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

[M18CTID]

You wouldn't like it. He argues that CAS basically misdirected themselves in saying that (i) the procedural request for document production (cf. Article R44.3 of the CAS Code) and (ii) the substantive contractual duty to cooperate under Article 56 of the FFP, are treated as one evidentiary concept and “both go hand in hand”. He maintains they are two separate concepts, leading him to argue that it's like a criminal case where the witness makes false statements about an incident that falls outside of the limitation period and the witness is not subsequently prosecuted for perjury on the grounds of time-barred information. (He didn't make the point that the accused in a criminal trail doesn't have to help the prosecution.) But City didn't make any false statements so it is all (literally) a bit academic. He thinks that as City did not provide all information requested by UEFA pursuant to Article 56 of the FFP, we should have been banned - i.e. for not providing evidence of something that didn't happen.

Banned for non-cooperation? Fucking hell. The way some people go on, it’s like UEFA should be held in the same regard as Interpol or the FBI when they are nothing more than a sporting body full of cuckolds who make up shitty rules as they go along to appease some of their members and then punish certain clubs on a whim at the request of said members rather than based on hard evidence, only to be made to look like a bunch of incompetent bent twats when an independent court respected the world over hears the case!

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Just in case this hasn't been posted? You may find this interesting PB & others. You have to register to read the article.

This article is written by Björn Hessert, University of Zurich. By way of disclosure, Björn works as a research assistant for Prof. Dr. Ulrich Haas, who was one of the three CAS arbitrators in the Manchester City FC v UEFA proceedings. Björn would like to stress that he himself was not involved in any capacity in the proceedings and that all of the opinions expressed herein are entirely his own. He would further like to emphasise that Prof. Dr. Ulrich Haas neither did provide assistance nor share any inside information.

The decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) of 13 July 2020 in Manchester City FC v. Union of European Football Association (UEFA)[1] has caused a sporting earthquake in European and international football. The repercussions of this decision are not yet foreseeable and may lead to amendments of the often criticised[2] and arguably unenforceable[3] Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. This is for others to decide in the future. Apart from any FFP-related issues, the decision taken by the majority of the CAS panel of arbitrators (CAS panel) raises interesting questions in relation to the duty of athletes and clubs to cooperate with sports governing bodies, which is the subject of this contribution. This article recaps the decision and then examines two such questions, namely:

• The legal relationship between procedural request for disclosure and the duty to cooperate; and

• The treatment of time-barred information.

Get access to this article and all of the expert analysis and commentary at LawInSport

https://www.lawinsport.com/sports/f...-the-man-city-v-uefa-decision?category_id=153

Using the words "unenforceable FFP regulations" is enough to convince me I really don't need to read it.

 

[levets]

I haven't been able to post my views since publication of the report. I'll also face difficulties in posting for some time to come (this is a one-off contribution and I won't be able to respond to replies to it).

But the conclusion to that article, especially the closing paragraphs, is the ultimate takeaway from CAS. This is all the more valuable as it comes from a legal professional who's (presumably) neutral in terms of fan allegiance.

I also note that CAS has been called not fit for purpose by some of our detractors in recent days. Not so. What's shown itself up as most unfit for purpose in this saga is the British football media.

City were charged with inflating revenue under sponsorship contracts whose fair value wasn't contested by UEFA, under which the relevant services had been provided, and which were underwritten by organs of the Abu Dhabi Emirati government.

All of this was in the public domain. And it showed, as many of us on here repeated ad nauseam, that MCFC would highly likely prevail before CAS unless UEFA possessed evidence hitherto unknown to us. Of course, they ultimately didn't.

Yet the British football media unanimously gloried in the prospect of our demise from the publication of Der Spiegel's revelations onwards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall one media outlet (and I mean literally not a single fucking one) ever at any stage suggesting that City may prevail.

