Manchester City to be made to pay a high price for spending spree under Uefa Financial Fair Play rules
Title challengers may face heavy fine or transfer embargo for breaking Uefa's Financial Fair Play rules
Manchester City were facing a huge Financial Fair Play sanction on Monday night as Uefa prepared to rule that the spending spree that transformed them into a superpower of the game breached its much-vaunted cost-control regulations.
Telegraph Sport has learnt that City, whose billionaire owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, has bankrolled the most successful period in the club’s history, will this week be found guilty of failing to comply with FFP rules – barring an improbable 11th-hour reprieve.
Paris St-Germain are also poised to be punished by Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body, which was created to police “greed, reckless spending and financial insanity” in European football and will meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to make its first decisions on which clubs will be prosecuted.
City and PSG are understood to be among fewer than 20 teams under threat of a sanction and, unless dramatic new evidence emerges in the next 48 hours to support their claims they have played by the rules, they are on course to be hit hardest of all.
The nature and degree of any punishment will be determined in the coming days but it is understood neither team will be faced with expulsion from the Champions League.
The sanction is far more likely to be either a heavy fine or transfer embargo to prevent their mega-rich owners adding to two of the most expensive squads in history.
Such a punishment could hardly come at a worse time for City, who remain at the centre of one of the most thrilling three-horse title races English football has seen and will be desperate to avoid any distractions in their final six games of the season.
They declined to comment on Monday night on the status of the CFCB’s probe into their finances, PSG did not respond to requests for comment, while Uefa refused to comment on the identities of any team in danger of being punished.
Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea all confirmed they were not under investigation from European football’s governing body, having complied with its rule forbidding clubs making losses in excess of €45 million (£37.2 million) during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons after certain exceptions are taken into account.
Having posted losses of £149 million over that period after buying the likes of Sergio Agüero, Samir Nasri, Gaël Clichy, Javi Garcia and Matija Nastasic, City were always likely to be under heavy scrutiny.
It is their attempts to balance their books which have been most closely examined, particularly their 10-year, £350 million sponsorship deal with Etihad, the official airline of Abu Dhabi.
FFP rules prohibit transactions with companies which have ties to a club or its owners being used in this way unless they can be shown to represent fair market value. Designed to prevent wealthy owners artificially inflating the value of such deals, their validity is judged on three criteria.
If it is shown to be a related-party transaction, Uefa’s auditors calculate how much equivalent media exposure would have cost through the company advertising in other ways, how the tie-up compares with those struck by similar clubs, and what independent marketing experts think of the agreement.
City have always insisted the deal is no more unfair when measured on a like-for-like basis against those struck by its closest rivals, including United.
PSG have also argued that their much larger €200 million-a-year (£167 million) commercial arrangement with the Qatar Tourism Authority is above board but it emerged last month that Uefa had serious doubts over its validity and the French champions’ attitude to scrutiny of it.
Tuesday and Wednesday’s meeting of the eight-strong CFCB investigatory chamber, which includes former Celtic chairman Brian Quinn, could consider new data before making a final decision on each club’s innocence or guilt.
Those prosecuted will then either be offered the opportunity to settle the case by accepting a predetermined sanction, or the matter could be referred straight to the CFCB’s five-strong adjudicatory chamber.
Uefa introduced the ‘settlement’ option into its FFP regulations in an effort to avoid lengthy disciplinary hearings and the clubs involved will have 10 days to respond to the investigatory chamber’s approach.
If they reject settlement, the adjudicatory chamber will determine their case, which could result in a more severe, as well as more lenient, sanction.
Clubs guilty of FFP breaches will not be named and shamed until around May 5, after which there is a further right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
PSG are understood to have threatened already that they will fight any attempt to punish them.
Also woven into FFP rules is the opportunity for rival clubs directly affected by any sanction to contest it on the basis it is too lenient.
Were City found guilty and still allowed to enter next season’s Champions League, Everton or Arsenal could challenge their punishment.
Uefa revealed six weeks ago that it was investigating 76 teams involved in its club competitions this season for possible FFP breaches, with more than 50 subsequently cleared.
It said in a statement yesterday: “Uefa will only communicate once decisions have been taken by the CFCB investigatory chamber, which we anticipate will happen at the beginning of May.”
From the Telegraph. Thoughts?
