CITY v UEFA Club prepared for ban appeal
BLUES PURSUE IMMEDIATE ‘IMPARTIAL JUDGEMENT’
With this prejudicial process now over, the club will pursue an impartial judgement
Manchester City statement
CITY have been banned from the Champions League for the next two seasons and fined 30m euros (£24.9m) after being found to have committed ‘serious breaches’ of financial regulations.
The Premier League champions are said to have overstated sponsorship revenue in accounts submitted between 2012 and 2016, according to European football’s governing body.
City have already said they will appeal the ‘flawed’ decision of the
Adjudicatory Chamber of the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), taking it to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The Blues are confident the ban – which includes all UEFA competitions over the next two season – will be overturned.
City will continue in this season’s competition, in which they face Real Madrid in the last 16, but unless they win their appeal they will be banned for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 campaigns.
The lack of Champions League football throws into question the future of manager Pep Guardiola and also any plans they had to bring in new players in the summer transfer window who may want to be playing in Europe’s most prestigious competition.
“The Adjudicatory Chamber, having considered all the evidence, has found that Manchester City Football Club committed serious breaches of the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations by overstating its sponsorship revenue in its accounts and in the break-even information submitted to UEFA between 2012 and 2016,” read a UEFA statement issued last night.
“The Adjudicatory Chamber has imposed disciplinary measures on Manchester City Football Club directing that it shall be excluded from participation in UEFA club competitions in the next two seasons (ie: the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons) and pay a fine of 30 million euros.”
City said they are ‘disappointed but not surprised’ by UEFA’s announcement. In their own statement released just minutes after UEFA’s, the Blues said: “Manchester City is disappointed but not surprised by today’s announcement by the UEFA Adjudicatory Chamber. “The club has always anticipated the ultimate need to seek out an independent body and process to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence in support of its position. “Simply put, this is a case initiated by UEFA, prosecuted by UEFA and judged by UEFA.
“With this prejudicial process now over, the club will pursue an impartial judgement as quickly as
possible and will therefore, in the first instance, commence proceedings with the Court of Arbitration for Sport at the earliest opportunity.”
Findings published by UEFA also state that the club ‘failed to cooperate in the investigation of this case by the CFCB.’
Financial Fair Play (FFP) was introduced by UEFA as an attempt to prevent clubs getting into serious financial difficulty by overspending.
Regulations, which must be adhered to by all clubs participating in UEFA competitions, were drawn up in 2009 and introduced at the start of the 2011-12 season, with clubs required to balance their books over the course of three years.
After previously being punished in 2014, City accepted a settlement that included a £49m fine, a £49m limit on transfer spending for the current season and a 21-man limit on Champions League squad size, instead of the usual 25.
UEFA opened a fresh investigation into the Blues following a series of new allegations about the club in the media, led by German magazine Der Spiegel.
It was alleged that City’s breaches of FFP around the same period ran much deeper than UEFA realised at the time of the 2014 settlement.