Man City Successfully Overturn European Ban Soccer

[David76]

This thread is for the general discussion of the Soccer Man City Successfully Overturn European Ban. Please add to the discussion here.

 

[David76]

From what I get from it CAS decided that City didn't break any rules but didn't fully operate with UEFA's investigation.

MANCHESTER CITY FC DID NOT DISGUISE EQUITY FUNDING AS SPONSORSHIP CONTRIBUTIONS BUT DID FAIL TO COOPERATE WITH THE UEFA AUTHORITIES

As the charges with respect to any dishonest concealment of equity funding were clearly more significant violations than obstructing the CFCB's investigations, it was not appropriate to impose a ban on participating in UEFA's club competitions for MCFC's failure to cooperate with the CFCB's investigations alone

CAS look to have taken the opinion that a two-year ban from UEFA competition was too harsh for failing to co-operate alone. For them, that warranted a fine.

CAS Statement PDF: https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/CAS_Media_Release_6785_Decision.pdf

 

[Fraser]

UEFA takes note of the decision taken by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to reduce the sanction imposed on Manchester City FC by UEFA's independent Club Financial Control Body for alleged breaches of the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play regulations.

UEFA notes that the CAS panel found that there was insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold all of the CFCB's conclusions in this specific case and that many of the alleged breaches were time-barred due to the 5 year time period foreseen in the UEFA regulations.

Over the last few years, Financial Fair Play has played a significant role in protecting clubs and helping them become financially sustainable and UEFA and ECA remain committed to its principles.

UEFA will be making no further comments on the matter.

The fine print will take a few hours to wade through but this could effectively mean the end of FFP as we know it and a complete redraft by UEFA under guidance from CAS.

 

[Son Of Jack]

I don't understand how cheating and getting away with it can be seen as a great day for football tbh.

 

[Steve]

Manchester City's two-year ban from UEFA competition has been overturned after the club's successful appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

But what does this mean for the club — and their rivals — going forward?

What has been decided?

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled the allegation that City artificially inflated their sponsorship agreements was "not established" (not proven) or "time-barred", so there is no Champions League ban at all and City will be in the competition next season.

It did find they had breached Article 56 of the club licensing and Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations by failing to co-operate with UEFA's investigation, which is why there is a £9 million fine — reduced from the £25 million UEFA imposed in February.

Now that is all cut and dried, City are in the Champions League, but City's reputation and the future of FFP could well be decided in a few days' time when CAS's full written reasons for why and how they came to these decisions are published.

The alleged breaches were "either not established or time-barred". What does that mean?

Apart from the actual result, this is the most interesting sentence in the CAS press release and we will not know its full meaning until we have seen the full written decision.

In short, "not established" means UEFA failed to prove part of its case and "time-barred" means the alleged offences happened too long ago to be considered now.

UEFA has five years to bring an FFP case against a club and as these allegations dated back to a five-year period between 2012 and 2016, most of them fell outside that statute of limitations.

UEFA obviously knew that but its legal advisors clearly decided the alleged deception at the heart of this case should overrule that limit. This is a well-established legal principle and was perhaps best seen in the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, where most of his wrongdoing would have been time-barred if he had not lied about it.

We really need to see the full CAS verdict before saying anything further on City's conduct in this case, particularly as the press release also says UEFA simply failed to make part of its case stick. But how much of City's apparent exoneration is down to technical grounds (time-barred) and how much it owes to UEFA not having the evidence to support those sanctions (not established) will frame the debate about City for years to come.

City have still been hit with a fine. They failed to cooperate with UEFA. This isn't a complete exoneration, is it?

A win is a win. And for City, who were facing the threat of two years without Champions League football and with a huge stain on their reputation, this is clearly a highly significant victory — hugely important for their on-pitch ambitions and for the wider credibility of their project under Sheikh Mansour's ownership.

It is, though, a result with certain grey areas. Even with their ban overturned and a ban reduced from £25 million to £9 million, and with CAS concluding that the club "did not disguise equity funding as sponsorship contributions", it is not the total vindication City hoped for. The CAS statement said that City had shown a "disregard" for UEFA's regulatory process, citing their "obstruction" of the investigation, hence that significant fine.

CAS said that "most of the alleged breaches reported by the adjudicatory chamber of the (UEFA) CFCB were either not established or time-barred". That is embarrassing for UEFA but it also raises the possibility that there might have been a different outcome if either (a) City had cooperated with the UEFA inquiry or (b) Rui Pinto had hacked into their email server a year or two earlier.

