Premier League vs. Manchester City: The trial of the century begins

The opening of the process between the Premier League and Manchester City has dragged on so much that it could have seemed as if it was never going to start. Richard Masters, the league’s CEO, was asked at every opportunity about the current status. Masters gave evasive answers, and only at the league opening in August did he express himself more precisely.

It is “now time” for the case to be resolved, including him. This Monday, the hearings before an independent commission will actually begin. They will take place behind closed doors, and not even the location is known. In England, the legal dispute is seen as the trial of the century in football. “It is difficult to overestimate its seriousness and extent,” wrote the BBC. In principle, it is about both the credibility of the club and the authority of the league.

The Premier League, which governs the English elite football system as the umbrella organization, filed charges against Manchester City Football Club in February 2023 – after a tough four-year investigation. The allegations: serious financial trickery and inadequate cooperation in 115 (!) cases.

These are divided into five categories: 50 violations of the provision of correct information on the club’s financial situation; 24 violations of the detailed disclosure of player and coach salaries; 5 violations of compliance with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations, to which every member of the Premier League is obliged; 6 violations of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules and 30 violations of the mandatory support of the investigations to the best of knowledge and belief.

14 seasons are affected

The period of the allegations covers all football seasons from 2009 to 2023, i.e. the entire era of the club under its main shareholder Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The 53-year-old is a member of the ruling family of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and brother of the head of state of the United Arab Emirates.

Mansour bought Manchester City in September 2008 for a quarter of a billion euros, making him the first major financier of a Premier League club from the Arabian Peninsula. After his arrival, dizzying sums of money flowed in – probably with the aim of increasing the reputation of the repressive regime through success in football, which critics brand as “sportswashing”.

Under Mansour, City spent an estimated €2.75 billion on new players and recorded a transfer deficit of around €1.5 billion. Hardly any other club has invested more money in its own professional team in the past 16 years. Mansour’s investments have paid off in sporting terms: Manchester City recently won four championships in a row under coach Pep Guardiola and the Champions League for the first time in 2023.

The club has thus won virtually everything – and could now soon lose a lot again. If convicted in the current case, City faces final penalties. These range from point deductions, which could lead to relegation, to exclusion from the league. After the allegations became known, City’s former financial advisor Stefan Borson said on the radio station Talksport that the sheer extent of the allegations, if proven, would “at least lead to relegation” of the club.

The Premier League’s case appears to build on the first charges brought against City by UEFA. In 2019, Europe’s football union complained that City made false income statements between 2012 and 2016 in order to undermine the Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, which, put simply, only allow limited losses for clubs and subsidies from owners.

Financial doping through sponsorship revenues

Payments from Mansour were allegedly disguised as artificially inflated sponsorship revenues. A year later, City was banned from all European cup competitions for two years by an independent UEFA finance commission. A landslide ruling that the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) largely overturned shortly afterwards under questionable circumstances – citing the statute of limitations and insufficient evidence.

In contrast to UEFA rules, the Premier League has no statute of limitations. The main evidence, then as now, is likely to be hacked files from the whistleblower platform Football Leaks, which is run by the Portuguese Rui Pinto. Since 2016, Pinto has leaked more than 70 million files from top European clubs to the magazine “Spiegel”, which were analyzed by the research network European Investigative Collaborations. Some of these are freely accessible on the Internet. The articles based on Pinto’s revelations suggested that City was probably trying to circumvent the competition rules of the national and international associations.

Manchester City denies any wrongdoing and from the outset described the allegations as an “organized and clear” attempt to damage their reputation. City has not commented on the Football Leaks documents and considers them to be stolen, illegally hacked and taken out of context. The club also believes – not entirely without reason – that the financial rules are a measure by the football establishment to keep nouveau riche, ambitious clubs in check.

Guardiola is combative

City has always been confident of victory in the legal case. When the Premier League published its charges, the club responded with a brief statement. They were “surprised” but welcomed the independent review to put an end to the case “once and for all”. To support their own position, the club announced “extensive irrefutable evidence”.

Before City’s league match on Saturday against FC Brentford (2:1), Guardiola stressed that everyone is innocent until convicted. In his view, all Premier League clubs wanted City to be sanctioned. Manchester City did not respond to an NZZ query about the allegations and the timing of the proceedings; the Premier League said it could not comment further on the purchases made so far in public.

The hearings are said to last ten weeks, and a verdict from the independent commission is expected at the beginning of next year. However, both sides, the Premier League and Manchester City, can appeal, and the case would then be assessed by a newly appointed commission. It could take some time again for the proceedings to be concluded.