Comment: The verdict against Manchester City deserves every superlative, but could also backfire

The historic guilty verdict against Manchester City must now be followed by a corresponding punishment. That this will happen is by no means certain, partly for understandable reasons, but it would send a disastrous signal and make everything even worse. A commentary.

The Premier League's guilty verdict against Manchester City is extraordinary: guilty on all 115 charges, and none of them trivial. The independent commission appointed by the league found enough evidence to prove the club committed systematic financial fraud from 2009 to 2018.

According to the judges, the club run by Abu Dhabi's ruling family, among other things, misrepresented accounts and concluded sham contracts with companies in order to "artificially inflate" revenue and reduce their costs, as the ruling states. That let the Cityzens spend more on the transfer market for years than UEFA and Premier League regulations actually allowed. Manchester City are said to have cheated their way to an illegal advantage of up to one billion euros.

This is a verdict historic in its scale and deserves every superlative. Financially in particular, it could bring consequences on a scale never seen before. There has long been speculation, for instance, over whether disadvantaged Premier League clubs could now claim damages from Manchester City for lost revenue.

Yet the guilty verdict must now be followed by a fitting punishment. Otherwise, it could backfire and make everything even worse.

How the ruling was framed has made a historic punishment against Pep Guardiola's former club more likely, but it is still far from certain.

Have Manchester City been convicted of financial offences before?

After all, this is not the first time Manchester City have been convicted of financial offences. Strictly speaking, Manchester City were already convicted in 2020 of the same offences as now.

Back then, UEFA banned the Sky Blues from all European club competitions for two years for serious breaches of Financial Fair Play and imposed a fine of 30 million euros. The ruling was later overturned by the international criminal court CAS, but by no means because the court had established City's innocence. Instead, City benefited from the rulebook and UEFA's rather lax appetite for investigation.

The Financial Fair Play rulebook sets out very clearly what is permitted and what is not, but it gives the watchdogs a fairly short deadline to uncover any offences: after five years, financial offences become time-barred for UEFA. The allegations raised against Manchester City at the time related mainly to the years from 2009 to 2013, meaning they were time-barred in 2020.

UEFA also relied primarily on documents that whistleblower Joao Pinto had made available, among others, to Football Leaks and Spiegel. Apparently, the continental body made little effort to find further evidence from the more recent past and also wanted to bring the unpleasant case to a swift conclusion. In the end, Manchester City got away with a fine of 10 million euros for failing to cooperate with the authorities.

Without a harsh punishment, even the most historic verdict is worth nothing

The Premier League cannot be accused of any lack of thoroughness: the commission investigated for three years before the ruling was handed down. And because the league has no statute of limitations for breaches of the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), it was also able to use the most compelling and publicly accessible evidence from the early years of the club's takeover by Abu Dhabi's ruling family.

Remarkably, the Premier League of all leagues, the most commercial and capitalist league in the world, is now making up for what UEFA botched in 2020.

Still, the ruling can only be the first step. Hand on heart: who still had it on their radar yesterday that Manchester City had already been convicted in 2020 of the same offences? Many people still remember Juventus' enforced relegation from Serie A in 2006 for the systematic influencing of referees ("Calciopoli"), while many have probably already forgotten their exclusion from the Conference League in the 2023/2024 season for accounting manipulation ("Plusvalenza").

Without a historic punishment, even the toughest verdict is worth nothing.

Not because everything would then be better. That would be foolish. Cheating has been part of professional football since it was invented. And until now, those involved have always found a new way to bend the rules as soon as one loophole was closed. But if Manchester City are not also punished severely for these massive offences and after this ruling, then any rules such as Financial Fair Play could be buried for good.

If anything is really to improve even a little in this respect, City must be punished severely.

What are Manchester City really facing now?

Anything is possible, from drastic points deductions over several years and fines running into the tens or hundreds of millions to enforced relegation, the stripping of all titles won during the period, and extensive compensation payments to rivals.

Realistically, however, that is sadly not really conceivable. However desirable and important it would be for the Premier League to make an example of Manchester City and impose the harshest possible punishment, it would also damage themselves in doing so. Clubs such as Chelsea, Aston Villa or Nottingham Forest are aggressively pushing the limits of the PSR. That is not illegal per se, but from now on the league would have to scrutinise every hint of creative accounting very closely if they are serious about it.

Then there are ManCity's financial resources, which must not be underestimated: an endless legal battle against the club's virtually unlimited and state-backed resources carries an extreme financial and political risk. For the league and ultimately for all clubs in the league. As already mentioned, a harsh ruling could also trigger an incalculable flood of damages claims from other clubs who feel they were cheated out of titles or revenue from the Champions League and other competitions. There are grounds to fear that the league will ultimately strike a pragmatic deal with Manchester City so as not to get lost in a legal labyrinth.

That, however, would achieve the opposite of what the ruling was actually supposed to accomplish.