Tony Pulis has asked when Stoke City will get their FA Cup back, saying he feels cheated after Manchester City were found guilty of breaking the majority of the 115 financial rules they had been accused of breaching.
The former Stoke manager, who took his side to the 2011 FA Cup final, said the verdict – which broke on Friday – had left a very sour taste in his mouth. He acknowledged that the process is far from over, because Manchester City are expected to appeal.
For Pulis, the 2011 final remains one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of 50 years in football as a player and manager. Stoke’s supporters travelled to Wembley that May day dreaming of a first win in the competition in the club’s long history. The team standing in their way, Manchester City, were on their way to dominating English football, and at that point had not won a major trophy for 35 years – their previous one being the 1976 League Cup. In transfer fees and wages, City cost well above anything Stoke could aspire to.
Pulis recalled walking out before kick-off to see Stoke’s end of the ground decked in red and white and hearing the supporters’ rendition of Delilah, with many fans having travelled from all corners of the world after spending or borrowing fortunes simply to say they were there. He described sharing the occasion with Stoke’s owners, the Coates family – Peter, Denise and John among them – as touching, pointing to the decades in which they have helped finance their own community’s local professional team, and to the good times and bad in which they found the money and spirit to back the club.
Stoke lost 1-0, with Yaya Toure scoring the winner. Pulis said his players were fantastic and gave a fully committed performance against the odds. Toure, he noted, was reportedly earning 10 times what Stoke were paying any of their players and had on his own cost more than Stoke’s entire starting XI when he signed from Barcelona in 2010 for around £24m. Roberto Mancini, described by Pulis as an elite coach, was in charge of a City side full of superstars, and Pulis said his disappointment after the game was buried in the fact that Stoke had simply fallen short.
He now feels very differently, and believes people connected with the other clubs affected by City’s successes between 2009 and 2018 do too. Stoke, he said, lost to a team that have been found guilty of breaking the financial rules set out by the Premier League – a team that went on to collect a stack of titles and dominate English football for more than a decade.
On the question of punishment, Pulis said Stoke supporters will be demanding that City hand the trophy over, and that every club affected by their actions will be considering their legal options. He does not expect Manchester City to call him or the club and offer back the 2011 FA Cup and the winners’ medals their players received, and does not seriously believe other trophies and titles will be handed back either. A points deduction and a massive fine, he suggested, feels far more likely.
Whatever happens next, Pulis said he still feels cheated, because Stoke will never get that day back and the chance to celebrate around Stoke-on-Trent with the cup and medals they honestly fought for – something Manchester City got to do instead after breaking the rules.