CAS judgement: UEFA ban overturned, City exonerated (report out p603)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...lost-appeal-against-European-ban-CRUSHED.html

...

That is what those inside the club believed they were fighting. A struggle for their modern existence, for their right to sit at the top table, not just to be taken seriously, but to be permitted access, to be allowed to walk and breathe, and maybe thrive, among the Champions League elite.

It is a cosy little club, European football's upper echelons, and UEFA kowtow to it.

...

City threatened the hierarchy. They wanted the right to come in, to play, to be allowed to challenge those who see football's riches and its spoils as their birth right.

And they won't be welcome, certainly not now having scored such a public victory. Not even having won at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, having been exonerated of the worst accusations, by an independent panel of lawyers.

...

But they are too much of a threat to be received by the traditional elite, either domestically or in Europe.

Seeking potential allies during the nervous weeks before CAS's verdict, a City employee idly clicked on the website of the European Clubs Association. There they were, the ECA's men of influence: from Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, AC Milan, Bayern Munich.

It read like a who's who of every club that had ever spoken out or denounced City. They've got no friends there and should know that by now. Financial fair play is the elite's power grab. It is their ploy to turn a moment in time into permanence. And Manchester City broke through.

...

If you are a fan of Newcastle, Everton, Wolves, Tottenham, any club thinking big but currently on the outside looking in, you should cheer this victory from the rafters.

...

Could Foden, now coming of age, be part of a club regulated to the periphery? That is where City came from, that was what was being imagined for them by their rivals; a return to the days when Shaun Wright-Phillips could be plucked by Chelsea, and placed among the reserves to fulfil an English qualification quota.

The Abu Dhabi project would have been set at nought. All the good done for women's football, for youth football, for English football in Europe would've been erased.

...

The key was not City's initial refusal to participate in an investigation provoked by hacked material, but CAS's statement on the crucial charge, that City's 'disguise of equity funding as sponsorship contributions' was not proven.

It means the allegations City had cheated, had lied, had falsely achieved their success were unfounded.

...

Here's a technicality. Chelsea got where they are by doing everything that City did, in terms of owner investment, then worked with other elite clubs to change the rules so that growing a club using the transfer market became illegal.

Every club, at some stage in its development, has had to speculate. Only now has this been made a crime — and by the very clubs who will benefit greatly from the status quo.

...

First out of the blocks, Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga and a man who, as a party trick, sometimes speaks while Real Madrid and Barcelona drink a glass of water.

In July 2016, European Union competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager demanded the repayment of millions in soft loans, tax breaks and sweetheart property deals given to seven LaLiga clubs, chief among them Spain's big two.

Yet Tebas continues to insist it is City who should be thrown out of Europe for distorting UEFA competitions. Now he wants CAS thrown out, too, for not reaching the verdict his masters desired.

'We have to reassess whether CAS is the appropriate body to which to appeal institutional decisions in football,' he said. 'Switzerland is a country with a great history of arbitration, CAS is not up to standard.'

Funnily enough, it seemed perfectly acceptable to Tebas in 2016, when it halved Real Madrid's FIFA transfer ban for wrongdoing over the signing of young players. And no complaints about CAS as recently as six days ago, when it rejected Brazilian club Santos's case against Barcelona, relating to the signing of Neymar in 2013.

It must just be in the last week CAS's standards have become unacceptable. When Tebas's friends didn't get their way.

That is how the system is supposed to work. David Gill of Manchester United in the corridors of power, Rick Parry — a former Liverpool chief executive — on the UEFA financial control body that imposed City's European ban, and pressure, pressure, pressure from outside.
Click to expand...

Quite a lot I didn’t want to cut out, worth the click to read the full thing imo
 
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