The Premier League accuses Manchester City of financial cheating and the consequences could be dire

BarcelonaImpact news in the Premier League. The governing body of European football’s top state competition believes Manchester City committed repeated breaches of financial rules between 2009 and 2018, always under the tutelage of Abu Dhabi ownership. He has explained it through a statement, in which he assures that the club gave false information about its benefits and sponsorships, paid more money than it said to coaches and players and did not comply with the rules of fair play financial of UEFA nor of sustainability of the Premier itself. The charges come after a four-year investigation.

The Premier claims that the alleged offenses were committed more than 100 times from September 2009 to the 2017-2018 school year. They will now be studied by an independent commission, which would have a say in the consequences that all of this could have for the entity in the medium term. According to reports The Times and the Daily Mail, if City are found guilty after the whole process, which can take up to eighteen months, they would face a series of sanctions that include the deduction of points in the ongoing edition of the Premier (at the time of the sentence) or even expulsion from the competition. During the time in which they would have committed the irregularities, the citizens they lifted the Premier League three times, the Carabao Cup twice and the FA Cup once.

The UEFA precedent

It is not the first time that the English club is immersed in a situation like this. Three years ago UEFA sanctioned him with two seasons without Champions League and a fine of 30 million euros. The reason: bypassing the financial control rules of the continental highest estate, which concluded that City inflated sponsorships up to ten times above the market price to pay sports salaries and infrastructure. The most graphic example was the sponsorship of the airline Etihad, with an official contract of 10 million euros and a real economic injection of 75 million. In that particular case, the institution appealed the sanction to the CAS, which partially upheld it. City were able to continue playing in the Champions League, but had to pay a 10 million fine to UEFA for “non-cooperation”.

City sources assure ARA that today’s complaint by the Premier is in the same line as that of UEFA in 2020 and they predict that, just as in that precedent, the higher sports authority will withdraw the sanction, whatever be it In a statement published this Monday, the British club is “surprised” by the accusation of the Premier League and assures that these years it has offered “help and a large amount of material” to the competition so that it could review it in the framework of the research. “We welcome the work of the independent commission to impartially consider the irrefutable evidence that exists. We look forward to seeing this all come to an end as soon as possible,” the letter concludes. citizen.

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