So that was the first article from june 2024. If I remember correctly, there was another article and a new one from these days about Haaland and the charges, I'll try to post them here too. Sorry for (maybe) some mistakes, it is a translation of a german article:
Manchester City and the financial rules
The doping of football
Manchester City's financial behaviour has long been a concern for European football. Now the conflict in the Premier League is coming to a head. A relaxation of the rules would be fatal.
When the new volte face in the Manchester City financial scandal was announced to the world, a comparison with Lance Armstrong made the rounds on social media. It is now a quarter of a century since the cycling-dominator set up and maintained his super doping system. For many years, nothing and nobody has been able to touch him, not even a positive Epo test, no matter how overwhelming the evidence and statements around his team. On the contrary, he has even been covered up often enough - until one day someone took action. And then imagine that the solution in the Texan's case would have been for the sport to decide to completely liberalise doping.
For years now, the football world has been concerned with the financial behaviour of Manchester City, which has been owned by Arab investors since 2008 and has become the dominant force in England thanks to billions from the Gulf. It has just won its fourth Premier League title in a row and a Champions League trophy in between. The core accusation is that City is also concealing the true and, according to the rules, limited possible donations from the investor by cheating on the income from sponsors close to the investor. For a long time, this was only of limited interest and has only changed in recent years. Europe's football union even excluded Manchester City from the Champions League before the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned the judgement under dubious circumstances. The Premier League in turn accused City of breaching the league's financial rules in 115 cases between 2009 and 2018; this will be heard in November. And now, according to a report in the Times of London, City is taking legal action against the Premier League and its sponsorship rules, which were tightened last year. The reason: ‘discrimination’ and a ‘tyranny of the majority’.
The fight for the Super League and against 50+1 is going in a similar direction
It is of course Manchester City's right to go against every rule in the world. With so many decently paid lawyers, there should be plenty of arguments to be found, especially as the competitors are not volunteer scout groups, but are often blessed with an investor. And in case of doubt, we will see whether a lawsuit against a regulation from 2023 still has anything to do with alleged violations from previous years. But it is about the message that obviously resonates in City's position - in line with the motto ‘Just give financial doping free rein’. That would be a fatal development. The financial imbalance in European football is bad enough - such a move would exacerbate it. Incidentally, M doesn't just have to look at bad or not-so-bad investors from the Gulf. The core principle of wanting to bring down the financial architecture can also be found in many other areas of European football.
You can look at the top Spanish clubs Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, for example, who are trying with all their might and an allied agency to push through a Super League. And you can look to Germany, where the 50+1 rule is repeatedly under fire from interested parties, according to which the final decision-making power should lie with the club. However, these cases cannot be directly compared with each other. Furthermore, all sets of rules, from the European to the English to the German, have considerable weaknesses, as can be seen from the fact that they were unable to prevent the current situation. But having no financial rules at all or significantly relaxed financial rules can no more be a solution than the liberalisation of doping would have been wisdom for Lance Armstrong a quarter of a century ago.