There were many damaging allegations in the "Football Leaks" reports. City have complained that those allegations were "out of context" but they have never denied the authenticity of the content. We will find out more when CAS publishes the written reasons for its findings but it appears that some of those allegations have been rejected simply because of the amount of time that has elapsed, rather than because they were untrue.

Either way, City are entitled to feel an overwhelming sense of relief. The result from CAS was not quite the emphatic vindication that they might have hoped for but it was certainly a significant victory and one that will ensure that the whole unedifying story gradually fades from the memory (as City's FFP sanctions 2014 had been forgotten by many until "Football Leaks" blew open the whole issue once more). What can be said with far greater certainty is that, for UEFA, it is an extremely damaging defeat.

Will the Premier League take any action?

This is very interesting now as the Premier League has been investigating for about as long as this whole UEFA process has taken. The feeling is that the Premier League has been waiting to see how UEFA got on and now we know the answer — not very well. In any case, the Premier League's own FFP regulations are much less strict than UEFA's and allow losses of up to £105 million over three seasons.

There is another slightly less well-known rule, however. Under section J7 of the Premier League's handbook, "any club making a false statement (whether made verbally or in writing) in an application for a UEFA Club Licence or falsifying a document produced in support of such an application shall be in breach of these rules and shall be liable to be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of section W of these rules (disciplinary)."

This is another example of why CAS's full, written judgement regarding the time-barred element will be so interesting. If CAS says that UEFA could not act on breaches that did take place because they happened more than five years ago, the Premier League may take that as evidence that there were breaches and act on those, either in line with their FFP regulations or the falsifying of documents.

But it should be said that CAS's decision does make the chances of a Premier League punishment far less likely. FIFA gave City a £310,000 fine in August 2019 for breaching rules regarding the recruitment of minors but the club avoided a transfer ban. Now they have seen a European suspension lifted and been given another, admittedly more considerable, fine. From a City point of view, you might expect them to say to the Premier League: "Look, guys, UEFA threw everything at us, FIFA threw everything at us… are you really going to try it too?"

We need to wait for the full written verdict before any judgement can be cast on UEFA or FFP. Sure, this is a clear victory for City, but depending on the language in the ruling it may also be a broader victory for UEFA & FFP if the judgement was overturned primarily on technicalities or because of the 5 year time issue. Very possible CAS accepted & agreed with the merits of UEFA's case but was left with no choice but to rule in favour of City based on time limitations. We have to wait to see the language of the ruling. This could, in the long run, turn out to be a very hollow victory for City if CAS affirmed the merits of UEFA's arguments.

 

[Geezer]

I don't understand how cheating and getting away with it can be seen as a great day for football tbh.

Financial "Fair" Play was brought in to protect the elite clubs from competition.

A legalised form of corruption.

Fixing the rules to suit their own monopolies.

 

[Random Guy]

FFP is and has been nonsense anyway. The current bigger clubs are protected by it because any investment into any other club wanting to dare challenge this elite is now stunted and makes the likelihood of anyone breaking into it consistently via investment/takeover quite remote.

 

[Franco Pinion]

A lot of vitriol but at the end of the day an independent court heard both sides of the argument and ruled conclusively in Man City's favour. All along City were confident of having done no wrong and that confidence has been justified by a court.

I think people woke up yesterday expecting this to be the end of Man City but the result has strengthened City's position in football in a major way and some people clearly won't like that.

 

[Dylan]

A lot of vitriol but at the end of the day an independent court heard both sides of the argument and ruled conclusively in Man City's favour. All along City were confident of having done no wrong and that confidence has been justified by a court.

I think people woke up yesterday expecting this to be the end of Man City but the result has strengthened City's position in football in a major way and some people clearly won't like that.

The ruling doesn't say anything about City having done nothing wrong. It says that UEFA shouldn't have brought a case that was outside the statute of limitations that's written in it's own rules. That does not in any way mean that City are innocent of the charges, just that UEFA should have brought the case earlier. It does find City guilty of obstructing the investigation, therefore they have still been fined. Those are not conspiracy theories, they're facts.

 

[Fraser]

UEFA are a shambles and have been embarrassed by this ruling. FFP is dead in the water without a revamp of the rules.