Manchester City’s era of dominance now comes with an asterisk. A first-instance verdict has been delivered against the club in the Premier League’s long-running case over its financial conduct, and whatever punishment follows, the titles and trophies of that period can no longer be read the same way. City have been found guilty of some — though, in fairness, not all — of the more than 100 charges they faced, and the club continues to deny every allegation.
The process is far from finished. The sanction itself has yet to be decided, and there remains scope for a dramatic reversal at a later stage, with final appeals still to come. Until that is settled, the asterisk must carry an asterisk of its own.
The scale of the delay has been striking. It is a full eight years since Der Spiegel published the first allegations of industrial-scale cheating. The charge of failing to cooperate with financial reporting — something that on the face of it could be cleared up in half a day — took three years to reach a verdict. That delay is itself a consequence of taking on an entity willing to spend so aggressively on the world’s most energetic lawyers, and willing to threaten to bankrupt the very organisation it signed up to serve.
Spare a thought, too, for Rui Pinto, the original whistleblower, who is currently in witness protection after being found guilty of information-related offences. The verdict suggests football’s greatest vigilante was right, or right enough.
Credit belongs above all to the Premier League for its refusal to bend. Any tribunal that finds the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates guilty of breaches of minor but still vital sporting regulations has done something worth noting — a small but high-profile rejection of the idea that wealth and political heft can steamroller regulation and process, and a reminder of the basic sanctity of applying the same rules to everyone irrespective of status.
And the punishment really is the key. Everything is on the cards, not least the much-trailed potential destruction of the brand. There has long been a whispered suggestion that the league is taking a hammer to its own knees in this process: that the product sold to broadcasters and supporters down the years was not straight, and that what people paid for and believed in was not real. Arguably everyone who bought a subscription during that period now has a legal claim. The question the league must answer is what its legacy is actually worth, and how much more damaged it becomes, if its owners shy away from their own rules and allow the serial champions to shortcut their way to success.
It is also worth setting out who paid the price. The teams that might have won league titles during those years are listed as Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal. There is a legitimate suggestion those clubs could consider suing City for compensation, and that the Premier League could pre-empt that by stripping titles and reallocating the glory. That may feel like an overload of asterisks, but that is what happens when the rules are ignored: other teams abided by them, lost bidding wars, lost games and lost league titles by fine margins while one club carried on regardless.
City’s supporters deserve sympathy in all this. They do not run the club; they simply support it, and they have been loyal to owners who, on the basis of this decision, were turning the club into a toxic entity and a parasite on its host and on the basic idea of sport. There will be those who see a conspiracy because they want to, or who choose to fight on, but many will simply feel sad at the tarnishing of memories. There is also a legitimate suggestion that it is time for those owners to sell up and move on.
One further thread is worth recording. Bloomberg reported last month that the UAE had been in touch with the UK government to express concerns about the Premier League process, and, it was implied, about the potential damage to the wider relationship between the two countries. If true — and it is only a suggestion — it would demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the culture being bought into. The law is not supposed to bend to power and influence. It is also worth remembering that skimping on some financial rules is hardly the worst thing the UAE has been accused of in those years: there are accusations of supporting the bloodshed in Sudan, alongside numerous human rights abuses, the curtailment of dissent and massive social inequality.
Whatever its ultimate outcome, the entire process stands as a warning for every sport with its eyes spinning at the offer of transformative financial investment. Look very hard at who you get into bed with. Jam today, pain tomorrow, and it never, ever comes for free.