Follow-up – WAA
Media outlets revealed, on Thursday evening, that Manchester City is threatened with not continuing in all competitions this season, if it is proven guilty of committing financial violations and violating the rules of financial fair play in recent years.
The Telegraph reported that “City is now at risk of being excluded from the FA Cup and the English League Cup, and there is no guarantee that they will be able to continue playing in the Champions League or the Club World Cup as well.”
The newspaper revealed that “his rivals in the English Premier League do not believe that a one-time deduction of points would be a sufficient punishment if he is found guilty of the vast majority of the charges against him.”
According to the newspaper, City’s exclusion from the Premier League may please those calling for a harsher penalty, but this will greatly shake English football, and could lead to the four-time Premier League champions being excluded from participating in the FA Cup, League Cup and Champions League, and the rules of the two domestic cups open the way for the possibility of City being excluded from both competitions.
Article 31 of the FA Cup Rules states that: “If a club is admitted to the competition and is then expelled from the league in which it competes (or its league matches are suspended), the Professional Game Board (PGB) may expel the club from the competition.”
The governing body of the professional game consists of representatives from the Premier League and the Football League, and the League Cup rules define participating clubs as “each member from time to time of the League and each member from time to time of the Premier League”.
The rules governing the Champions League are more complex, as teams are required to obtain a club licence from UEFA to participate in European competitions.
UEFA, the FA and the Premier League jointly manage these licences, but The Telegraph has not confirmed whether exclusion from the domestic league could be grounds for exclusion from European competitions.
The detailed rules governing the expanded Club World Cup, which will start this summer and for which City qualified after winning the Champions League last year, are not publicly available, however, if City are excluded from all domestic competitions it could become difficult for them to continue playing in the Champions League and Club World Cup due to the long periods between competitive matches.
The prospect of him winning those trophies at the end of a season in which he was excluded from the Premier League and other competitions could anger rival clubs and their fans.