Good week for the sports washers
IT’S been a good week for the plutocrats. It’s been a good week for the sports washers and the financial dopers. It’s been a very good week for probably the most potent symbol in the world of all of that: Manchester City Football Club.
What it’s not been is a good week for UEFA, who were left standing buck naked in front of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne. Their enforcement efforts for Financial Fair Play (FFP) look in tatters after Manchester City got off with little more than a slap on the wrist.
It’s not so much that Manchester City getting their two-year Champions League ban overturned makes fools of UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body, rather it’s the manner of it that makes the European governing body look so ineffectual. CAS found that there was “insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold all of the CFCB’s conclusions in this specific case and that many of the alleged breaches were time-barred.”
Basically CAS found that the CFCB attempted to charge City for offences that occurred outside of the statute of limitations. No prosecutor worth their salt would make such a basic mistake, or so you would have thought at least. To say it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence would be something of an understatement.
Of course, City don’t come out smelling of roses here either. CAS found that City engaged in “obstruction of the investigations”. Not a good look and one that rather lends credence to the notion that City’s approach – and that of its owners – is that might makes right. Using high-powered – and ruinously expensive – lawyers the club made life as difficult as possible for its regulators. To be clear that’s their right, but it does rather suggest that City’s approach to a problem is to throw money at it... which is why we’ve ended up here in the first place.
City are – to coin a phrase – more than a club. They’re an arm of a super rich petro Gulf state, Abh Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Their chairman Sheik Mansour is a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and the deputy prime minster of the UAE. Despite repeated denials, the club is clearly a projection of political power.
What happened this week opens the door even wider for more governments to get involved in high level football and buy their way to the top. With nothing to hold them back can you imagine the spending spree the Saudis will go on with Newcastle if and when they get that deal done? Compared to Saudi Arabia, the UAE is a political and financial pygmy. City should be careful what they wish for.