Manchester City case puts football’s power structure on trial

A football case with geopolitical consequences

The Manchester City case has grown far beyond a dispute over financial regulations. It has become, in Jonathan Liew’s analysis, a test of whether the most powerful institutions in football—and the states and billionaires behind them—can be held to account.

Leaked emails and documents published by Der Spiegel in 2018 revealed an aggressively confrontational approach towards Uefa. City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak was reported to have preferred spending millions on lawyers to fight the governing body for years rather than accept a fine. Club lawyer Simon Cliff, meanwhile, allegedly argued that Uefa responded only to aggression and threatened the “destruction of their rules and organisation”.

Those revelations now carry greater significance after the Premier League found City guilty of more than 100 alleged financial irregularities. The club continues to deny wrongdoing, and the dispute is expected to continue through appeals and potentially further legal proceedings.

When football becomes foreign policy

City’s majority ownership by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a senior UAE figure, has ensured that the case is not confined to sporting institutions. The article notes reports that UAE officials warned an adverse verdict could put billions of pounds of Emirati investment in the UK at risk. That has transformed a football tribunal into an issue with diplomatic and economic implications.

“It is a football club majority-owned by a country,” Liew writes, “that ... is defying arms embargos in Sudan and Libya” and has been accused by rights groups of political repression and abuses. His central concern is that sporting decisions are increasingly entangled with state power, investment and international leverage.

A challenge to regulation itself

City’s public statements have combined respect for due process with pointed questions about whether the Premier League can act as an “independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator”. In a separate 2024 case, the club challenged the league’s governance structure, describing the two-thirds majority required for motions to pass as “the tyranny of the majority”.

Liew argues that this style of resistance risks discrediting the very idea that powerful clubs can be regulated. While City and other state-backed projects may view financial rules as barriers designed to preserve the old elite, rejecting every meaningful check on power leads to a system in which leverage—not shared standards—decides outcomes.

The wider ownership crisis

The argument extends beyond Manchester City. State-backed Newcastle United, private-equity ownership across the Premier League and billionaire investment in clubs all form part of a broader concentration of wealth and influence at the top of English football.

For Liew, the verdict’s significance lies in whether football can uphold a common set of rules in an era when international institutions and alliances appear increasingly weakened. “It articulates the increasingly outmoded idea that there is a shared set of values and rules by which all must abide,” he writes.

The case is not over. City are likely to pursue further appeals, while diplomatic pressure and private negotiations may continue alongside the legal process. But the outcome matters not only to City’s rivals or to football’s competitive balance. It is also a test of whether the rule of law can still impose limits on institutions with vast wealth, political influence and the means to fight indefinitely.