Welcome, then, to the age of asterisk. Whatever punishment Manchester City and their sovereign wealth fund owners receive at the end of this process, one fact remains: everything is tainted now.

In a powerful opinion piece for The Guardian, Barney Ronay writes that the club's glittering run of success has been irreversibly stained by the Premier League's findings at the first instance. “Overturn the tables, scatter the gold coins. Throw your medals in the bin. You cheated to win them,” he writes.

A verdict that must still earn its asterisks

The columnist is careful not to declare the matter closed. “This is not over of course. We still work on the principle of innocent until repeatedly proven guilty, pending mega-bucks final appeals. There could yet be a dramatic reversal at the next stage,” he notes, adding: “So for now we must also asterisk the asterisk.”

City continue to deny all allegations, even those proven at the first instance, and have not been found guilty of all of the 100-plus charges levelled against them. Yet regardless of the final sanction, Ronay argues the damage is done: “Stolen glory, stolen income, stolen joy. Every chant, every ‘we won the lot’, every awkward documentary scene about the deep, throbbing heart of this empire of love. It all looks odd, sinister, cold, sloppy, but also, and this is always the best response, utterly absurd.”

Eight years, one whistleblower

The piece pays tribute to the long road to this moment. It has been a full eight years since Der Spiegel published the first allegations of industrial-scale cheating, and Ronay spares a thought for Rui Pinto, the original whistleblower, “currently in witness protection after being found guilty of information-related offences”. The verdict, he suggests, shows football's greatest vigilante was right, or right enough. “Raise a glass, José Bloggs of Oporto, or whatever you go by these days.”

That extreme delay, he writes, is “simply another consequence of taking on an entity that is willing to spend so aggressively on the world's most energetic lawyers, to threaten to bankrupt the organisation it signed up to serve and nourish” — a testimony to the lawfare-level response deployed throughout the process.

A victory for the rules-based order

Ronay frames the verdict as a rare and welcome stand for the rule of law. “In the age of despotism, of endless chatter about the decline of the rules-based international order, any tribunal that finds the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE guilty of breaches of minor but still vital sporting regulations deserves its own statue outside the Royal Courts of Justice,” he writes, adding: “Mainly this is a great day for the Premier League, which must be commended above all for its refusal to bend.”

The league has been “rigid in the right way”, he argues, resisting the temptation to protect its own product at the cost of its credibility. “What is that legacy actually worth, how much more damaged will it be, if its owners shy away from their own rules and allow the serial champions to shortcut their way to plastic success? The answer is: very little.”

Sympathy for fans, questions for owners

Ronay reserves sympathy for City supporters, “innocent of anything other than wanting their team to win and believing the evidence presented to their eyes”. But he argues cheating matters because other clubs were abiding by the rules. “Other teams didn't buy players, lost bidding wars, lost games and league titles by fine margins during a period where one team was saying, well, thanks but no thanks.”

He goes further, suggesting the owners should now consider selling up. “They have been loyal to their owners, even while those owners, on the basis of this decision, were turning the club into a toxic entity, a parasite on its host and on the basic idea of sport.”

The punishment is everything

The columnist warns that the process could yet “hole itself below the waterline” with a soft sanction. “Guilt followed by a minor slap on the wrist. This would asterisk the asterisk, would provide a complete reversal of all that goodwill,” he cautions, noting there is very little mitigation: “Not reporting financial information might sound trivial in another sphere. But in football, where success is defined by expenditure, this is deliberate and highly effective deceit.”

He lists the clubs deprived by City's conduct: “The list of teams that might have won league titles in those years reads: Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal.” He suggests those clubs could consider suing City for compensation, and that the Premier League could pre-empt this by stripping titles and reallocating glory — though he concedes that “still feels like an overload of asterisks”.

A warning to power

Finally, Ronay addresses last month's Bloomberg report that the UAE had been in touch with the UK government expressing concerns about the Premier League process, with implications for the wider bilateral relationship. If true, he writes, it “would demonstrate yet another profound misunderstanding of the culture you're buying into”. “The law is not supposed to bend to power and influence. Does anyone actually want to live in a world where this is the case?”

The article closes on a defiant note: anyone with an interest in justice, equality and universal rules “should be pleased with this result, including City fans” — provided the coming sanction lives up to the scale of the offence.