Manchester City have begun an appeal against their two-year ban from European competitions in a potential huge week for the club.
UEFA hit Premier League champions City with the punishment for ‘serious breaches’ to the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations between 2012 and 2016.
The reputation of the club is on the line as they face the possibility of being unable to play European football for the next two seasons.
There are major questions over how they’ll cope with such a ban and what impact it will have on their squad and standing as a football powerhouse.
As they begin their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), there are may questions up in the air…
Will Man City overturn the ban?
It is difficult to know as this is new territory for CAS in terms of financial fair play appeals.
This case is the first time Uefa has banned a club for two years instead of one.
It is also the first time CAS has had to deal with a case centred around leaks and hacks – UEFA’s investigation began after a series of emails were published in the German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2018 which accused City of a host of breaches.
It would appear unlikely they will be able to overturn their ban but it may be reduced or restructured.
What have UEFA said?
UEFA believe City’s actions were ‘serious breaches’ of its imposed FFP rules.
In most FFP cases, clubs are punished for spending more than they are permitted. They are then fined or banned for a season.
But in City’s case, the leaked emails claim club executives deliberately manipulated sponsorship income to work around the rules and that the club then did not co-operate with the investigation.
UEFA have also been stricter as this is the second time City have been sanctioned for FFP breaches — in 2014 they paid a £18million fine.
What have City said?
Manchester City’s CEO Ferran Soriano said in February: “These allegations are simply not true. The owner has not put money in this club that has not been properly declared.
“We are a sustainable football club, we are profitable, we don’t have debt, our accounts have been scrutinised many times, by auditors, by regulators, by investors and this is perfectly clear.
“We did cooperate with this process.
“We delivered a long list of documents and support that we believe is irrefutable evidence that the claims are not true and it was hard because we did this in the context of information being leaked to the media in the context of feeling that every step of the way, every engagement we had, we felt that we were considered guilty before anything was even discussed.
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“But at the end, this is an internal process that has been initiated and then prosecuted and then judged by this FFP chamber at UEFA.”
City boss Pep Guardiola said in February: “We cannot change what people think. I know how hard we work.
“I am so proud about how hard we’ve worked all these years.
“No one helped us outside, we did it day by day, game by game.
“This is not finished, it’s not over, we appeal as a club and we see what happens.”
What if City are unsuccessful in their appeal?
If the club fail to overturn their ban, they will not be able to participate in Europe’s elite competition for the next two seasons.
They will also be banned from playing in the next UEFA Super Cup should they win this season’s delayed Champions League.
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