It was all in the emails, they gloated. Well, chaps, take a look at what the CAS says about that. Should hardly have required the Brain of fucking Britain to work it out, should it.

Now, your level of performance has been truly execrable on an objective level from any body of professionals with pretensions to even bare adequacy as a group. One issue is that we find football writers trying to grapple with complex issues of finance and law when they're, perfectly understandably, lamentably ill-equipped to do so - even those who claim expertise in the relevant areas. But there's a deluge of cases where the ineptitude is bound in with bad faith: they're also desperate for us to fail.

Well, it isn't failure, is it? Quite the contrary. On the main point, the one that matters, the one on which UEFA's AC tried to hang an extended ban, it was rather emphatic: as has been said elsewhere, count the usage of terms such as 'no evidence' in the report. Anyway, try to convert the result into football terms and you're probably looking at something like 4-0.

By all means indulge your incompetence and bias by trawling through the rest of the report, the flim-flam, for out-of-context phrases you can use to discredit City for the delectation of your clickbait sheep. Go big on the barely relevant obstruction point if you want to. We're happy to have obstructed an investigation mired in illegally obtained materials, prejudicial conduct, and vicious and self-interested third-party lobbying, all egged on by vacuous press cheerleading.

The thing is, you've shown us what you are now, haven't you? We knew all along, of course, but you used to try and gaslight us. You reported on us fairly and we were too thin-skinned to see it, you used to say. That won't wash any longer, will it? Act as PR shills for our enemies in the way you seem to want to. Fine. Don't expect a reaction from us other than utterly fucking despising you for it, though.

A final mention for David Conn, the self-appointed conscience of football. I long regarded his professional success as an example of Emperor's new clothes syndrome as others queued up to praise him extravagantly. I did, however, respect him for what seemed to be an ethical approach and genuine integrity.

What a sad state of affairs, then, to see his tendentious output over the last few months. It truly rivals the worst imaginable from any bigoted, comically biased, bottom-feeding hack scum that's out there. Still, chin up, David. You can always trot off back to FC United and help your mate Walsh be the exemplar of soul in modern football. Oh.

OK, maybe The Guardian will let you write a bit for the front end of the paper. Oh, no, another no-go. You did those stories on Orgreave a while back and they were fucking dreadful so you were sent back to the toy section. Looks as though you've found your level, then, doesn't it. As have City, however much you and your journo mates wish it were otherwise.

marvellous post.

 

[Citizen Green]

Must admit after yesterday I was expecting a steady stream of new Der Spiegel documents! I wonder when the next one lands? Unless City have taken some sort of action.

 

[Woody135]

Submitted my BBC complaint (first time)

I’ve had enough to be honest. I’ve never complained to any online platform before but the reputation of my club has been through the mud for months and now it has been given the legal vindication that it has been stating since the start. Only you wouldn’t know that was the story from your article.

MCFC has stated throughout, that it did not break any financial rules and that all emails being reported and discussed were hacked and being taken out of context.

Of course MCFC were right on all 3 cases. Cas has found there to be no evidence of any wrongdoing; the emails were hacked and they were being taken out of context (a number of them had elements deleted before publishing and one was the amalgamation of 2 different emails).

Call it what you like but essentially the world has assumed guilt on the part of MCFC based on completely false and fake information.

Only this isn’t the angle your article decided to run with. Despite the unbiased requirement of the BBC, it appears you remain undetatched from the partisan nature of football (no doubt a large number of your football writers are football fans, do they declare their team as part of their job? Who is the journalist that wrote this piece a fan of out of interest...) and the necessity to pander to the key fan bases of Liverpool and Manchester United (amongst others) who did not wish MCFC to be found not guilty.

So instead of showing MCFC to be cleared of all financial violations of FFP (i.e. the whole basis of the story), your article focussed on the smaller bit that was proved (i.e. that MCFC did not cooperate with UEFAs investigation).

