How much bigger could the Man City scandal get?

The Athletic FC Podcast

The episode explores the escalating legal and reputational war between Manchester City and the Premier League following findings of guilt re

Key takeaways

• The scale of future sanctions—ranging from a fine to total expulsion—will dictate the long-term impact on the Premier League's era.
• Manchester City's appeal is expected to focus on errors in law rather than presenting new evidence, using a 'de novo' approach.

Main topics

• Manchester City legal charges
• Premier League sanctions and regulation

Notable quotes

If it ends up with Manchester City expelled from the Premier League, it's pretty big.

Conclusion

The episode underscores that the Manchester City verdict is not just a

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) What does it take to push bold ideas forward? Build new ways of working. And how can businesses help solve society's biggest challenges? Take on Tomorrow is back with a brand new season. Join us as we meet innovators and experts from around the world to discover the secret to building momentum. Visit pwc.com slash take on tomorrow or wherever you listen to podcasts for season five. Speaker 8 (0:32) John and Antonia have a new case to solve. Speaker 7 (0:36) The killer shot from here. It's good, as they say. Speaker 8 (0:39) It's pure magic. Based on the bestseller of Juan Gomez, The Black Wolf, the new season of The Red Queen arrives. Speaker 1 (0:48) Make it work now! Speaker 8 (0:51) The new season of Reina Roja, Black Wolf, now available on Prime Video. Speaker 7 (1:05) The Athletic FC. Speaker 3 (1:11) Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Kate Mason. Manchester City and the Premier League have gone to war since the Athletic first revealed they'd been found guilty of virtually all charges facing them last week. We've discussed the responses from both sides, possible sanctions and how those within the game have reacted. Today, we're asking, has the verdict tainted an entire Premier League era? And how much bigger could this story actually get? Speaker 3 (1:40) Well, if you are one of our number of new viewers or listeners this week, welcome. We are the Thursday Club at the Athletic FC and I'm joined as usual in studio by former England goalkeeper Rob Green. Hello. Hello. Lovely new haircut for all the new viewers. Speaker 5 (1:55) Thank you Speaker 3 (1:55) very much. And the Athletics senior sports news reporter who has been living and breathing this one, Matt Slate. Speaker 5 (2:02) What about my haircut? Speaker 3 (2:03) It's looking really slick, actually. Speaker 5 (2:06) Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I'm fine, thank you. Glad Speaker 3 (2:08) to hear it. And joining us down the line from New York City, it is reigning sports journalist of the year, Adam Crafton. Hello. Speaker 2 (2:15) Hello. I still have my curtains. That's my haircut. Big in the 90s. Big in the 90s. Speaker 3 (2:21) Oh, so he was. Now, before we get into today's discussion, Matt, could you tell us what people come to the Athletic FC's Thursday Club generally for? I Speaker 1 (2:31) have absolutely no idea. What are you doing? Go for a walk. Take us for a walk. You can go for a walk. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. Look, I'd like Speaker 5 (2:39) to think that they come to us because we're going to talk about the big topics, but in a kind of measured, deep, Speaker 1 (2:47) analytical, and to steal a line from Rob over here. Was it your son that said Speaker 6 (2:53) this? It was my grandfather explaining Speaker 1 (2:55) it to my daughter. Daughter, sorry. My Speaker 6 (2:57) father, Speaker 1 (2:57) sorry. Her grandfather. Sorry. In a clever way. I'll take that. You know, and hopefully not a boring way. Speaker 3 (3:03) I never boring in here, that's for sure. And certainly the last few days have not been boring, Adam. How does this story compare to anything else you've seen in the course of your career? Speaker 2 (3:16) Probably, I just still think it depends on the sanctions. You know, I mean, if this ends up being a big fine, then it's big, but not that big. If it ends up with Manchester City expelled from the Premier League, it's pretty big. And I think the sanctions will determine, you know, where this eventually goes down. But clearly, I think reputations have already been destroyed, really, for several people at Manchester City over the past week. And they are now in a real battle to claw back that damage. But I think even if they were to win on a period, I think the kind of realm of public opinion now seems so set on... you know, the determination. So I think they've got a very, very uphill battle. Speaker 3 (4:05) Rob, you're here in the studio for many days. It's probably slightly different to be talking about this in this way than if anything like this story had broken when you were playing, for instance. What's it been like to be a part of this? Speaker 6 (4:17) It's been surreal, I think, because everyone knows so little in terms of where it's going to go. And the players will be the same. They'll sit there and go, we know actually so little and you feel so powerless. as a player and the Manchester City players will be sat there saying, we are helpless within this. And yet they're the ones that are going to be carrying the can, which is the remarkable situation is nearly all of these