Everything You Need to Know About the Explosive Manchester City Scandal

When news broke that Manchester City had been found guilty of illegally juicing their revenue through “sham contracts” and by misstating its finances, the schadenfreude that ricocheted through the soccer world registered on the sports-politics Richter scale. The “Sham FC” t-shirts practically printed themselves.Last week, an independent regulatory commission determined that the trophy-winning juggernaut—owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private-equity firm run by Abu Dhabi royalty and United Arab Emirates politicos—had engaged in extreme financial chicanery totaling a whopping £921 million ($1.2 billion). New York Times reporter Tariq Panja dubbed the ruling “perhaps the most damning document in English football history.” His colleagues went further, suggesting that the club’s misconduct amounts to “the biggest financial scandal in at least the modern history of sports.”Between 2009 and 2018—the period under investigation—Manchester City racked up seven major trophies: three Premier League titles and four domestic cups. Those achievements are now in dispute. Roy Keane, an on-field legend for cross-town rival Manchester United, sniped, “They won it on the pitch because cheating was going on. They knew it would hurt a lot of people, but they’ve still done it.” Turning the knife, he added, “If I was a [Manchester City] player, I’d be 100 percent sticking those medals in the bin.”Lacquered atop the travesty is the fact that Manchester City is a textbook case of sportswashing—political leaders deploying sports to look legitimate on the world stage while deflecting attention from chronic social problems at home for political and economic gain. When a gaggle of Abu Dhabi investors led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayad Nahyan purchased Manchester City in September 2008, the term sportswashing had not even been coined.And yet, by 2009, City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak was dishing up fat dollops of sportswashed propaganda, acknowledging that owning Manchester City afforded Abu Dhabi, and the UAE more generally, the ability to soften its global image. “We are acknowledging that how we are handling this project is telling a lot to the world about how we are,” he said. “This is showing the world the true essence of who Abu Dhabi is and what Abu Dhabi is about. That is something new, something we didn’t really plan for.” Uh-huh.Al Mubarak’s glow-up somehow failed to note how the UAE was repressing the country’s human-rights activists, censoring the press, and operating an oppressive migrant-worker system, as noted in a 2009 Human Rights Watch report. More recently, as Manchester City continued to fill its trophy closet, Sheikh Mansour aided the Sudanese Commander Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, an alleged genocidaire. The positive spotlight that Manchester City provided conveniently diverted attention from those horrors.By 2013, Sheikh Mansour had formed City Football Group, snapping up more than a dozen football clubs around the world, from New York and Yokohama to Uruguay and Spain. This was an empire of deflection. Soccer was the key.While some diehard Manchester City supporters have stood against Abu Dhabi—with some even forming the group MCF Against Sportswashing—most fans have stayed silent, choosing trophies over ethics. But now everything is in disarray.In February 2023, the Premier League charged Manchester City with more than 100 breaches of league rules, including failure to cooperate with its investigation. Last week, the league announced that the independent commission tasked with adjudicating the situation found the club guilty of 114 of the 115 charges. Cue up a massive identity crisis for English football.Manchester City has maintained its innocence from the beginning. Recently, top executive Ferran Soriano strenuously denied wrongdoing in a leaked video sent to City staff, in which he described the charges as a “conspiracy theory” anchored in “a single false accusation.” Setting aside Soriano’s unnerving feat of not blinking even once during the three-minute video, one must wonder why he has yet to put forth what he calls “irrefutable evidence” of the club’s innocence. Manchester City vowed to appeal, and on Friday it did just that.This, however, is not Manchester City’s first run-in with corruption allegations. As early as 2014, soccer officials were aware of apparent financial irregularities thrumming through the club’s books. In stepped Gianni Infantino, the current head of FIFA and the notorious quisling who gifted Donald Trump something called the FIFA Peace Prize. At the time, Infantino helmed UEFA, Europe’s governing body for soccer, where he ran interference for his friends in Abu Dhabi. Drawing from documents hoovered up by “Football Leaks” whistleblower Rui Pinto, Der Spiegel concluded that “Infantino cut secret deals with Manchester City” to help them avoid penalty.In 2020 Manchester City yet again found itself in the crosshairs of football regulators. UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body unearthed significant Financial Fair Play breaches and deliberate efforts to mislead investigators. UEFA banned the club from the coveted Champions League for two years and fined it £25 million ($33 million). That’s when City’s upmarket litigation team kicked into gear, performing Simone Biles-level legal gymnastics. The decision was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that same year. This go-round, though, Manchester City cannot appeal its case to the Switzerland-based CAS, as the Premier League is duty-bound to English law.The Manchester City ruling couldn’t have come at a worse time for soccer honchos. It follows Gianni Infantino’s unrealized private-equity fever dream whereby the World Cup would have been privatized by the likes of JPMorganChase and Thrive Eternal, the venture capital firm run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared. The saga sparked a revolt against Infantino, casting doubt on his re-election. Public disgust with those entrusted to protect the world’s most popular sport is riding high.In our age of impunity, the fact that the powerbrokers running Manchester City might receive some measure of accountability—if not comeuppance—is conspicuously refreshing. The legion of lawyers representing the club dragged out the legal process for years. One could be forgiven for thinking that the sheer wealth, power, and influence of some clubs had become so lopsided that there was very little that regulators could do to thwart or punish them. Simply attempting to enforce their own rules and regulations meant getting bogged down in protracted, pricey legal combat.But here we are. The potential consequences for Manchester City are bracing. In 2024, the Premier League penalized Everton and Nottingham Forest for breaking its Profit and Sustainability Regulations. Everton received an eight-point sanction (after appeal and the addition of another penalty) while Forest lost four points.But their breaches were mere artisanal corruption. City’s, meanwhile, is straight-up industrial-grade. The club’s penalty is likely to be enormous. Relegation and expulsion are on the table. Former player-turned-pundit Jamie Carragher isn’t alone in asserting Manchester City should be stripped of its titles.Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola, City’s stratospherically successful manager, risks squandering the goodwill he has built up supporting causes like Catalonian independence and Palestine. Guardiola posted on X: “I want every single @ManCity fan to know I am here; more than ever. I am, always have been, always will, be behind my club, my owner, my chairman, Ferran, the players…and you, our unique supporters.” But only a few years ago, he said of club brass: “If you lie to me, the day after I am not here. I will be out and I will not be your friend any more.” Will the real Pep Guardiola please stand up?Manchester City executive Simon Pearce once responded to a question about whether club officials could retroactively doctor the date of payment on internal documents by stating, “Of course, we can do what we want.” But the sportswashers stepped across the line. Whatever happens on appeal, that brand of arrogance has won itself a thunderous rebuke.