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114: Manchester City in legal trouble once again, and what it means for football and beyond
£900m in ‘sham contracts’ and ‘disguised funding.’ The Premier League and the Independent Commission used this wording when referring to Manchester City’s guilty verdict on 114 charges of violating Premier League financial rules. Over the past week, Manchester City has been at the centre of arguably the biggest club football scandal since Calciopoli in 2006. The central question is whether this verdict, if upheld, could have consequences beyond football, even affecting British foreign policy. Before looking at those wider implications, it’s important to understand how we got here.
In September 2008, Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) bought a 90% stake in Manchester City from businessman and former disgraced Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. The following year, ADUG bought the remaining 10% from Shinawatra, and from that day the Mansour-backed Manchester City dynasty began. What followed was a meteoric rise, which English football had never seen before. From Robinho and De Jong to the City of Manchester Stadium being renamed as the Etihad Stadium (Etihad Airways had already become the first team shirt sponsor) in 2011, Sheikh Mansour made his presence felt in Manchester immediately. Manchester City won their first-ever Premier League title in 2012 under Italian manager Roberto Mancini before repeating the feat in 2014, this time under Chilean manager Manuel Pellegrini. Alongside that 2014 title win came a 10-year partnership between ADUG and Manchester City Council to jointly begin reinvigorating the East Manchester area, including the Etihad’s campus development, Co-op Live Arena, and 6000 homes.
Since the takeover, East Manchester has thrived both on and off the football pitch, but back in the UAE, controversy has followed the Bin Zayed Family. From allegations of limiting freedom of speech in 2010, UN reports officially citing the UAE as supplying weapons to the RSF militia in Sudan, as well as the countless controversies surrounding the Kafala VISA system. The UAE has been at the centre of international controversy and multiple ICC cases, putting it in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. With Sheikh Mansour’s brothers (Khalifa and Mohamed Bin Zayed) being the presidents/de-facto leaders of the UAE for the last 20 years, and Mansour being the Vice President of the UAE since 2023, the Manchester City project has arguably been the most prominent case of sportswashing that football has ever seen.
Fast forward to today, and on September 29, Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of 115 violations of Premier League financial rules. The original hearing occurred throughout the second half of 2024, and two years later we finally have a full breakdown of what those charges are. Within the context of the sport, the most damning charges from the report are in relation to the 12 charges in violation of both UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations and Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules, both sets of rules putting limits on how much a football club can spend in relation to how much they earn.
Looking at these charges without football-tinted lenses on, the charges raising the most suspicion relate to the 68 charges of inability to provide accurate and up-to-date financial information, between 2009 and 2018. Of those 68 charges, 54 of them are directly related to the ‘sham sponsorship and image rights deals’ which have been at the centre of this case. City was found guilty of using these deals to inflate their own revenue to allow them to spend more money than they were earning. The remaining 14 of those 68 relate to information regarding players' and managers' wages. City’s manager during their 2011/12 title-winning season, Roberto Mancini, was reportedly on two simultaneous contracts while at Man City. When the now-Italy head coach was asked about it during the ongoing international break, he simply responded that it ‘wasn’t his concern.’ Alongside his official contract, Mancini was also reportedly on a secondary contract consulting for Emirati football club Al Jazira, whereby he would have been earning £1.7 million annually for only 4 days of work.
So where does that leave us now? With Manchester City insisting on their innocence and appealing against the decision, there is still some time before any official punishments are dished out. In the meantime, many fans online have asked what this means for their clubs and the successes they potentially have lost due to City’s alleged wrongdoings. For fans of Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool, there have been suggestions that they are all entitled to multiple titles during Man City’s breaches. If these trophies were reawarded accordingly, it could mean that Premier League and Liverpool icon Steven Gerrard could finally add a Premier League title to his CV. Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson would have won an additional title. Both Jürgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta could have added two additional Premier League titles to their tenures.
Despite the hysteria surrounding potential punishments if Man City’s verdict is upheld, the route to the final verdict is murky. With Etihad Airways considering suing the Premier League in response to the independent commission's decision and Andy Burnham’s statement on the City case creating even more discourse, things are only going to get more complicated from here. Burnham was also mayor of Manchester during the majority of the partnership between ADUG and Manchester City Council, so the depths of how far the Labour and City group goes is something only Burnham knows. Despite the seemingly good relationship between the UAE and the UK, there have been reports and speculation that a negative verdict on the City case could impact UK-UAE relations.
The Telegraph has reported that the UAE has threatened that a negative verdict on the case could lead to them removing billions in funding from UK-based projects. The most prominent project mentioned seems to be the hi-tech ‘Silicon Valley-style hub’ between Oxford and Cambridge. While Number 10 has reiterated the seriousness of the case, a government spokesperson also said they would be ‘really concerned' to see ADUG have to sell the club. Since then, Andy Burnham has also released a statement thanking ADUG for their investment in Manchester, causing even more confusion surrounding the government’s apparent ‘impartial’ view on the case.
Although we are all still uncertain about where this case might lead, one thing is clear: whichever way the verdict falls, the landscape of English football and the UK-UAE relationship could change forever.
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