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Manchester City reinstated, the coup de grace in financial fair play

One of the last traces of the governance of the European football union (UEFA) by Michel Platini, who chaired the body between 2007 and 2015, has just come out the window: while the body responsible for the financial control of clubs (ICFC) of UEFA had excluded Manchester City from the European Cups for two seasons – the one to come and the one after – for serious breaches of financial fair play, the Lausanne Arbitral Tribunal for Sport (CAS) this suspension this Monday morning, thus allowing the team under Emirates capital to participate again in a Champions League that it has been going on continuously since 2011.

Fury of the proceeding

As for the fine of 30 million euros which did not embarrass more than that a club justly condemned for spending too much compared to its activities in football bring him back, it drops to 10 million: cheese, dessert, coffee and sprout -coffee. Heavy, the ICFC’s conviction was not explained for two reasons. Not only was Manchester City accused of having overvalued sponsorship contracts – thus artificially inflating its revenues, allowing it to spend nearly 1.6 billion euros in ten years on the transfer market – linked to the Abu group Dhabi United, also owned by City owner Sheikh Mansour. But also to have made up the documents supplied to the ICFC, hence the fury of the proceedings.

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In its decrees, the Sports Arbitral Tribunal has concluded: “Manchester City did not disguise its sponsorship contracts but failed to cooperate with UEFA”, a semantic nuance to say the least tasty. In fact, financial fair play has received the final blow. Not only, there has long been a Maginot line that everyone laughs at, for example generously abounding the foundation of certain players (follow our look) without these sums never appear in the account: the example of City shows that even when a club is indeed taken by the patrol after having bypassed the regulations in stratospheric proportions, both in substance (the accounts) and form (concealment), it leaves the proceedings without damage – to the fees of the three law firms that the English club put on the spot.

Incredible perversion

So what is it for? As a barrier to new entrants of the Manchester City or Paris-Saint-Germain genre, who have not yet had the time to develop their economic models up to the Tauliers type Real Madrid or Bayern Munich: a way of political instrument , unfairly freezing the positions. And what was it to be used for initially? Platini, its creator, had imagined something much simpler and more virtuous, reducing the risk of players not receiving their month-end check by reducing the deficit of clubs qualified for the European Cup – to associations to get along with others. Something got lost along the way. In June 2019, AC Milan had even considered refusing to compete in the Europa League for UEFA to let them widen their deficit at ease, without being hit by a fine: an approach of incredible perversion (a European qualification is a sporting achievement) but which remains no less than a foolproof accounting logic. The idea of ​​financial fair play was beautiful. The way in which the world of football has adapted, not to mention the CAS decision, has made it lose its meaning.

Grégory Schneider

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