Manchester City offer an olive branch now Uefa holds all the power

Manchester City’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, mostly repeated the club’s previous forthright statements when he gave his interview to the club’s TV platform on Wednesday, but the content was different in one particular area. As expected, he denied as “simply not true” the finding that the club seriously breached financial fair play rules by overstating its Abu Dhabi sponsorships between 2012 and 2016, for which City have been handed a two-year Champions League ban and €30m (£25m) fine. But suddenly there were complimentary and diplomatic words for Uefa, contradicting City’s consistently ferocious anti-Uefa approach, and that provided a pointer to where the case is heading.

In a very significant detail, as City appeal to the court of arbitration for sport (Cas), the process changes now. For all City’s previous rhetoric against Uefa, the guilty finding and sanction were not in fact reached by Uefa itself, but by its club financial control body (CFCB), which administers FFP compliance.

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Following good governance practice to encourage independent application of the rules, the CFCB and its members have nothing to do with any other Uefa work, although by definition they have to be appointed by Uefa and are assisted clerically by its officials. The structure follows European governance models, with two separate panels to consider cases.

The investigatory chamber (IC) examines clubs’ financial details, and brings charges if it considers them necessary. These charges are taken to the adjudicatory chamber (AC), composed of senior European lawyers, which acts like a first court, hearing the IC’s case and City’s defence, then reaching a ruling. The right of appeal to Cas is built in, so all CFCB members know their work can ultimately be independently reviewed and publicised. But at this point Uefa, the organisation itself, with its president Aleksander Ceferin, becomes involved; it defends the rulings of its CFCB at Cas.

City ignored that distinction between Uefa and its CFCB in their furious statement when the AC’s ruling was announced last Friday. The club’s hierarchy denounced Uefa itself: the process was “flawed” and “prejudicial”, and was all Uefa’s fault. “Simply put, this is a case initiated by Uefa, prosecuted by Uefa and judged by Uefa.”

Soriano reversed that in his comments five days later, noticeably highlighting the difference, saying the CFCB “is not Uefa”. He now blamed the “FFP chamber” – although he referred only to the IC, not the AC – claiming it was “less about justice and more about politics”. For Uefa itself, there was unexpected praise. “The experience with this FFP IC has been negative for us, more than what I would have imagined,” he said. “But this is not Uefa.

“We are not talking about the whole of Uefa, which is an association of associations. I personally know many people that work at Uefa, very hard for the benefit of Uefa, but also for the benefit of the clubs of Uefa like ours, but also for the benefit of football. If the negative experience that we had and the way this process went is negative, it is negative also for them. Uefa is much bigger than this FFP chamber.”

This is a major shift, from alleging Uefa was a biased prosecutor, judge and jury, to blaming the FFP chamber and pointing out the many good people he knows at Uefa – which of course he does given his long involvement at City and previously Barcelona.

The reality is that the process, as it goes on appeal to Cas, has become political for the first time. Ceferin and his officials have responsibility for the case. When the IC decided to charge City, under the CFCB system the AC could not make a settlement; it had to hear the charges and decide whether they were proven. The AC members who did find City guilty of “serious breaches” and imposed the severe sanction are very experienced European lawyers, of a similar seniority to any who will sit at Cas.

They include the leading London barrister Charles Flint, a QC for 25 years, Christiaan Timmermans, former deputy director-general of the European Commission’s legal service then for 10 years a judge at the European Court of Justice, and the chairman, José Narciso da Cunha Rodrigues, a former Portuguese general prosecutor. City have not made it clear on what basis they allege that these distinguished legal figures prejudged the case for reasons of “politics” rather than a genuine examination of the evidence.

Soriano’s choice of words was interesting when he set out City’s innocence. In answer to the interviewer’s question, he said: “The owner [Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi] has not put any money in this club that has not been properly declared.”

Internal City emails published by Der Spiegel in November 2018, which prompted the CFCB investigation, did suggest that Mansour substantially paid the £67.5m sponsorship stated to be from the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad. However, as the AC’s ruling will not be published until Cas issues its decision, it is not known whether this formed part of the charges or guilty finding. When announcing the AC’s decision, Uefa said that City had been found to have “committed serious breaches of FFP regulations by overstating its sponsorship revenue”. It is not clear whether it was part of the CFCB’s case that Mansour put the money in, or just that it did not all come from Etihad.

It lands on Uefa now to decide whether to fully support the CFCB’s findings and sanction, and argue at Cas that it must stand. Alternatively, it is open to Uefa for the first time to reach a settlement, drop some of the issues or seek a lighter punishment.

Some observers point to two cases Uefa settled at Cas, and are wondering whether it might do the same with City. In March last year Uefa agreed with Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain, who had appealed on a technical point about time limits, that the IC could not reinvestigate its sponsorships from Qatari organisations, despite the AC deciding it should. In June Uefa settled with Milan, which set aside the AC’s provisional two-season ban from Uefa competitions, agreeing instead that Milan would be excluded for just this season. Last season the club finished fifth in Serie A, so did not qualify for the Champions League.

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Others argue that the City decision is so firm, and the sanction so strong, that the credibility of Uefa’s processes, and FFP itself, will be fundamentally damaged if the ruling body does not defend them.

Unlike the CFCB, Uefa has constant sporting, commercial and political involvement with the clubs, including City, as Soriano noted. That is why compliance processes are taken out of governing bodies’ core work. Ceferin’s major current concern is the very future of European club football, as top clubs push for an enlarged Champions League against the wishes of leagues, and Fifa seriously advances plans for an expanded Club World Cup.

Over the next three or four months it will become clearer whether Uefa sees the City case as a duty which must solemnly be performed, a problem to be managed, or a fudged combination of both. At least Ceferin and his hard-working executives now have some praise from Manchester City to warm them as they consider it.