newspaper The Sun claims that “Premier League clubs ask for blood and a quick decision”, the DT that renewed until June 2025 is at a crossroads looking ahead. It is due to the effect of his words and because of what the club can expect following the 115 accusations that are being raised, considering similar cases of financial irregularities.
The stain that the Italian team carries on its way through Serie A is fresh Juventus, involved in another case of corruption that made it not exceed the fair play financial, which led to the removal of 15 points in this championship by a ruling ordered by the Italian sports court. Thus, La Vecchia Signora is in an extreme situation: it is 13th with 23 points, just 10 units above the relegation zone. The announcement was made on January 21 by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), justified in “accounting fraud in transfers of soccer players with the aim of registering artificial capital gains in their accounts” and since then, he has looked more down than up in the table in which he was disputing places for entry to the cups.
The Turin club had been acquitted along with ten other entities in the spring of 2022, but the FIGC appeal court accepted the federal prosecutor’s demand to reopen the file and the outcome was worse: initially, a penalty of nine units. All this revived bad memories in that entity, because Juventus has already gone through the scandal called “Calciopoli” on the manipulation of referees, which a decade and a half ago caused their administrative descent to the second category (something that had never happened in sporting conditions) and the loss of the Scudetto which he obtained in 2005 and 2006.
The new leadership, which took over following the resignations and expulsions of the main players involved, aims to relaunch the team’s sporting situation, which failed to win a title last season for the first time in eleven yearsbut above all it seeks to fix the economic situation: recorded losses of more than 200 million euros in the last two years and is closely watched by UEFA because of its fragile finances.
In the case of Premier League Rule W51, should the alleged breaches be proven, the range of sanctions is very wide: a warning, the deduction of points or a recommendation to the expulsion league for a club. The Commission has the power to cause defined actions to be taken within a fixed period of time and also provides that defendants have the right to appeal. City is exposed to the withdrawal of its titles obtained in the period in which there might be fraud, Therefore, they might remove from their showcases the trophies obtained between 2009/2010 and 2017/2018, a period that covers six conquests in the Premier League.
“We were accused. I do not forget it. Eight or nine teams sent a letter to the Premier League to ban us from competing. And we are the fifth team in net spending in the last five years. That is the reality,” Guardiola said. The team is currently second in the tournament, five points behind leader Arsenal, and has qualified for the round of 16 of the Champions League, where it will face Leipzig, from Germany.
Although similar cases are few, it is worth remembering that the Football Club Surveillance Commission prevented Palermo from registering in the second division tournament in 2019 due to a debt of 500,000 euros and had to relaunch its sporting life from the last category with another name: Palermo Football Club. And in that same country, Milan, the last champion of Italian football, is investigated by the Justice in relation to the sale of the stock package of the “rossonero” club last August by the Elliott group to the investment fund RedBird Capital Partners, in an investigation that may have consequences in the short or medium term following an extension of 40 days requested from the Sports Attorney General’s Office.
In Manchester City they have already hired Boris Johnson’s lawyers to defend themselves once morest the Premier’s accusations, who charge between 5,500 and 11,500 euros an hour, The Lawyer Magazine reported, for which they might receive regarding 450,000 euros a week. More than Kevin De Bruyne, for example.
THE NATION