players, I think, other than maybe Phil Foden, I'm not sure if he's old or not, will have nothing to do with this when these fines, when they came about. When you've got nothing to do, you say, I came last week. I came in August. What difference does it do to me? But yet they're the ones literally carrying the flag, wearing the badge, and they'll be getting it on a week-by-week basis. I feel for them. I think it has made their season even harder. And every game, you know, Adam's just saying, an uphill battle, every away game in particular is just going to be... Pure vitriol. Liverpool next? Yeah. It's not going to get any bigger than that. And that is going to be right. Brace yourselves because it's going to be like that week in, week out. And Speaker 3 (5:37) you've been in Copenhagen and came back to be with us. We spoke to you yesterday, of course, Matt. And you've been, well, I said it the other day, you looked a little bit tired. I hope you don't mind me mentioning that. But that's because a function of how big the story is and how much work you've been doing. I've been Speaker 5 (5:52) up all night in Copenhagen. Yeah. No, I haven't. Yeah, I think we're all a bit tired if we've been on this story. I mean, it's absolutely, it's all hands to the pump. Massive team effort here. Yeah, I was in Copenhagen for this, European Football Club's General Assembly, which is as boring as it sounds, and got completely railroaded by this news. I think I was there, I was going anyway, because I like boring football conferences, but it grew. Because, oh, Ferran Seriano's on the board. And in fact, you know, the BBC arrived on Tuesday for that very reason. It was the place to get that kind of television moment, that reaction moment. We didn't know the story was going to drop, like properly drop on Tuesday, but did know that Ferran was going to be there, that he couldn't avoid us. You know, me and other journalists had been trying to talk to him since arriving on Monday. We know that he gave a little speech to the board where he basically reiterated the club's position for the last eight years. We're innocent. We're going to keep fighting. Very much the stuff they've sort of been putting out for the last few years, the stuff they put out on Friday when we dropped our story, that Khaldun Al Mubarak, the chairman, said in an open letter to fans on Saturday, this isn't over. It's been a long time. We're confident of winning. So we got all that on Monday and we got more of it on Tuesday because he wasn't saying any more than that. And suddenly, of course, everything changes. Really, I think everything has changed because we've now seen it. We've read it. It is worse, stroke, stronger, harder, whatever, whatever adjective you want to use there, than expected. And we've got some of the detail. We've got 40 pages worth of detail. And it's shocking stuff. And I know we've done it over the last few days. And we are now thinking about what next. But I genuinely think things have changed. You know, this idea that Man City... It's business as usual. Oh, come on. Come on. You know, the players, we've heard the players, you know, how it's changed for them. But fans, sponsors, rivals, we're all viewing Manchester City and everything they've done for the last decade through a different lens now. Speaker 3 (8:00) Well, as Matt mentions, this is such a fast moving story since the news first broke on The Athletic last week, last Friday. So I'm going to just quickly run you through what has happened since our last show, which was... 24 hours ago. Former City boss Pep Guardiola has taken to social media to defend the club and its owners. He says, I want every single Manchester City fan across the world to know I am here more than ever. Let me be clear, we will get through this together. UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has told the BBC he would be really concerned to lose City's Abu Dhabi owners from the Manchester area. Football League's whistleblower Rui Pinto has accused FIFA president Gianni Infantino of allowing Man City's deception to go unnoticed when he was UEFA's general secretary in 2014. And City sponsor Etihad Airways have left a statement rejecting the findings and saying they are considering legal action. So before we get into whether the league has been tainted, Matt, I want to ask. as we look forward, what happens next? First of all, what is this official appeal and hearing process? And what kind of timeline are we looking at? Speaker 5 (9:08) Okay, well, I'll give you the handbook version. And I'm going to tell you that really, we don't know. Because the handbook is going out the window. It's gone out the window a while ago, actually. So, okay, we know they have to get their appeal in by tomorrow. So we're talking Thursday, the appeal goes in on Friday. And according to the handbook, It should then be heard within 12 weeks. Okay. This new three-person panel will hear... an appeal on the liability, not really skate the whole case again. So this is your opportunity, the losing party, if you like, to say the other lot got it wrong. They got the law wrong. They've made an absolute howler. They've misinterpreted something. If they have some new evidence, maybe they can introduce that. That bit can be de novo, which is the sort of phrase for starting again, doing it as new. But I don't think there is any new evidence, frankly. This will be