When the original punishment was brought (for clear breaches of FFP and failure to cooperate) the main story was on clear breaches of FFP. Now they have been exonerated of that, the storyline should have focussed on the same subject. Not twisted as you have to move to the non-story of uncooperation.

I expect better and hope for fairer reporting on this matter.

Had my response:

Thank you for getting in touch about our reporting on Manchester City’s Uefa FFP case.

As a result of the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) 93-page legal document being released to the media with no embargo to allow preparation, the news story was a naturally developing one over the first couple of hours as the full details were fully digested. The piece underwent a number of changes in that period. Importantly none of the alterations were as a result of factual errors – it was the process of our journalists developing the initial take into the full story.

By 9.00pm the story was finalised with headline and copy referencing the fact that the report had found there was 'no conclusive evidence” Manchester City “disguised funding from their owner as sponsorship'.

The criticism of Manchester City by CAS was an important part of the story. Manchester City were said to have committed a “severe breach” by showing a “blatant disregard” to UEFA, European football’s governing body. The panel said that Manchester City were to be “seriously reproached” for obstructing UEFA’s investigation. The 10m Euros fine, albeit reduced from 30m, remains one of the biggest in football history.

When the CAS verdict was released the previous week we had already reported prominently that Manchester City had overturned their ban and had been cleared of “disguising equity funds as sponsorship contributions.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53387306

Therefore in our initial version of the story on the release of the full report we focused on the criticism of Manchester City from CAS that we judged key new information. We included high up in the story that “the panel cannot reach the conclusion that disguised funding was paid to City” and in subsequent versions built up that part of the story with more information.

Reporting on a complex and evolving story like this required our journalists to digest a high volume of detail to produce an accurate and impartial account of the case.

Thank you again for your feedback, which has been shared with the relevant teams.

Kind regards,

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

“”

Essentially. We jumped to a negative story/headline and then watered it down when we understood the full context.

That’s the whole problem! Its always negative first, truth/balance later

 

[M18CTID]

I haven't been able to post my views since publication of the report. I'll also face difficulties in posting for some time to come (this is a one-off contribution and I won't be able to respond to replies to it).

But the conclusion to that article, especially the closing paragraphs, is the ultimate takeaway from CAS. This is all the more valuable as it comes from a legal professional who's (presumably) neutral in terms of fan allegiance.

I also note that CAS has been called not fit for purpose by some of our detractors in recent days. Not so. What's shown itself up as most unfit for purpose in this saga is the British football media.

City were charged with inflating revenue under sponsorship contracts whose fair value wasn't contested by UEFA, under which the relevant services had been provided, and which were underwritten by organs of the Abu Dhabi Emirati government.

All of this was in the public domain. And it showed, as many of us on here repeated ad nauseam, that MCFC would highly likely prevail before CAS unless UEFA possessed evidence hitherto unknown to us. Of course, they ultimately didn't.

Yet the British football media unanimously gloried in the prospect of our demise from the publication of Der Spiegel's revelations onwards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall one media outlet (and I mean literally not a single fucking one) ever at any stage suggesting that City may prevail.

It was all in the emails, they gloated. Well, chaps, take a look at what the CAS says about that. Should hardly have required the Brain of fucking Britain to work it out, should it.

Now, your level of performance has been truly execrable on an objective level from any body of professionals with pretensions to even bare adequacy as a group. One issue is that we find football writers trying to grapple with complex issues of finance and law when they're, perfectly understandably, lamentably ill-equipped to do so - even those who claim expertise in the relevant areas. But there's a deluge of cases where the ineptitude is bound in with bad faith: they're also desperate for us to fail.

Well, it isn't failure, is it? Quite the contrary. On the main point, the one that matters, the one on which UEFA's AC tried to hang an extended ban, it was rather emphatic: as has been said elsewhere, count the usage of terms such as 'no evidence' in the report. Anyway, try to convert the result into football terms and you're probably looking at something like 4-0.

