tense relationship between Manchester City and UEFA

During the championship match against West Ham on February 19, banners were displayed by Manchester City supporters, which read "UEFA mafia", "UEFA cartel" and more crude words. ANTHONY DEVLIN / AFP

Pep Guardiola had his face on a bad day to the press Friday, February 21, the day before a match against Leicester City in the Premier League, the English Premier League. Monosyllabic answers, half swallowed words, clear desire to be elsewhere …

The Manchester City manager would have wanted to talk about something other than the sanction imposed a week earlier by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA): two years suspension from the Champions League, not to not having respected, between 2012 and 2016, the rules of financial fair play, which require clubs not to spend more than their revenues. Manchester City has appealed and the decision is pending. "It doesn't change anything at the moment, ended up dropping Pep Guardiola. By the end of the season, no one knows what’s going to happen and we’ll see. "

Read also Football: Manchester City banned from European cups for two seasons

While "Man City" will face Real Madrid on Wednesday, February 26, at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium (Madrid), in 8es Champions League finals, the tension in the press room that day summed up the attitude of the club since the shocking UEFA announcement.

An aggressive attitude

The leaders of Citizens (one of the team’s nicknames), and with them the supporters, adopted an aggressive attitude, rejecting all the accusations against them, considering themselves victims of a cabal of the authorities of European football to keep them from becoming a big club. "This decision is not a matter of justice, but of politics, accuses Ferran Soriano, the club's general manager, in a video posted on his site. It is clear that we did not benefit from a fair process. " In its press release, Manchester City is even harder: "Let’s be clear, this case was initiated by UEFA, pursued by UEFA and judged by UEFA. "

Longtime fans believe there is no reason that Manchester City should be the only team toast

On the fan side, it's the same anger. During the championship match against West Ham on February 19, banners were displayed which read "UEFA mafia", "UEFA cartel".

The tone is also set in a podcast from the club's supporters site, Blue Moon. The various speakers, all longtime fans, recognize "We twisted the rules a bit", that accounting may have been "Dubious" but they believe that these practices are widespread and that there is no reason why Manchester City should be the only team toast. They suspect in particular the big historic European clubs of ganging up against their team. "Is UEFA afraid that the huge cartel (at the head of European football) be disturbed? " wins Adam Carter, a supporter of the Sky Blues (another nickname of the club). "Of course Manchester United, Madrid or Barcelona are going to complain … it's their self-preservation instinct", adds Steven McInerney, another fan.

The revelations of the “Football Leaks”

To understand the Manchester City affair, we have to go back to 2008. Sheikh Mansour, of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, offers himself the club. He injects hundreds of millions of euros to make Manchester's eternal "other team" a football giant. In 2011, UEFA introduced financial fair play. To circumvent the new rules, according to the UEFA survey, Manchester City then artificially inflates the sponsorship amount for the airline Etihad Airways, headquartered in Abu Dhabi.

Read also Manchester City has become the most expensive football club in the world

In 2014, Manchester City received the first time (at the same time as PSG) fined € 60 million, of which € 20 million is fine, for breaking the rules. But this is the publication, in 2018, by the weekly German Der Spiegel "Football Leaks", a leak containing thousands of internal club emails, which will lead UEFA to reopen the club’s file and investigate. In one of these emails, the one who was then the financial director of the club, Jorge Chumillas, details for example where the money from Etihad will come from: 8 million pounds sterling (approximately 9.5 million euros) of "Direct contribution" from the airline and … £ 57 million from Abu Dhabi United Group, the sheikh’s personal business. This amount will be recorded as a "Contribution to sponsorship fees for 2013-2014".

A defense at the bazooka

Faced with these elements, which are difficult to ignore, the management of Manchester City opted for a bazooka defense, refusing to publish precise answers to the accusations. "We have provided a long list of documents, merely declares Mr. Soriano. But, in the context of the “leaks”, we were found guilty before we even started the discussions. "

Read also Financial fair play: "By sanctioning Manchester City, UEFA sends the signal for a turning point"

UEFA, which has not released details of its ruling pending the appeal, says the club has not "Not cooperated". In addition, the investigation and the judgment were carried out by two semi-independent bodies – the investigation chamber and the adjudication chamber of the Club Financial Control Authority – made up of serious personalities: the former Prime Minister Belgian Yves Leterme and José Narciso da Cunha Rodrigues, a former attorney general of Portugal.

But the club's management had already stood out in its "relationship" with these organizations. In 2014 in particular, when the death of Jean-Luc Dehaene, the former Belgian Prime Minister, who chaired the UEFA investigative chamber, was announced. In an internal email, released by Der Spiegel, Club lawyer Simon Cliff wrote: "1 less, there are still 6", with reference to the composition of this body.

Of course, Manchester City can envy the fate of Paris Saint-Germain, which has been cleared by UEFA despite the disputed amount of various sponsorship deals from Qatar. The case had leaked into the New York Times, who revealed that Mr. Cunha Rodrigues found Mr. Leterme's investigation particularly accommodating.

But, whatever the bottom of the PSG record, the Manchester club will have to defend themselves on the merits and it is not certain that its aggressive attitude will serve it.

Read also Manchester City sanctioned: "The Sports Arbitral Tribunal could consider that there is an inequality with the PSG"

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here