Man City sparked a legal cold war and these clues suggest how it will end

When it eventually dropped, it was almost subdued, as events of such magnitude often are; the bang before the sound wave. On Thursday 24 September, the Premier League clubs were given a very short statement informing them that all but one charge in the Manchester City case had been proven. Even that was subject to a stringent NDAs.

Cue, the very next afternoon, more noise than English football has ever experienced about anything.

Amidst all of that, and so many questions, right up to what Pep Guardiola was now thinking, a figure even more central to all of this publicly quoted the former Man City manager.

Rui Pinto, as part of a much longer social media post that heralded a “historic decision for English football”, acknowledged an irony in how he couldn’t help remembering Guardiola’s words at his first City press conference.

“Fasten your seat belts,” remarked Guardiola in 2016.

It’s easy to forget, given how long it’s been, but all of football has been braced for this since Der Spiegel’s publication of those first emails - obtained from Pinto’s huge data cache - in November 2018. If City’s success from that period has deepened an argument that Guardiola is one of football’s most influential ever figures, that is also a description that can be extended to the Portuguese hacker, but for very different reasons.

The road from there to here forms the biggest controversy in the history of European football, involving so many layers, while also offering potential clues as to what next in this long way to go.

Back in November 2018, amid shock at some of the views relayed, including “of course, we can do what we want,” there was a dawning realisation at what the emails appeared to reveal: alleged manipulation of finances through backdated and inflated sponsorship deals with companies related to the Abu Dhabi owners, to avoid breaches of rules. Equity had seemed to be disguised as sponsorship. Investigators for a previous Uefa case that City were forced to settle in 2014 were “incredibly frustrated”. They felt they had been misled.

City never denied the authenticity of the emails but statements described “out-of-context materials purported to have been hacked or stolen” and an “attempt to damage the club’s reputation” that was “organised and clear”.

Within City, there was fury, but also what sources describe as a “two-track” response. The leadership of Ferran Soriano and Simon Pearce is said to have gone into crisis mode, almost locking themselves off, with staff feeling the main aim was to protect chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak.

That same wider staff were largely left in the dark, as City temporarily became “a very uncomfortable place to work”. Some naturally believed the public statements that the club had done nothing wrong, only to be taken aback when they’d be in the outside world and called “cheats”.

Many rival executives had been calling them this for years prior to 2018, and felt vindicated that there was at last proof after so much suspicion. As one Premier League chief executive said, “there was finally going to be punishment”.

They are still waiting.

That was despite Uefa responding with marked speed to the breaches of their financial rules. Timing would actually end up central to the case.

After six months of investigation by Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body from March 2019, amid some concern about scrutinising an autocratic state and going up against immense legal might, the case centred on two main deals.

One was Etalisat, for which there was more information. On City’s own admission, Abu Dhabi United Group - as the company that owned the club was then called - “caused” for £30m to be paid by a third party on behalf of the telecom company in 2012 and 2013. It was later alleged this was paid by a person named “Jaber Mohamed”, as revealed in YouTube documentary Britain’s Biggest Football Scandal?

The eventually unpublished Adjudicatory Chamber report said: “the obvious question, not answered at any point… [is] why either Etisalat or ADUG should have needed any financial assistance from a broker in paying the Etisalat sponsorship liabilities”.

The other deal was with Etihad, where emails were alleged to show the airline paying only £8m of sponsorships worth £35m, £65m and £67.5m from the 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2015-16 seasons.

Although Uefa only had the emails in this case, not accounting information, the evidence was found credible because the airline had made two separate payments for the 2015-16 sponsorship that tallied with the amounts in the email. Since City refused to hand over further evidence, the chamber was entitled under Swiss law to infer the same patterns of behaviour as with Etisalat.

After a one-day hearing in January 2020, Valentine’s Day saw City given a two-year Champions League ban and a €30m fine (£26.7m at the time) for “serious breaches” of regulations. The description was of “a sophisticated, thoughtful and fundamental attempt to circumvent or violate” the rules.

Far from a resolution, though, the outcome was one of many moments when it felt the case was never-ending.

City were already preparing to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with Soriano talking of “irrefutable evidence”.

The ban was actually overturned, in July 2020, because certain evidence was precluded. CAS didn’t have to deal with anything related to Jaber Mohamed because the judges ruled that the Etisalat evidence was time-barred. Although the accounts for that example had been submitted inside the May 2014-May 2019 time limit, the payments had been made earlier. Two of the three judges ruled it was the timing that mattered. That meant the Etisalat evidence couldn’t be used to draw inference for the Etihad case, either, which was how CAS ruled the claim of disguising equity finding “remains unsubstantiated”.