By all means indulge your incompetence and bias by trawling through the rest of the report, the flim-flam, for out-of-context phrases you can use to discredit City for the delectation of your clickbait sheep. Go big on the barely relevant obstruction point if you want to. We're happy to have obstructed an investigation mired in illegally obtained materials, prejudicial conduct, and vicious and self-interested third-party lobbying, all egged on by vacuous press cheerleading.

The thing is, you've shown us what you are now, haven't you? We knew all along, of course, but you used to try and gaslight us. You reported on us fairly and we were too thin-skinned to see it, you used to say. That won't wash any longer, will it? Act as PR shills for our enemies in the way you seem to want to. Fine. Don't expect a reaction from us other than utterly fucking despising you for it, though.

A final mention for David Conn, the self-appointed conscience of football. I long regarded his professional success as an example of Emperor's new clothes syndrome as others queued up to praise him extravagantly. I did, however, respect him for what seemed to be an ethical approach and genuine integrity.

What a sad state of affairs, then, to see his tendentious output over the last few months. It truly rivals the worst imaginable from any bigoted, comically biased, bottom-feeding hack scum that's out there. Still, chin up, David. You can always trot off back to FC United and help your mate Walsh be the exemplar of soul in modern football. Oh.

OK, maybe The Guardian will let you write a bit for the front end of the paper. Oh, no, another no-go. You did those stories on Orgreave a while back and they were fucking dreadful so you were sent back to the toy section. Looks as though you've found your level, then, doesn't it. As have City, however much you and your journo mates wish it were otherwise.

No need to wait another 9 years and 5 months for the Bluemoon post of the decade nominations. It’s already in the bag.

 

[Marklr]

Had my response:

Thank you for getting in touch about our reporting on Manchester City’s Uefa FFP case.

As a result of the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) 93-page legal document being released to the media with no embargo to allow preparation, the news story was a naturally developing one over the first couple of hours as the full details were fully digested. The piece underwent a number of changes in that period. Importantly none of the alterations were as a result of factual errors – it was the process of our journalists developing the initial take into the full story.

By 9.00pm the story was finalised with headline and copy referencing the fact that the report had found there was 'no conclusive evidence” Manchester City “disguised funding from their owner as sponsorship'.

The criticism of Manchester City by CAS was an important part of the story. Manchester City were said to have committed a “severe breach” by showing a “blatant disregard” to UEFA, European football’s governing body. The panel said that Manchester City were to be “seriously reproached” for obstructing UEFA’s investigation. The 10m Euros fine, albeit reduced from 30m, remains one of the biggest in football history.

When the CAS verdict was released the previous week we had already reported prominently that Manchester City had overturned their ban and had been cleared of “disguising equity funds as sponsorship contributions.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53387306

Therefore in our initial version of the story on the release of the full report we focused on the criticism of Manchester City from CAS that we judged key new information. We included high up in the story that “the panel cannot reach the conclusion that disguised funding was paid to City” and in subsequent versions built up that part of the story with more information.

Reporting on a complex and evolving story like this required our journalists to digest a high volume of detail to produce an accurate and impartial account of the case.

Thank you again for your feedback, which has been shared with the relevant teams.

Kind regards,

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

“”

Essentially. We jumped to a negative story/headline and then watered it down when we understood the full context.

That’s the whole problem! Its always negative first, truth/balance later

The negative headline is still there. The release of the full report was a positive for City fans..yet they turn it into a negative. Same with any story about us. Boycott the cnuts. We dont need them.

 

[Carlos- the- jackal]

I haven't been able to post my views since publication of the report. I'll also face difficulties in posting for some time to come (this is a one-off contribution and I won't be able to respond to replies to it).

But the conclusion to that article, especially the closing paragraphs, is the ultimate takeaway from CAS. This is all the more valuable as it comes from a legal professional who's (presumably) neutral in terms of fan allegiance.

