Guilty on almost all charges: how Manchester City's financial cheating saga finally came to this
There is no episode in English football's history that even resembles a precedent for the epic Manchester City disciplinary saga, which encapsulates the modern game at breaking point. A grand, stoic old club, taken over in 2008 by Abu Dhabi royalty and mega-funded to imperious success, was crowned serial champions by a league simultaneously pursuing charges of monstrous financial cheating.
Sources have confirmed the saga — in which Pep Guardiola's expensively constructed City teams won five Premier League titles and the Champions League since the investigation began in December 2018 — culminated in guilty findings on almost all of more than 100 charges.
The charges were unprecedented in scale: that City failed to provide accurate financial information to the league for nine seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18; failed to provide full details of payment in contracts with manager Roberto Mancini from 2009-10 to 2012-13; failed to include full payment details in player contracts from 2010-11 to 2015-16; breached Uefa's financial fair play regulations from 2013-14 to 2017-18 and the Premier League's profitability and sustainability regulations from 2015-16 to 2017-18 — and failed to cooperate with the league's investigation from its inception in 2018-19 to the 2022-23 season, including the duty to provide documents and information "in the utmost good faith".
The exposé that started it all
The stunning exposure of the modern Manchester City's insides was precipitated in November 2018 by the German magazine Der Spiegel, which published internal City documents leaked from a hack of the club's emails. Most damaging were emails and financial documents that appeared to show that Sheikh Mansour's ownership group was paying the bulk of the multimillion-pound sponsorship by the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad, which includes bearing the name of the stadium — suggesting City was circumventing financial fair play rules, which limit the losses owners can fund and require money to be spent from earned revenue.
City responded with the outrage and indignation that became familiar: "We will not be providing any comment on out-of-context materials purportedly hacked or stolen. The attempt to damage the club's reputation is organised and clear."
One internal email from City's in-house lawyer Simon Cliff revealed chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak's defiance over a Uefa sanction into the club's massive 2012 and 2013 losses: "He would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue [Uefa] for the next 10 years."
From takeover to dominance
The era of dominance began with FA Cup victory in 2011 after 35 trophy-less years, then the breakthrough 2012 Premier League title won by Roberto Mancini through Sergio Agüero's celebrated 94th-minute winner. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, had invested £395m within 18 months of the takeover, beginning with the statement signing of Carlos Tevez from Manchester United in 2009. By 2017-18, Guardiola had won his first title, Mansour's personal investment was declared at £1.3bn, and the club moved into profit.
Uefa's adjudicatory chamber concluded in February 2020 that City were guilty of deception over sponsorships by Etihad and the UAE telecoms company Etisalat, imposing a two-year Champions League ban. City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which overturned the ban in July 2020 but found the club had failed to cooperate and imposed a €10m fine.
In July 2021, a British court judgment revealed the Premier League's own process had been continuing — with City and their lawyers trying to block it at every step. News of the independent commission's decision has finally emerged almost two years after the hearing of the charges in late 2024, concluding one of the most consequential disciplinary sagas in the sport's history.