Manchester City Financial Fair Play Scandal

Pep Guardiola once said...

Because I said to them, "If you lie to me,

the day after I'm here."

Last season, he actually walked out that door,

and now Man City have been found

guilty on 114 of 115 charges. So how did we get

here? In 2018, Rui Pinto, a hacker, breaks into Man City's servers, leaks

millions of internal documents to a German outlet. The story?

Fake sponsorship deals with companies in Abu Dhabi, inflating City's revenue so

they'd have more room to spend under financial fair play. Okay,

hold on a second.

Let's try in English. Man City's owners secretly gave the club

extra money by

disguising it as sponsorship deals with companies in Abu Dhabi, so it looked like

the club had earned that money fairly.

But the charges claim it was the owner's own cash,

and because financial fair play

only lets you spend based on what you earn,

that fake income allowed them to spend

money they technically weren't supposed to have.

So it was like, "Bro, I got the money.

Just don't ask where it's from." Was that how they were able to go out and sign

some of the best players in the world?

Oh, and the hacker, he got a suspended prison sentence himself

for extortion years

later. So just to be clear, the guy who exposed the crime is also a

criminal. Anyway, UEFA investigates, bans City from Europe for two years.

City appeal. They win because most of the leaked emails

were from 2012 and

2013, and UEFA's own rules say anything older

than five years

can't be punished. Time barred. Basically, did you do it? Yeah.

Can we punish you? Yeah, but not anymore.

They walked away with a reduced fine, and everyone thought that was it.

It wasn't, because the Premier League doesn't have a

five-year rule.

So while the world moved on, they quietly built their own case for four

years.

By the time they finished investigating, some of those players in the original case

had retired. February 2023, boom, 115 charges

dropped, covering nine Premier League seasons all

the way from 2009 to

2018. We're talking misleading regulators, secretly off-the-book payments, and

refusing to cooperate in their own investigation.

This week, the verdict: found guilty on 114 of 115

charges. That one charge they beat's probably

having the best time of its life.

Man City's chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, released a statement to fans saying the

club is confident in proving its innocent and that nothing has changed. Nothing?

Let's talk about Pep before he built a dynasty in Manchester.

Pep spent eight years clearing his own name.

As a player back in 2001, he failed two doping tests and

was hit with a suspended

prison sentence. Wasn't fully cleared until 2007.

A few years later, he's managing Barcelona, and Barcelona

are now facing their own

scandal payments to a referee committee VP spanning 2001 to 2018.

Pep's entire Barcelona time sits right inside that window, so Pep has spent

his whole career standing next to scandal.

Now, think about the greatest moments Man City

has produced in the Premier League:

Aguero's last-minute title winner in 2012, four Premier League titles in a row,

their first ever Champions League, two Trebles.

If every charge holds, do these moments still mean what they

think they mean?

Because the Premier League is like, "Yo, I got receipts." Will those titles be

stripped? If I had one thing to say about this,

it would be fasten your seat

belts because City's biggest signing

might be their accountant.