Bernardo Silva, Raheem Sterling, and Gabriel Jesus, Manchester City (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned Manchester City’s ban on European football. The ruling did not entirely exonerate the club.
In February, the European football authority, UEFA, banned MCFC from European football for the next two seasons and fined them €30 million for violating Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations and failing to cooperate with their investigation.
UEFA’s case rested on evidence that City had disguised the amount of money it had received from its sponsorship deal from Etihad Airlines and their balance statements from 2012 to 2016.
In February, I argued in a column that football governing bodies should not dictate to football owners how much money they can spend on their clubs. As football clubs in England are private businesses, it is the investment of money in a free market that has made the Premier League the best league in the world.
FFP was designed to keep clubs from overspending beyond their means on players, coaches, and facilities by only spending cash earned in revenues rather than through additional investment by owners.
These regulations were intended to even the playing field for current club owners; however, the unintended consequence was to protect the current establishment from hyper-aggressive new owners and entities.
I argued in my column that FFP’s only role should be to enforce regulations on fraud and other deceptions of reality.
UEFA ruled in February that Manchester City had committed fraud and deception in its accounting and reporting practices. In my column, I agreed that the club should be punished for these reasons, but not for the spending of cash for its business interests.
I still stand behind this opinion.
column that football governing bodies should not dictate to football owners how much money they can spend on their clubs. As football clubs in England are private businesses, it is the investment of money in a free market that has made the Premier League the best league in the world.</p>
<p>FFP was designed to keep clubs from overspending beyond their means on players, coaches, and facilities by only spending cash earned in revenues rather than through additional investment by owners.</p>
<p>These regulations were intended to even the playing field for current club owners; however, the unintended consequence was to protect the current establishment from hyper-aggressive new owners and entities.</p>
<p>I argued in my column that FFP’s only role should be to enforce regulations on fraud and other deceptions of reality.</p>
<p>UEFA ruled in February that Manchester City had committed fraud and deception in its accounting and reporting practices. In my column, I agreed that the club should be punished for these reasons, but not for the spending of cash for its business interests.</p>
<p>I still stand behind this opinion.</p>
<div class="next-slide slider"> <a class="next-slide-btn" style="background: #0" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="next-slide-shortcode" href=https://playingfor90.com/2020/07/14/opinion-cas-ruling-manchester-city-guilty/"#"> <span class="title">Next:</span> What The CAS Ruling Really Means </a>
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<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-482981 size-full" src=https://playingfor90.com/2020/07/14/opinion-cas-ruling-manchester-city-guilty/"https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/fetch/c_fill,g_auto,f_auto,h_1939,w_3200/https%3A%2F%2Fplayingfor90.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fgetty-images%2F2020%2F07%2F1212401028.jpeg" alt="Manchester City" width="3200" height="1939" srcset="https://playingfor90.com/wp-content/uploads/getty-images/2020/07/1212401028.jpeg 3200w, https://playingfor90.com/wp-content/uploads/getty-images/2020/07/1212401028-768x465.jpeg 768w, https://playingfor90.com/wp-content/uploads/getty-images/2020/07/1212401028-268x162.jpeg 268w" sizes="(max-width: 3200px) 100vw, 3200px"><p class="wp-caption-text">Etihad Stadium, home of Manchester City (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)</p>
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<h2>The CAS ruling did not overturn the verdict; it reversed the punishment.</h2>
<p>In CAS’s press release on Monday, the panel stated that Manchester City had <a href=https://playingfor90.com/2020/07/14/opinion-cas-ruling-manchester-city-guilty/"https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/CAS_Media_Release_6785_Decision.pdf">“contravened Article 56 of the Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations,”</a> which refers to the club’s requirement to cooperate fully with UEFA regulators.</p>
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<p>The release stated that there was not enough evidence to support the finding that MCFC had disguised the sources of their money. CAS further advised that much of the evidence had been time-barred, which means that the statute of limitations had expired.</p>
<p>These findings do not completely clear City of wrongdoing for two reasons.</p>
<p>One, just because there is not enough evidence, does not mean a violation was not committed. It just means that there was not enough of it, in the CAS panel’s opinion, to meet the legal standard of guilt or liability.</p>
<p>More importantly, there is absolutely no moral or ethical statute of limitations on fraud. The fact that the evidence dates to 2012 through 2016 does not eliminate the reality that City did not correctly report where their revenues were indeed coming from. A is A. Fraud is fraud.</p>
<p>Following Manchester City’s money is a swampy marsh as layered as the plotline of <em>The Wire</em>.</p>
<p>MCFC, City Football Group and Etihad Airlines are owned all by the same people: Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan and other members of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. It’s not the money that is the main issue; it is the club’s lack of transparency.</p>
<p>It is the lack of transparency and the swamp of state-sponsored football ownership that is the issue.</p>
<div class="next-slide slider"> <a class="next-slide-btn" style="background: #0" data-track="shortcode" data-track-action="next-slide-shortcode" href=https://playingfor90.com/2020/07/14/opinion-cas-ruling-manchester-city-guilty/"#"> <span class="title">Next:</span> Government and Football: Do They Go Together? </a>
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<h2>Financial Fair Play needs to be reimagined and recreated.</h2>
<p>The slippery slope of state-sponsored ownership in English football started with Roman Abramovich when he purchased Chelsea in June 2003.</p>
<p>The Russian-Israeli billionaire obtained his fortune mostly through his relationship with Russia’s presidents during the Russian style crony capitalism that was created in the fall of the Soviet Union.</p>
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<p>Abramovich’s relationship with the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is still in place and resulted in his visa to come to England to not be renewed due to Russian covert operations on English soil.</p>
<p>When Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City in 2008, he announced that the purchase was a “private” investment and not a part of the United Arab Emirates’ attempt to run a football club.</p>
<p>This statement is inherently untrue. Sheikh Mansour is a member of the UAE royal family, which runs the country. Those two things can not be unhooked from each other.</p>
<p>The government of the UAE is running Manchester City. It’s shirt and stadium sponsor is from an airline, Etihad, the state of the UAE owns. It’s all the same.</p>
<p>It is state-sponsored ownership of private football clubs by entities out of the Middle East, China, and Russia, among others, that is partly responsible for the graft and fraud that is pervasive in world football.</p>
<p>The proper role of government is to protect the individual rights of its people, not use people’s tax money to purchase and run football teams.</p>
<p>Where you see government-sponsored football, you find fraud and lack of transparency. This concern is the case for Manchester City and is the case against Saudi Arabia and its planned take over of Newcastle United.</p>
<p>The issue of state or government ownership of football clubs is where UEFA should adequately regulate. Money in the game should come from private owners that have no direct affiliation with the government.</p>
<p>Financial Fair Play should be re-directed to deal with the graft, fraud, and deception caused by the blurry lines created when the government is directly involved in club ownership and finances.</p>
<p>FFP should not be in the business of determining what private owners do with their clubs from a financial standpoint.</p>
<p>The regulatory bodies should be fighting any fraud and deception that comes from owners in whatever form it takes.</p>
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<p>If UEFA takes the step of fighting graft, then the game will remain an open free market that, in time, will dramatically improve clubs and leagues.</p><!—pageview_candidate—>">