Manchester City’s Champions League Ban Is Overturned

Still, the rules had not stopped City from winning everything but the Champions League title, the crown its owners covet the most. It has another chance to win it in August, when the Champions League returns for a mini-knockout tournament in Lisbon featuring eight quarterfinalists.

But without the ban looming, City can approach the event with a sense of ease that might have been missing if it faced a ban — and the likely departures of players looking to compete for European trophies over the next two seasons.

Lawyers for City and UEFA presented their arguments to the panel during a video hearing in early June. City had said it would spare no resource to defend itself. It contended that the UEFA process was one-sided and that an impartial body like CAS would overturn the ruling, which came after damaging leaks in 2018 that suggested the team had engaged in illegal accounting tactics to get around UEFA’s cost control rules.

Citing internal documents and emails, those reports suggested City had disguised millions of dollars of direct investment by its owner, Sheikh Mansour, as sponsorship income. One document published by the German weekly Der Spiegel appeared to show that the team’s main sponsor, the Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, had paid only a fraction of an $85 million sponsorship agreement.

City had denounced the publications as “out-of-context materials purportedly hacked or stolen,” contending that the leaks were part of an “organized and clear attempt to damage the club’s reputation.”

Its rivals had demanded serious punishment, though, leaving UEFA and its president, Aleksander Ceferin, squeezed by powerful, and wealthy, forces on both sides. Ceferin said he had no role in UEFA’s investigation, which was handled independently by a group responsible for scrutinizing clubs’ adherence to fiscal rules. That group, known as the Club Financial Control Body, ruled against City, adding a fine of €30 million on top of the ban.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/sports/soccer/manchester-city-champions-league.html