I also note that CAS has been called not fit for purpose by some of our detractors in recent days. Not so. What's shown itself up as most unfit for purpose in this saga is the British football media.

City were charged with inflating revenue under sponsorship contracts whose fair value wasn't contested by UEFA, under which the relevant services had been provided, and which were underwritten by organs of the Abu Dhabi Emirati government.

All of this was in the public domain. And it showed, as many of us on here repeated ad nauseam, that MCFC would highly likely prevail before CAS unless UEFA possessed evidence hitherto unknown to us. Of course, they ultimately didn't.

Yet the British football media unanimously gloried in the prospect of our demise from the publication of Der Spiegel's revelations onwards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall one media outlet (and I mean literally not a single fucking one) ever at any stage suggesting that City may prevail.

It was all in the emails, they gloated. Well, chaps, take a look at what the CAS says about that. Should hardly have required the Brain of fucking Britain to work it out, should it.

Now, your level of performance has been truly execrable on an objective level from any body of professionals with pretensions to even bare adequacy as a group. One issue is that we find football writers trying to grapple with complex issues of finance and law when they're, perfectly understandably, lamentably ill-equipped to do so - even those who claim expertise in the relevant areas. But there's a deluge of cases where the ineptitude is bound in with bad faith: they're also desperate for us to fail.

Well, it isn't failure, is it? Quite the contrary. On the main point, the one that matters, the one on which UEFA's AC tried to hang an extended ban, it was rather emphatic: as has been said elsewhere, count the usage of terms such as 'no evidence' in the report. Anyway, try to convert the result into football terms and you're probably looking at something like 4-0.

By all means indulge your incompetence and bias by trawling through the rest of the report, the flim-flam, for out-of-context phrases you can use to discredit City for the delectation of your clickbait sheep. Go big on the barely relevant obstruction point if you want to. We're happy to have obstructed an investigation mired in illegally obtained materials, prejudicial conduct, and vicious and self-interested third-party lobbying, all egged on by vacuous press cheerleading.

The thing is, you've shown us what you are now, haven't you? We knew all along, of course, but you used to try and gaslight us. You reported on us fairly and we were too thin-skinned to see it, you used to say. That won't wash any longer, will it? Act as PR shills for our enemies in the way you seem to want to. Fine. Don't expect a reaction from us other than utterly fucking despising you for it, though.

A final mention for David Conn, the self-appointed conscience of football. I long regarded his professional success as an example of Emperor's new clothes syndrome as others queued up to praise him extravagantly. I did, however, respect him for what seemed to be an ethical approach and genuine integrity.

What a sad state of affairs, then, to see his tendentious output over the last few months. It truly rivals the worst imaginable from any bigoted, comically biased, bottom-feeding hack scum that's out there. Still, chin up, David. You can always trot off back to FC United and help your mate Walsh be the exemplar of soul in modern football. Oh.

OK, maybe The Guardian will let you write a bit for the front end of the paper. Oh, no, another no-go. You did those stories on Orgreave a while back and they were fucking dreadful so you were sent back to the toy section. Looks as though you've found your level, then, doesn't it. As have City, however much you and your journo mates wish it were otherwise.

I applaud you sir, top notch.

 

[deano ou812]

The negative headline is still there. The release of the full report was a positive for City fans..yet they turn it into a negative. Same with any story about us. Boycott the cnuts. We dont need them.

Boycott,I’d have them all lined up bent over,and thousands of city fans walking past giving them all a good kick up the arse ..

 

[Jacko1956]

Banned for non-cooperation? Fucking hell. The way some people go on, it’s like UEFA should be held in the same regard as Interpol or the FBI when they are nothing more than a sporting body full of cuckolds who make up shitty rules as they go along to appease some of their members and then punish certain clubs on a whim at the request of said members rather than based on hard evidence, only to be made to look like a bunch of incompetent bent twats when an independent court respected the world over hears the case!

Couldn't have put it better well said sir !