Premier League Charges Manchester City Over Financial Rules

Under the stewardship of its Gulf owner, Manchester City has been transformed into one of the most successful and free-spending teams in world soccer, a serial English champion and a regular contender for the world’s best players and Europe’s biggest trophies.

Those titles were secured by a brand of winning soccer that set points records and at times made the team, with perhaps the deepest and most talented roster in English soccer history, seem almost unbeatable against domestic opposition. In many seasons, it became routine to see City swat aside even its closest rivals.

But throughout that period, suspicion about Manchester City’s financial dealings shadowed its on-field successes. The focus intensified in 2018, when a Portuguese hacker responsible for uncovering some of soccer’s darkest secrets secured internal Manchester City documents and emails that suggested the club had engaged in years of financial manipulation through deals with companies linked to its wealthy Gulf owners. Sponsorships were used to artificially inflate revenues on City’s balance sheet, the club’s critics argued, and allowed it to continue its relentless acquisition of playing, coaching and scouting talent.

In 2020, the governing body for soccer in Europe, UEFA, banned Manchester City from its top competition, the Champions League, for two years for financial rules violations, though the club appealed the decision and had the ban overturned.

In challenging that ban, City focused on a few words in the governing body’s rules that set a five-year time limit on the infractions eligible for punishment. In effect, UEFA’s investigation had taken too long to consider the most serious offenses, the appeals panel found, and so the club escaped the harshest punishments levied against it.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/sports/soccer/manchester-city-premier-league-financial-charges.html