The Premier League on Monday charged its reigning champion, Manchester City, with engaging in years of financial rules violations in its pursuit of trophies, accusations that could result in the most severe punishments in league history — including the prospect that City, one of the most dominant soccer teams in Europe over the past decade, could be ejected from England’s top division.
The Premier League’s list of charges, outlined in a news release dotted with legalese and dry references to specific rules and bylaws, was remarkable in its scale. Manchester City is accused of more than 100 violations, including failing to provide accurate financial information “that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position”; not disclosing contractual payments to managers and players; and failing, as required, to cooperate with Premier League investigators.
The charges have been referred to an independent commission and will be heard in a confidential hearing, the Premier League said. League officials declined to comment further on the statement or on the case against City. The team currently sits second in the league table. No date has been set for the hearing.
It is unclear what penalties Manchester City will face if the league’s charges are upheld. According to Premier League rules, teams found to have violated its rules face business penalties that could include reprimands and fines or sporting ones like points deductions in the standings or even expulsion from the top division.
Manchester City responded to the charges with a statement whose language was at odds with the league’s claim that City had failed to cooperate in the investigation, which is now in its fifth year. The club declared itself “surprised by the issuing of these alleged breaches” and said that it had turned over a “vast amount of detailed materials.”
City said it welcomed an independent review of what it labeled a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” that it said supported the club’s position.
The scale of wrongdoing alleged in the City case is unprecedented for English soccer’s top league, which has grown to become the world’s most popular domestic league and one of Britain’s most significant cultural exports. City has been a leading light over the past decade, with six championships since 2012, including four of the past five.
The charges against the club unveiled Monday date as far back as 2009 — a year after Manchester City was purchased by the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and began a turbocharged era of spending and success.
Under the stewardship of its Gulf owner, Manchester City has been transformed into one of the most successful and free-spending teams in world soccer, a serial English champion and a regular contender for the world’s best players and Europe’s biggest trophies.
Those titles were secured by a brand of winning soccer that set points records and at times made the team, with perhaps the deepest and most talented roster in English soccer history, seem almost unbeatable against domestic opposition. In many seasons, it became routine to see City swat aside even its closest rivals.
But throughout that period, suspicion about Manchester City’s financial dealings shadowed its on-field successes. The focus intensified in 2018, when a Portuguese hacker responsible for uncovering some of soccer’s darkest secrets secured internal Manchester City documents and emails that suggested the club had engaged in years of financial manipulation through deals with companies linked to its wealthy Gulf owners. Sponsorships were used to artificially inflate revenues on City’s balance sheet, the club’s critics argued, and allowed it to continue its relentless acquisition of playing, coaching and scouting talent.
In 2020, the governing body for soccer in Europe, UEFA, banned Manchester City from its top competition, the Champions League, for two years for financial rules violations, though the club appealed the decision and had the ban overturned.
In challenging that ban, City focused on a few words in the governing body’s rules that set a five-year time limit on the infractions eligible for punishment. In effect, UEFA’s investigation had taken too long to consider the most serious offenses, the appeals panel found, and so the club escaped the harshest punishments levied against it.
Unlike UEFA, the Premier League does not have a statute of limitations in its disciplinary regulations. Several of the new charges date to the 2009-10 season, and at least one makes reference to the current campaign. But the City case is already unusual for a number of reasons.
No previous Premier League investigation has lasted as long as the current case against City, for example, nor has one produced allegations of wrongdoing spread over so many seasons. The outcome may even have a deeper diplomatic impact, since City’s ownership group is directly linked to one of the Gulf’s most powerful ruling families and because the sponsorship deals under scrutiny involve some of the United Arab Emirates’ most significant companies, including its national airline.
That sensitivity was perhaps clear in how the Premier League announced the news of the charges, which was published quietly on the league website and without an announcement to the news media.
City, too, had tried to keep its battle with the Premier League quiet, at one point using its considerable resources to sue to prevent details of an active investigation’s becoming public. A judge ruled against City, and even chided the process that had allowed City to win multiple league titles as the case dragged on without resolution.
Manchester City officials have for years fought back against any efforts to criticize their financial maneuvers or question their adherence to financial rules, railing against hackers who leaked private club documents and the news media organizations that reported on them. It has called accusations that the club broke rules “entirely false” and decried the investigative process as “unfair.”
In the previous case involving a proposed Champions League ban, City vowed to do “everything that can be done” to defend itself. Bankrolled by one of the world’s richest men, the club appeared prepared to spend any sum to prevail. But in the Premier League, it will come face to face with a formidable opponent. The league is one of the world’s richest sporting competitions, and it is populated by a half-dozen more of the world’s most deep-pocketed teams — all of them chasing the same prizes as City every season.
The stakes are high. If the league’s charges against City are upheld, the outcome could at a stroke delegitimize the outcome of a decade worth of league play — bringing into question not only the championships and trophies won by City but also the opportunities (and the tens of millions of dollars) lost by its rivals. But it also could have consequences inside Manchester City.
Pep Guardiola, the Spanish coach who has been the architect of the club’s greatest successes, has been a fervent defender of City whenever allegations of wrongdoing have been leveled at the club. But last spring he revealed that he told the club’s management he would quit if what they had told him was found to be untrue.
“I said to them: ‘If you lie to me, the day after, I am not here. I will be out, and I will not be your friend anymore,’” Guardiola said. “‘I put my faith in you because I believe you 100 percent from Day 1, and I defend the club because of that.’”
