Football Leaks/Der Spiegel articles

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

All this gets more and more ridiculous every day and is clearly nothing more than a vendetta of jealous elements of German sporting life waged by a sensationalist German publication based on dubious materials probably obtained illegally. There would appear to be very little chance of a reopened enquiry based on this trash.

In Britain, of course, we have holier-than-thou table tennis players who simper that one cannot disobey rules because they are unfair. That is a judgement for the courts to make and they have not yet pronounced on the question. The law declares that any attempt to restrict investment, unless the aim of that investment is anti competitive, is void as are any punishments to enforce the limit on investment. Whatever can be said in favour of the legality of FFP I have yet to come across a serious legal opinion that the break even rule is anything other than an anti-competitive, protectionist measure to maintain a cartel which violates the right to invest. The law deals very severely with cartels. Sheikh Mansour has, as PB pointed out in his interview with City fan TV, invested in ways which are wholly acceptable to any sports' governing body and he has not, in any way, put the financial stability of the club in jeopardy. He has done nothing to damage competition. These considerations have to weigh heavily with UEFA if it wishes to revisit the question. If the break even principle is not sound in law the whole attack on City is shown to be nothing more than bile and jealousy.

It is clear that City gave serious consideration to legal action in 2014 and we can assume that City accepted neither the legality nor the fairness of the break even principle. I would be grateful to Prestwich Blue if he could tell me which deals reported by Der Spiegel as in any way "cheating" were concluded after the settlement agreed by the club and UEFA in 2014. Also, City have undergone the same inspection process that other clubs have, since 2014 without difficulty and, indeed, only last year (?) UEFA refused flatly a request from La Liga to look into City's compliance with FFP. Is there anything in these "revelations" which, even if they were true and admissible as evidence, which has not already been dealt with by UEFA.

I have never hidden my view that the break even rule is untenable in law, that UEFA could only prevent investment in a club if the aim of that investment were anti-competitive. It also seems that nothing City has done is against the law and nothing is, in fact, against the FFP regulations. But I would be very grateful for enlightenment on this, PB.

 

[rowarta]

Matthew Syed admitted to cheating against Desmond Douglas
https://tabletennisengland.co.uk/news/featured-news/matthew-syed-admits-one-of-his-biggest-regrets/

 

[laserblue]

Karl Heinze rummenigge anyone? Or am I being cynical

I suggested that the other day (that Der Spiegel was acting as a mouthpiece for Bayern) and was shouted down by some, one of whom called my suggestion "tripe". This has Rummenigge's fingerprints all over it and I'd be prepared to bet serious money Bayern were behind these 'leaks'.

 

[salfordbluetrue]

got to say disappointed with leaks today as far as i am concerned Pep signed on 3 years before he came so i can see why everyone is talking about other things.
So here goes, when Chelsea broke up the g14`s top 3 places they made it a top 4 when City broke up the g14`s top 4 they cried and cried they changed the rules and cried and cried they used a clubs tv station to administer the laws and cried and cried they got English refs banned from the world cup and cried and cried this muck spreading is just that an attempt to stop utd from losing millions of fans which would harm sky and no amount of advertising utd by sky is going to change the perception that utd are the new Milan
on another note utd were charged by UEFA when they broke rules on sponsorship, mainly the coining onto the pitch at half time with a different sponsor on their shirts the utd stance was `we at Manchester United have never knowingly broke UEFA rules` the wording was very specific it did not say who the we was, utd gave a substantial amount to charity as recompense and so avoided charges by UEFA , anyone out there remember which charity and who owned the charity? it would be more interesting than the leaks today especially as we know as little as 10% can go where it should

 

[laserblue]

The press from our country are a disgrace. Here we are with these half baked allegations yet Ogden, ducker, ladyman and Herbert( fuck me these are the new stooges surely) have gone in feet first and totally ripped us apart. They've shown their true colours, not that they hid them anyway but I think after this quietens down those four should be publically shamed, sued for defamation of character and slander and be barred for their lifetime from our club.
In a world full of twats and idiots these four clowns aren't welcome with their biased and negative shite.
We should call them out if we see them at the etihad and let them know what utter shithouses and bitter rag ****s they are and how they are an embarrassment to their profession.
Utter utter ****s of the highest order.

I agree completely mate but these fucking cowards have hidden behind inverted commas and words like alleged and allegedly at the same time as deciding we're guilty and ripping us apart. Complete twats the lot of them.

 

[Len Rum]

Thanks for the reply (and to everyone else who has replied or liked my post).

Even assuming HHSM paid Aabar to pay us, that doesn't IMHO make Aabar a related party.

What is a 'related party' is defined within the FFPR themselves. So in other words it was up to UEFA to decide who was, and who was not, a related party for the purposes of the FFPR. Except, in the section defining related parties, what they did was copy and paste the standard accountancy definition widely known as IAS24. So it would be very very surprising if 'related party' within the meaning of the FFPR means anything different than it means in ordinary accounting. And in fairness nobody has argued that it means anything different.

