Roberto Mancini has appeared to acknowledge that he had “a double contract” during his time as Manchester City manager, after the club were found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules.
Among the charges City faced was an alleged failure to provide accurate details for player and manager payments between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. In 2018 the German magazine Der Spiegel published evidence showing that Mancini doubled his base salary of £1.45m for advising a club in Abu Dhabi.
Mancini, now in charge of Italy, managed City to their first Premier League title in half a century in 2011-12, having also won the FA Cup in 2011 after Abu Dhabi’s ruling family bought the club in 2008. He was fired by City days after a shock defeat by Wigan in the 2013 FA Cup final.
Asked about his contract with City at Italy’s news conference in Turkey before a Nations League match on Monday, Mancini played down his own involvement in a story that is developing potentially into the biggest scandal in English football history. “It’s not a problem that concerns me,” he said. “Anyhow, it’s not something new, because every four or five years this comes up. Manchester City is not guilty and the fact of having a double contract isn’t my problem but theirs, probably.”
City said on Friday that their case with the Premier League was “ongoing”. The club have always denied wrongdoing, and the chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, restated that position in a letter to fans on Saturday. “The Premier League process still has a long way to run, and our confidence and intent in proving the club’s innocence is just as strong as when this began,” he said.