The noose is tightening around Manchester City. Since February 2023, when the Premier League officially charged the club with more than a hundred financial offenses, the case has taken on the appearance of a legal marathon. After long weeks of closed-door hearings in 2024, City were formally charged with the vast majority of the 115 charges against the club this Friday. At the heart of this sprawling case is a major accusation. For years, the club allegedly artificially inflated its revenues and concealed its true expenses to circumvent financial fair play rules. After having experienced a glorious decade, the club is now up against the wall and accused of having founded this dynasty on illicit bases.
False sponsorship contracts and inflated salaries since 2009
As reported The Times this Friday in a long investigation, the charges are based first on artificial sponsorship contracts. According to the indictment, which covers as many as 50 revenue-related offenses between 2009 and 2018, the majority of sponsorship money actually came directly from Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the club’s parent company. The example of the operator Etisalat is the most glaring: on a global contract valued at nearly 19.5 million euros, the sponsor would have only paid around 1.8 million euros. The rest, more than 17.6 million euros, would have been discreetly injected by ADUG. The pattern would have been repeated with the airline Etihad, which would have paid only 9.4 million euros for incredible contracts valued at 41 million, 76 million, then almost 80 million euros over different seasons.
To maintain its lifestyle without alerting the authorities, City would also have outsourced part of its payroll. Eight accusations directly target the remuneration of Roberto Mancini, the coach who gave the club its historic title in 2012, and his mandate between 2009 and 2013. If his official contract showed a base salary of around 1.7 million euros, the Italian would have received an additional 2 million euros per year via a fictitious job as a “consultant” for Al-Jazeera, another Abu Dhabi club, which did not require of him only four days of work per year. The money passed through a front company before arriving in his accounts. The players were not left out, with similar arrangements for image rights. Documents revealed that payments of €4 million, followed by installments of €4.7 million, were allegedly made to Yaya Touré’s agent via an offshore company.
What does Manchester City really risk?
Faced with these discoveries, Manchester City’s attitude constituted an offense in its own right, as reported by our English colleagues. Thirty accusations point to a pure and simple refusal to cooperate. For years, management did not deign to communicate and refused to provide the requested documents under cover of confidentiality, which had already earned it a fine of 10 million euros from the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2020. But here, today, what is the concrete risk of the Mancunian ogre, which has become one of the best clubs in the world since 2009? While the independent commission validated the vast majority of the Premier League’s accusations this Friday, the sanctions could reshape the landscape of English football.
The range of punishments is vast and as is often the case in these financial fair play cases, they often vary from the acceptable to the catastrophic. The punishment could be a massive points deduction, potentially enough to cause automatic relegation to the lower division. In the worst-case scenario, the club could be banned from the league altogether, accompanied by record fines and a recruitment ban. Finally, the question of titles is on the table. Although legally complex, the withdrawal of crowns acquired during periods of fraud (notably the trophies of 2012, 2014 and 2018) remains a possibility feared by supporters. Otherwise, as the case dates back many years, the prospect of seeing no heavy sanctions is possible, for “only” hefty fines. A simple call to order can even be imagined. Response in the coming weeks.