There was now fury among the rest of the sport, especially amid the feeling that lack of co-operation should have brought far greater punishment than a €10m fine (£8.9m at the time).

Within all of that, though, there was a clue as to how the Premier League case might go. It hasn’t been subject to any statute of limitations. What’s more, having almost immediately published emails that appeared to contradict testimony in the CAS, Der Spiegel in April 2022 also publicised the run of emails that Uefa investigators had been requesting.

There had also been amazement as to why Uefa’s in-house team surprisingly declined to pursue access to Etihad or Etisalat’s accounts, a development described as “the killer for the case”.

Significant questions persist about Uefa’s strategy in the CAS appeal, which is seen as inexplicably bringing “a rubber chicken to a gun fight”.

The problem with the corresponding Premier League case, however, was that it never seemed to come alive. The expectation had long been that it would end in some fudged settlement, due to the English competition’s reputation for light regulation.

As far back as July 2021, Lord Justice Males rebuked the entire process, stating it is “a matter of legitimate public concern” that “so little progress has been made after two and a half years – during which, it may be noted, the club has twice been crowned as Premier League champions”. That became five times.

The comments were made after both the Premier League and City attempted to keep private a ruling in the Court of Appeal, where the club had attempted to challenge the jurisdiction of an arbitration panel. One argument made was of “a real possibility that the arbitrators were biased”.

There is now expectation among Premier League executives that a similar strategy may be pursued in an eventual appeal; to question the independence of the panel.

Back in 2021, the feeling among rival executives - who would regularly ask the Premier League for executives - was that the competition was “just sitting on this”.

Whatever the truth, the energy around the entire case is seen as having drastically changed when Alison Brittain was appointed Premier League chair in January 2022. A chair of the King’s Trust, she is described by many as feeling the Premier League finally had to act to be taken seriously as a regulator.

What was published on 6 February 2023 certainly made the football world stop. City were charged with 115 alleged rule breaches, later clarified to 130, although some were the same ones over several seasons.

A City statement again referenced “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” that they insisted would clear their name.

A legal cold war began, as the two sides bunkered in for what would become one of the longest waits for a civil award in English history. Much was made of the armies of lawyers being deployed, with Bird & Bird representing the Premier League, and Clifford Chance working for City, as the esteemed Lord Pannick even inspired banners at the team’s games.

The case caused tension in diplomatic circles, having been raised in meetings between UK and UAE representatives. Eddie Lister, the former British envoy to the Gulf, described it as a “running sore” between the countries.

There were also considerable flare-ups. One of the biggest was in mid-2024 when City launched an unprecedented legal action against the Premier League, claiming the competition’s rules on Associated Party Transactions - that would be most relevant to those with state-linked ownership - were “unlawful”. This was supplemented by the accusation that they were victims of discrimination, under a “tyranny of the majority”.

While City had many reasons for taking the case, the belief among rivals was that it was a tactic to distract the Premier League’s legal team while also potentially giving them a key victory before the hearing that would erode faith in the rules.

There was temporarily the possibility that the entire premise of fair market value in the rules could be exploded, potentially undermining most of the regulations that formed the basis of the bigger case.

As one source said at the time, “Abu Dhabi are an existential threat to football”.

Arsenal’s former executive vice chairman Tim Lewis was one executive willing to be more bullish, rallying a response among a group of clubs viewed as more ambivalent to the entire issue than before. With an independent tribunal eventually forcing some of the rules to be amended, a 16-4 vote in favour of the Premier League was seen as key. City came to a settlement in September 2025.

There was peace, for a while. In the meantime, the process finally saw the investigation evolve into a three-month hearing from September 2024.

The process has been described as “very disciplined”, even if details were scarce.

Only a handful of people in the world had actual knowledge of a case provoking the most intense global interest.

One reason it is seen as having taken so long is because of the make-up of the panel: two lawyers and one jurist. Aside from the panel also working on other cases at the same time, lawyers take much longer to write up legal opinion than jurists, and if two disagreed on matters of law, the accountant would not break the deadlock.

Through that time, normal football business has proceeded. Guardiola has left City. The club has continued significant expenditure on players who now find themselves compromised as this unfolds.

Various sources involved in transfer negotiations have said that City were dismissing the prospect of punishment to potential signings.

Few figures within the club seemed concerned about it over the last few years, a stance that is now of a piece with their response to Thursday’s developments.

It remains to be seen whether that is justified.

Whatever happens next is going to be anything but subdued.