By Spy Correspondent
Manchester: European football’s governing body UEFA ruled in February that City had committed serious breaches of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations and failed to cooperate with its investigation.
The club was banned by UEFA from European club competitions for two seasons and handed a €30m (£25m). UEFA’s Adjudicatory Chamber found the club had overstated its sponsorship revenue in accounts submitted between 2012 and 2016.
Manchester City had vehemently denied any wrongdoing and its appeal was heard over three days by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in June over video conferencing constituted by three European lawyers heard the City’s appeal and set aside the previous holding and concluded thus;
a) MCFC has contravened Article 56 of the Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations.
b) MCFC shall pay a fine of EUR 10,000,000 to the UEFA, within 30 days as from the date of issuance of the arbitral award.
UEFA seems to have welcomed Monday’s verdict stating that “Uefa notes that the CAS panel 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 due to the five-year time period foreseen in the Uefa regulations”
If UEFA’s verdict was upheld this would have meant that despite finishing the EPL second on the log City would not have qualified for next season’s UCL and would risk losing some of it’s biggest names including the Manager, Pep Guardiola.
