The English Premier League continued the work of UEFA

The flagship of English football, Manchester City, which three years ago with great difficulty avoided a two-year suspension for violating the rules of financial fair play (FFP) of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), is facing sanctions already for violating the provisions of the similar regulations of the English Premier League (EPL) . The structure put forward a number of accusations against the grandee. These include the failure to provide “accurate information” on financial activities, gray payment schemes for contracts, as well as ignoring the fundamental principles of UEFA. Last year, the authors of an investigation conducted by the German publication Der Spiegel and the Football Leaks platform accused Manchester City of systematically circumventing football regulations.

In the English Premier League, a loud scandal erupted. He was provoked by a statement published by the Premier League, which concerns the most successful club at the moment. This is Manchester City, which won gold in four of the previous five national championships and is at the top of the Deloitte Money League – a rating that ranks teams by annual income: Manchester City’s income for last season is estimated at € 731 million. The Premier League announces the start of proceedings against the club in connection with suspicions of a number of commercial and financial violations committed between 2009 (that is, shortly after its purchase by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan) and 2018.

The accusations (there are more than a hundred in total) are divided into several blocks.

The first one talks about non-compliance by the club with the provisions of the financial regulations of the Premier League, requiring accurate information about “income, including sponsorships”, partners and expenses. In the second, a violation of a clause obliging members of the Premier League to describe the remuneration due to them in contracts with coaches and players “down to detail”. In other words, in this case, we are probably talking about gray payment schemes. According to the Premier League, Manchester City used them when paying for coaching services from 2009 to 2013, and when paying for football players from 2011 to 2016. Specific names are not named in the statement, but at least it is not difficult to guess which of the mentors is meant. The fact is that from the end of 2009 to May 2013, Manchester was trained by the famous Italian specialist Roberto Mancini.

The third block of accusations refers to violations of financial fair play rules Union of European Football Associations (they took place from 2013 to 2018), and in the fourth – the regulations of the Premier League in the part that contains principles of “profitability and sustainability” of clubs. This block covers events from 2015 to 2018. In addition, the Premier League noted that Manchester City refused to help her in the investigation of his activities. It has been going on since December 2018. The Premier League has clarified that the proceedings against Manchester City will be secret, without revealing when it is going to make public their results, as well as the sanctions that threaten the club. Meanwhile Daily Mail argues that they can be harsh – from deprivation of points to expulsion from the Premier League.

As big as the news of a new and much bigger than Sunday defeat at Tottenham Hotspur that worsened Manchester’s chances of catching up with Arsenal, the football giant’s problem in the tournament, for those who follow him closely, it could hardly become a real sensation.

The fact is that lately Manchester City has always been at the epicenter of high-profile cases related to financial and commercial regulations.

It was this club that was supposed to become the main victim in the history of the invented UEFA at the end of the decade before last FFP. In 2019, the main continental structure caught Manchester City in an extremely gross violation of it. Then it turned out that Sheikh Mansour was injecting funds into the club through affiliated companies, reflecting the money received as sponsorship payments. This became the basis for opening a disciplinary case against Manchester City. In February 2020 UEFA dismissed Manchester from participating in European competition for two seasons, and also fined € 30 million. Such measures could lead to disastrous consequences, up to a long-term loss of prestigious status.

However, in the summer of Manchester City managed cancel them by contacting the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). At the same time, the Manchesterites did not deny the authenticity of the information on which the charges were based, but their lawyers skillfully took advantage of the procedural nuances. In the end, the CAS considered the sanctions to be unnecessarily harsh and the statute of limitations in the case expired.

However, already in 2022, a new investigation into the business of Manchester City appeared. It was carried out by the German edition Der Spiegel and the Internet platform Football Leaks, which specializes in such disclosures.

The authors of the material came to the conclusion that the Manchesters systematically violated the regulations of various organizations. In particular, it confirmed the position of UEFA.

Der Spiegel and Football Leaks insisted that Manchester City were constantly receiving payments from companies directly related to the UAE authorities, which is already contrary to FFP rules. The official position of representatives of this country has always been that ADUG is a purely private company. However, documents obtained by Football Leaks showed that some of the payments from it to the club were pre-approved by the UAE government agency, the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA). Thus, it seemed that the real control over the financial flows of ADUG was still in the hands of the EAA, which is headed by Khaldun al-Mubarak, who is actually the prime minister of Abu Dhabi, and at the same time the chairman of the board of directors of Manchester City and co-founder – along with Sheikh Mansour – City Football Group: it has been managing Manchester City since 2013.

The investigation also mentioned Roberto Mancini – just in the context of dubious schemes for covering the contract. Officially, the Italian’s salary at the club was only £1.45m. Even before £4m, he is believed to have received in the form of bonuses. However, on December 19, 2009, the same day that Mr. Mancini began to coach the Manchester team, the Italian signed a fictitious contract with the Al Jazeera club from Abu Dhabi (it is also owned by Sheikh Mansour), where he was obliged to pay £ 1.75 million per year net for the provision of “consulting services”.

And that’s not all. For example, the authors of the investigation had no doubt that Manchester City managed to ignore some important points of the regulations of the International Football Federation (FIFA), signing contracts with underage players.

According to FIFA rules, clubs cannot make international transfers of players under the age of 16, as well as transfer funds to them, their parents or agents. The Manchesters, according to Der Spiegel and Football Leaks, acquired at the end of 2013 14-year-old Braim Diaz, who trained at Malaga. For this transfer, ADUG paid €360,000 to the Spanish club, and in order to hide its participation in the scheme, it transferred money to a counterparty through an intermediary company based in Barcelona.

Manchester City reacted promptly to the publication of the Premier League. IN club statement he was said to be “surprised” by the accusations against him, “all the more so given” the “colossal amount of detailed material that has come into the league’s possession”. The Manchesters, however, “welcomed” the creation of an independent commission to study their case, expressing the hope that it would be “impartial and competent” and that the matter would be “settled once and for all” thanks to it.

Alexey Dospekhov