Football Leaks/Der Spiegel articles

[Prestwich_Blue]

The laywers sat down with uefa and agreed a full and final settlement and this was 4 years ago, the noise is being made by hopeful pro rag journalists and keyboard warriors who havent got a clue about ffp.

It’s like getting a £25 parking fine because you overstayed the time you paid for by half-an-hour, paying it then the parking company coming back to you because their clock was wrong and it was actually an hour.

 

[Ban-jani]

Playing devil's advocate here, although I think I'm answering my own question;

If FFP is a masquerade to simply to protect the cartel and that we suspect City called UEFA's bluff, why have none of the other multi-millionaire/billionaire owners not challenged the ruling to allow them to pump their own money into their own footie club business?

Surely HRH isn't the only rich Premier League owner, with the only lawyers who spotted the flaw in FFP?

I think it’s become apparent that UEFA we’re relaxed on the rules. The only clubs to severely punished are smaller ones.

Us and PSG ended up only paying £20m and UEFA obviously started turning a blind eye.

I don’t think there was much need.

 

[Steve68]

Is anybody really doubting whether or not it's true? Seems to be pretty solid evidence in the form of the (illegally obtained) emails that the club have found ways and means of circumventing the rules. The issue is whether or not they actually broke rules or exploited loopholes.

I think most of our fans seem ok with this on the basis the rules were unfair in the first place and football is full of this kind shit going on behind the scenes etc But I think it's understandable why the club hasn't spoken out yet because they'd be lying if they denied a lot of the allegations.

When FFP was first announced a lot of people suggested that if the club brought lawyers in and pushed things all of the way, UEFA wouldn't have a leg to stand on. If that was really the case maybe we should have challenged the rules at the start rather than look for creative ways to break them. Or maybe we needed to just do whatever we needed to do before the drawbridge was pulled up and worry about the consequences later.

Unless they are completely fabricsting evidence and our Legal Piggy Bank is empty it’s probably pretty true. And I am in the Don’t Give A Damn school. FFP was crafted to pull the ladder up after Chelski, The Rags and the rest had spent megabucks to make their position unassailable.

The rules were crafted to exclude the Rags debt financing approach.

And as far as the whole thing about our owners being undemocratic and the like.

Sure. But that in that part of the world democracy equals radical Islamic governments who have no intention of being democratic after they get in. Politics is the equivalent of slowly letting the pressure out of a pressure cooker instead of yanking off the lid. When it comes to The Middle East our despots are practically saints.

I draw the line at real crooks like any rich Russian you care to name and wouldn’t consider bloodsucking Yank leeches fit owners either.

It’s too late to go back to the old days when it was just local, incompetents, crooks and spivs owning clubs. There’s too much money to be made and I’d bet there isn’t more than a tiny handful of Premier clubs whose owners could pass a serious Fit And Proper test anyway. Let’s face it, you don’t get football club owning rich in the modern world without being a straight up crook or some other variant of immoral bastard. Particularly if you’re Russian.

I’m sick of the hypocrisy. Just let owners spend what they want. At the end of the day as the Rags show, you can have all the money in the works and still be crap. And at the end of the day you can only field 11 players. And as Leicester showed - you can win the premiership even if only three or four of them are any real good and one of the rest is Wes Morgan.

 

[domalino]

Financial doping – who cares? Manchester City are pure joy

As Sergio Agüero thumped the ball into the roof of the net and Bernardo Silva danced through Manchester United’s cumbersome midfield, was there a moment when you grimaced and thought, “but only if they had adhered to those Financial Fair Play rules?”

Did you admire the bursts of excellence from one of the most brilliant of English club sides or did you find your enjoyment soured by what Arsène Wenger would call “financial doping”?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/financial-doping-who-cares-city-are-pure-joy-9czrqsw2g


Bold take from the Times.

 

[Henkeman]

Financial doping – who cares? Manchester City are pure joy

As Sergio Agüero thumped the ball into the roof of the net and Bernardo Silva danced through Manchester United’s cumbersome midfield, was there a moment when you grimaced and thought, “but only if they had adhered to those Financial Fair Play rules?”

Did you admire the bursts of excellence from one of the most brilliant of English club sides or did you find your enjoyment soured by what Arsène Wenger would call “financial doping”?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/financial-doping-who-cares-city-are-pure-joy-9czrqsw2g


Bold take from the Times.

Can you pick out a couple of quotes for those of us who aren't signed up to the Times?

 

[domalino]

Can you pick out a couple of quotes for those of us who aren't signed up to the Times?

I think we get in trouble with @Ric for posting too much content but basically..

- FFP is just a speedbump
- Football fans don't really care about it
- The worst thing about the leaks was the brazen attitude more than the actual extent the rules were broken
- City still seem fragile because Pep + Mansour won't be around forever.

It basically seems like a football fan trying to justify loving our football while not being a fan of the money.


I think he's kidding himself if he thinks we're going to go away again which he seems to

Thanks to the oil money poured in by Sheikh Mansour, the club are transformed into a global force but, soon enough, Guardiola and these players will move on. No owner wants to keep bankrolling a club, not even an oligarch or a Sheikh, and City do not have a wealth that makes them immune from a downturn. These are, quite possibly, the very best of times for City.

For as long as it lasts, the team are something to behold.

But rules that could stand in the way of football like this, and Agüero hitting the back of the net, are always likely to struggle for moral force among football folk. City’s contempt for the rules may have been laid bare but I suspect that goal did not lead to too many troubled debates about the ethics that lay behind it.

 

[Citizen Green]

I think we get in trouble with @Ric for posting too much content but basically..

- FFP is just a speedbump
- Football fans don't really care about it
- The worst thing about the leaks was the brazen attitude more than the actual extent the rules were broken
- City still seem fragile because Pep + Mansour won't be around forever.

It basically seems like a football fan trying to justify loving our football while not being a fan of the money.


I think he's kidding himself if he thinks we're going to go away again which he seems to

This is the narrative that's beginning to annoy me, the club as a whole is now self-sustainable.

Yes the Etihad & Aabar deals may have initially been inflated, but do people seriously believe we couldn't go and get a sponsorship from another company worth equal value? We've just signed a deal with Puma worth £50m.

 

[Mike D]

The laywers sat down with uefa and agreed a full and final settlement and this was 4 years ago, the noise is being made by hopeful pro rag journalists and keyboard warriors who havent got a clue about ffp.

The joke is that if FFP had been applied retrospectively the rags would be in deep shit just like most of the top teams in Europe.

 

[domalino]

This is the narrative that's beginning to annoy me, the club as a whole is now self-sustainable.

Yes the Etihad & Aabar deals may have initially been inflated, but do people seriously believe we couldn't go and get a sponsorship from another company worth equal value? We've just signed a deal with Puma worth £50m.

Even if we did lose some money on those deals, it's not going to be that significant. Abu Dhabi deals represent what, 75-100m per year? Even if we replaced those with half sized deals, it'd cost us £35-50m per year ie 10% of revenue.

 

[St.Pauli support]

It’s like getting a £25 parking fine because you overstayed the time you paid for by half-an-hour, paying it then the parking company coming back to you because their clock was wrong and it was actually an hour.

But we've had a settlement with the parking company and were refunded 67% (33 of 49m), about £16.84.

What if the parking company claims those £16.84 now, when they think we have been cheating with the clock?