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The Premier League's guilty verdict against Manchester City is extraordinary: guilty on 114 of 115 charges, and not one of them amounts to a minor offence. The independent commission appointed by the league found enough evidence to prove systematic financial fraud by the club from 2009 to 2018.
According to the judges, the club run by Abu Dhabi's ruling family, among other things, falsified accounts and entered into sham contracts with companies in order to "artificially inflate revenue and reduce its costs", as the ruling states. That allowed the Cityzens to spend more money on the transfer market for years than UEFA and Premier League rules should have allowed. Manchester City are said to have cheated their way to an illegal advantage of up to one billion euros in this manner.
It is a verdict historic in its scale and deserves every superlative. Financially in particular, it could have unprecedented consequences. There has long been speculation, for example, over whether disadvantaged Premier League clubs could now demand compensation from Manchester City for lost income.
Now the guilty verdict must be followed by a fitting punishment. Otherwise, it could backfire and make everything even worse.
Certainly, the wording of the verdict has made a historic punishment against Pep Guardiola's former club more likely, but it is still far from certain.
Have Manchester City ever been convicted of financial offences before?
This is not the first time Manchester City have been convicted over financial offences. Strictly speaking, Manchester City were already convicted in 2020 for the same offences as now.
Back then, UEFA banned the Sky Blues from all European club competitions for two years for serious breaches of Financial Fair Play and imposed a fine of 30 million euros. The verdict was subsequently overturned by the international court CAS, but by no means because the court had established City's innocence. Rather, City benefited from the regulations and UEFA's rather lax appetite for investigation.
Under UEFA rules, financial offences become time-barred after five years. The allegations raised against Manchester City at the time related above all to the years from 2009 to 2013, so by 2020 they were time-barred.
Getty ImagesUEFA had also based their case primarily on documents that whistleblower Rui Pinto had made available, among others, to Football Leaks and to Spiegel. Apparently, the continental governing body made little effort to find further evidence from the more recent past and also wanted to bring the uncomfortable case to a swift conclusion. Manchester City ultimately got away with a fine of 10 million euros for lack of co-operation with the authorities.
Without a severe punishment, even the most historic verdict is worth nothing
The Premier League cannot be accused of lacking thoroughness: the commission investigated for three years before delivering the verdict. And because the league does not have a limitation period for breaches of the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), it could use even the most substantial and publicly accessible evidence from the early years of the club's takeover by Abu Dhabi's ruling family.
Remarkably, the Premier League of all bodies, the most commercial and capitalist league in the world, is now delivering what UEFA botched in 2020.
Still, the verdict can only be the first step. Hand on heart: who still had it on their radar yesterday that Manchester City had already been convicted in 2020 for the same offences? Many people still remember Juventus' forced relegation from Serie A in 2006 for the systematic influencing of referees ("Calciopoli"). Many have probably already forgotten their exclusion from the Conference League in the 2023/2024 season for accounting manipulation ("Plusvalenza").
Without a historic punishment, even the harshest verdict is worth nothing.
Getty ImagesThat is not because everything would suddenly be better. Anyone who believes that is fooling themselves. Cheating has been part of professional football since it was invented. And so far, those involved have always found a new way to bend the rules as soon as one loophole was closed. But if Manchester City are not also punished severely for these massive offences after this verdict, then rules such as Financial Fair Play could finally be buried for good.
If anything is to get even a little better in this regard, City must be punished severely.
What really threatens Manchester City now?
Everything is possible, from drastic points deductions over several years and fines in the tens or hundreds of millions to forced relegation, the stripping of all titles won during the period and extensive compensation payments to rivals.
Realistically, however, that is unfortunately hard to imagine. As desirable and important as it would be for the Premier League to make an example of Manchester City and impose the harshest possible punishment, it would also be harming itself. Clubs such as Chelsea, Aston Villa or Nottingham Forest are aggressively pushing the limits of the PSR. That is not forbidden per se, but the league would from now on have to examine every sign of creative accounting very closely if it is serious.
Then there is Man City's financial muscle: Manchester City will almost certainly appeal. An endless legal battle against the club's virtually limitless and state-backed resources carries extreme financial and political risk. For the league and ultimately for every club in it. A harsh ruling could also, as already mentioned, trigger an incalculable flood of compensation claims from other clubs who feel cheated out of titles or income from the Champions League and other competitions. There are grounds to fear that in the end the league will strike a pragmatic deal with Manchester City so as not to get lost in a legal labyrinth.
Yet that would achieve the opposite of what the verdict was actually supposed to accomplish. Rules such as Financial Fair Play or the English Profit and Sustainability Rules would be dead for good.