But a 'related party' is a well understood accountancy concept. It is defined within IAS24 and that definition does not cover the situation where you say to a third party 'if you sign up to this deal that sees us get £15m in sponsorship, we will make sure £12m of that money comes from somewhere else.' Now, UEFA could have drawn up their rules so that it did cover that situation, but they chose not to - or, more likely they didn't think of it. Either way, the autonomous meaning that 'related party' has for the purposes of the FFPR does NOT cover the situation that is said to have arisen in relation to Aabar.

Like I said in my last post, we may have broken the sprit of the FFPR if not the letter of the regulations. Since the spirit of the FFPR was to give the established G14 teams a competitive advantage at our expense I frankly don't give a fuck.

But if in your example the 'somewhere else' that pays the £12m is a related party doesn't that represent a breach of FFPR?

 

[Mr.Feeny]

Collymore is a thick clown. They can't strip us of a title because we haven't won their shitty competition yet, or demote us as we are not in their league. They can ban us from the competition but that's about it.

He's sitting in a room crying because he publically, obnoxiously said that Guardiola would fail here "playing triangles". After City won the title, he has constantly tried to shift the goal posts on social media as he frantically and furiously typed away at his keyboard, desperately fighting tears because the manager who doesn't know who Collymore is succeeded when the former ridiculed him and predicted failure.

 

[Don Karleone]

I largely kept my powder dry on this because I wanted to see all four parts of the story before forming a view, but given part 3 was so piss poor I think I have enough to articulate my thoughts.

The biggest criticism seems to be the complaint that City inflated sponsorship deals to circumvent FFP. Except they didn't inflate the sponsorship deals. The sponsorship deal with Asabar, for instance was £15m. Not £3m, or any other figure, but £15m. That's the amount that Aabar were contractually obliged to pay.

There is absolutely nothing in the FFPR that requires that any third party sponsorship money must, for instance, come from distributable profits. Where a third party gets the money from to sponsor a team is neither here nor there: what matters for the purposes of the FFPR is the sponsorship income. And in the case of Aabar, the amount of sponsorship income was £15m.

The complaint, when properly understood, cannot be that City overstated the sponsorship deal, because they didn't. They reported sponsorship from Aabar of £15m, which is exactly what the contract said. The complaint must be that Aabar would not have entered into that contract in the first place if it had not been made clear to them that £12m would be provided from elsewhere. So in other words, the value of the sponsorship was artificially inflated (assuming the emails are genuine).

That however does not contravene the regulations. Nowhere does UEFA get to impose its own 'true and fair' valuation of the sponsorship deals other than in the case of related party transactions, which IIRC Aabar wasn't. So, assuming the emails are genuine, and the additional sponsorship money actually originated from HHSM, did we breach the spirit of the regulations? yep. Did we take advantage of what the regulations don't say? Absolutely. Did we actually breach the regulations then in force? Absolutely not.

So the complaint when you boil it down to its bare essentials is that we found a way round the regulations, and didn't tell UEFA what we had done.

Well cry me a fucking river. We all know these regulations were designed as a means of ossifying the status quo and making it more difficult for a team to progress in that competition. Der Spiegel actually say that in terms - they say that City could (and they imply should) have lowered their on-pitch expectations. So if people want to cry about it now because we found an arguably immoral way round regulations that themselves were immoral from the get-go, me my guest.

For my own part, and if you are reading this Matthew Syed, I'm talking to you, I have an absolutely clear conscience. The club I support has breached no regulations, and the worst that can be said of them is that they have fought fire with fire. If you have a problem with that, feel free to write more of your sanctimonious shite. I have no problem with it whatsoever.

What a brilliant post.

 

[Trojan63]

Yes Arab money gets mentioned, but there is fuck all said about American debt[/

One thing that’s lost in all this, regardless of FFP, it’s legalities, competitiveness etc is the term ‘Arab money’ keeps popping up.

All the posts about the leaks and FFP keep mentioning ‘oil money’ and how City’s/PSG’s owners and their respective governments are corrupt/involved in human rights abuses, but we’ve heard precious little about Chelsea or Abramovich. Chelsea were of a similar size to us pre-takeovers, with us having 1 more First Division title, 1 more FA Cup, the same amount of League Cups, but them winning a trophy more recently. Their stadium capacity is just under our average attendance for our 2007 campaign.

This isn’t an attack on Chelsea or their fans, but where was the cries for FFP back then? Or does it coincide with United’s poor form in the past few years? Or Bayern losing the best manager and missing out on KDB? Smacks of racism if you ask me.

Curious that “Arab money” “dirty oil money” “state sponsored” only seems to apply to football and in particular City - Russia/Qatar awarded the World Cup - Golf/Tennis tournaments Grand Prix held in Abu Dhabi/Qatar/Dubai - don’t ever hear journalists or governing bodies screaming for boycotts/ punishments etc if they suspect poor human rights/moral/political problems - these sports seem happy to take the finance from the above nations

 

[Paladin]

I suggested that the other day (that Der Spiegel was acting as a mouthpiece for Bayern) and was shouted down by some, one of whom called my suggestion "tripe". This has Rummenigge's fingerprints all over it and I'd be prepared to bet serious money Bayern were behind these 'leaks'.

I agree. The red herring that Bayern held talks about the new Super League in there on day 1 to throw everyone off the scent.