a Manchester City appeal based on that lot are wrong. They're wrong on the law. Now, ordinarily, and that is, by the way, completely normal for these football arbitration panels. Speaker 5 (10:20) This bit can be quite quick because you are asking one set of esteemed jurists to say the other set of esteemed jurists made a mistake. And that is very rare. And by the way, the bar is quite high. It cannot be Speaker 1 (10:34) just that if we'd been that original panel and we'd heard the same evidence as them, we might have come to a different view. It has to be, no, the view they came to is so egregiously wrong. that it needs to be struck off. They are not Speaker 5 (10:50) reinterpreting the evidence. So it's a VAR Speaker 3 (10:52) sort Speaker 5 (10:52) of Speaker 3 (10:52) thing. Speaker 1 (10:52) So VAR, clear and obvious error. Speaker 8 (10:54) Thank Speaker 6 (10:54) you. Thank Speaker 1 (10:54) you. That is perfect. Now I'm Speaker 6 (10:56) really worried. Speaker 1 (10:57) Yeah, that's perfect. Speaker 5 (10:58) It Speaker 1 (10:58) is clear and obvious. So you can see the bar is quite Speaker 5 (11:01) high. Speaker 1 (11:01) Now, we are kind of waiting. That's what we're assuming. But there is quite a lot of assumption going on here. So do we get on with a Speaker 5 (11:09) sanctions hearing? Because at the moment, all we've done is liability. Yes, no, did they do it? All right. You know. We should be racing ahead to a sanction now. Do we wait for the sanction hearing to start until this appeal over the liability is resolved? Okay. There are some theories that some of this stuff might have already started because the sanctions decision goes back to the original three. You know, the people that heard the case first decide the sanction. Right. I suspect they've got some views already. They've had two years to think about it. And then, of course, we know that Man City, and they're dropping... not very subtle hints about this, are going to go at everything. So this appeal is just one appeal. They're going through the handbook, right? They'll probably take this to the courts. And now we get into very, very uncharted territory. Football hates going to the courts. We've been there once before during the investigation phase. It didn't go well for City there. But they appear to be willing to burn the whole house down, frankly. And they're going to go after the rulebook. They're going to go after financial fair play. Who knows? And that, you know, every stage of that, there'll be a row and you go to the courts, it's even more delayed, more expensive. They don't appear to care about cost. Speaker 1 (12:22) Any kind of guess over what happens next and, you know, me trying to map out a timeline is hard. Okay. Can I ask you, who selects Speaker 6 (12:32) the three independents on there, which could be key? Yeah. But also, because we're in uncharted territory and we're going over technicalities of the law, law loves previous rulings. They does. President. Yeah. So we've not had that. Not really. Technically. There is possibly some ground for... Speaker 5 (12:55) There is some case or there is some precedent as to how these things should proceed. But this is a very unusual case, I think, is to answer that question. Yes, the Premier League side will be pointing to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah from whenever. Speaker 5 (13:09) Let's follow that example. And there is also plenty of arbitration law out there that has nothing to do with sport, by the way. You know, cases that, this is the thing about law, it's actually quite amusing when, you know, when you're in an arbitration hearing, they start talking about Snook versus da-da-da-da-da. Snook's the famous case that law students will be going, oh, I know Snook. That's about how you define a sham agreement. And it's got, honestly, it's so boring and mundane, but it is the definitive test of how you decide that's a sham agreement or not. It's called the snook test. Anyway, to answer your first question, finally, there's an easy answer. The panels are all appointed by a guy called Murray Rosen, a very sort of senior barrister. Speaker 6 (13:48) So it's still picked by the Premier League? Speaker 1 (13:50) No, but by a guy the Premier League have appointed to do it for them. A Premier League appointee is picking from a... So even that could be arguable? Well, it is arguable and it has been argued before in other cases because he is an Arsenal fan. Speaker 1 (14:08) Oh, no. But here's the thing. Oh, no. Wait, wait, wait. Speaker 5 (14:13) Here's Speaker 1 (14:13) the Speaker 5 (14:13) thing. It gets very offensive and jurists, barristers, KCs get really annoyed when you start suggesting their bias. They're like, hold on, I do this for a living. Oh, Speaker 6 (14:22) of course. Yes. Speaker 2 (14:24) From memory, Matt, I think, you know, barristers will have like their little website where they're kind of pitching for business, I guess. And they will have a little bio of what their hobbies are and what they do in their life. From memory, I think Murray Rosen actually had on his bio that because at the time he wasn't working with the kind of the Premier League and it was kind of a residue of kind of. previous stuff he'd done. It was like in my spare time, I sort of enjoy cricket and watching Arsenal. And I think that was how it kind of came to light. The funnier thing is Lord Panic,