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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7644050\/2026\/09\/30\/man-city-premier-league-case-findings-breakdown\/?source=athletic_moneycall_newsletter&campaign=19934032&userId=16438468",
    "parsed_content": "The opinion of the independent regulatory commission fades to black. A redacted section on the final page would pass for a stain were it not so neat and rectangular. A stain on the reputation of Manchester City Football Club.While the club maintain their innocence and remind everyone the process is \u201congoing, with significant elements uncompleted\u201d as they carry on a \u201crelentless\u201d pursuit of an appeal, the initial written reasons for the commission\u2019s guilty verdict were damning.Found guilty of all charges relating to serious breaches, City, in the words of the league\u2019s chief executive Richard Masters, \u201csystematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade\u201d.The findings, condensed into 40 pages by the independent commission, vindicate the Premier League, which confirmed on Tuesday that, as revealed by\u00a0The Athletic\u00a0on Friday, the club had been found guilty of almost all charges \u2014 including the most serious breaches of the league\u2019s financial regulations between 2009 and 2018.City were found to have artificially inflated their income and reduced costs through \u201cdisguised funding\u201d schemes such as \u201csham\u201d contracts and agreements \u201cconcocted\u201d to conceal equity contributions and investment from Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), which owns the club. The commission concluded that \u201cby its conduct, the club clearly intended to circumvent the PL rules\u201d.\n \n \n \n \n \n What You Should Read Next\n \n \n \n \n Manchester City have become \u2018Sham FC\u2019. They deserve the heaviest punishment\n \n \n Nine years of wrongdoing - as laid out in the independent commission's damning judgment - disfigured English football \n \n \n \n \n \n How complex was the case \u2014 and what stands out from the findings?Since it broke away from the Football League in 1992, the Premier League has known many moments of high drama on the pitch. Off it, however, nothing compares with the stakes of this case. Masters called it \u201cthe most significant in Premier League history\u201d.The \u201chigh-level overview\u201d of the 42 days over which the case was heard from September to December 2024 read like a match report. It was \u201cextremely hard fought\u201d on both sides and \u201cfiercely contested\u201d. City, for instance, even challenged the Premier League\u2019s ability to bring the charges in the first place.What do other Premier League clubs think of Manchester City?Nnamdi OnyeagwaraThese were divided into four categories (two of which were further divided into four sub-categories). The only one in which City were not found guilty was a sub-category of Charge Four, which requires clubs to comply with certain requests made of them by the Premier League during the course of investigation.The scale of the case, which dealt with the period between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons, was enormous and contributed to the independent commission taking \u201cmuch longer than we would have wished, and much longer than we had anticipated.\u201d For the first time, it is understandable to see why: millions of documents were produced when the Premier League sought disclosure.The league\u2019s statement of charges and facts was, for context, more or less the same length as Fyodor Dostoevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment. It was subsequently supplemented by 50 pages of further information, taking it to 550 pages. City\u2019s Answer was more of a novella: \u2018only\u2019 200 pages. Witness statements \u201cran to well over 700 pages,\u201d as the Premier League called six to give testimony and City served statements from 24.It is here, in the section regarding how the evidential picture was formed, that one of the worst revelations about City\u2019s conduct emerges. The independent commission found \u201cevidence given by a number of important factual witnesses called to give evidence on behalf of the club was false in a number of key respects, and that certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest\u201d.The core decision of the independent commission, which, it must be said, City believe to contain \u201cclear material errors, of law, principle and fact\u201d, retold the origin story of the modern-day version of the club in the barest of prose and the most scathing independently-established facts.It charts the acquisition in 2008 of a 90 per cent stake in City by ADUG, a private Abu Dhabi company ultimately owned by His Highness Sheikh Mansour, and remarks \u201chow he confirmed that he was buying the club in a private capacity\u201d. This \u201cappears\u201d to have been done, the independent commission states, as an answer to \u201cmeet media speculation that the club had not been bought by him but by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi itself\u201d. His Highness Sheikh Mansour\u2019s \u201cambitious plans and ambitions for the club\u201d \u2014 note the distinction \u2014 are remarked upon.The paragraph that follows is redacted.\n Sheikh Mansour (second right) owns Manchester CityFranck Fife \/ AFP via Getty ImagesWhat about the \u2018Disguised Funding Scheme\u2019?What became clear \u201cfrom the early days\u201d, however, was that realising those aforementioned ambitions would take \u201cvery significant funds\u201d from ADUG.It is estimated that almost half a billion pounds in equity contributions were made in the first two years of ADUG\u2019s ownership. This was not a sustainable model. City needed to raise commercial revenue if they were to avoid record losses and comply with European football governing body UEFA\u2019s financial regulations.\u201cIt was against that background that in early 2010, the club devised a plan to disguise shareholder funding (i.e equity contributions paid by ADUG) as \u2018commercial partner revenue\u2019 (i.e Abu Dhabi sponsorship income),\u201d the independent commission explains, \u201cwhat we have described\u2026 as the Disguised Funding Scheme\u201d.This involved entering into sponsorship agreements with Abu Dhabi-based companies that were priced \u201cwell above Fair Market Value\u201d. The value of these sponsorship agreements, in addition to being inflated, was not fully paid by the sponsor, either. The independent commission established they only paid a \u201cbase sum\u201d. The balance or \u201ctagged sum\u201d \u2014 i.e the rest of the money \u2014 \u201cwould be payable (and was in fact paid) by ADUG\u201d.As my colleague Chris Weatherspoon wrote, City\u2019s total commercial revenues over the period in question, 2009-10 to 2017-18, were stated to be \u00a31.335billion. Of that, per the independent commission\u2019s report, \u00a3949.9m was attributable to Abu Dhabi-based sponsors, or 71 per cent. Within that \u00a3949.9m, the commission found that just \u00a3119.3m was paid by those sponsors, with the remaining \u00a3830.7m paid by ADUG, City\u2019s owner.Stripping out ADUG\u2019s payments, but leaving the amounts actually paid by those sponsors, would have left City\u2019s commercial revenues over the period at \u00a3398.7million. That figure would have been the sixth-most in English football across that time: around \u00a3200m higher than seventh-best Aston Villa, but over \u00a3100m behind the next-lowest of the \u2018Big Six\u2019 clubs, Tottenham Hotspur.\n \nShare\"Each of those AD (Abu Dhabi) Sponsorship Agreements were (as a matter of law) shams and\/or arrangements whose economic substance was very different to the appearance given in the AD Sponsorship Agreements themselves,\" the independent commission states.As such, City gave \"a misleading impression to third parties (including regulators and its auditors) in its financial statements and any required FFP (financial fair play) returns that its commercial revenues from AD Sponsorship Agreements (and so its income generally) were far, far greater than was in fact the case, and to conceal from third parties the true extent of the equity contributions in fact being made into the club by ADUG\u201d.Curiously, paragraph 70 of the report informs \"there was no direct evidence that (REDACTED) was aware of the Disguised Funding Scheme or authorised the operation of the Disguised Funding Scheme. We therefore concluded that the Disguised Funding Scheme was operated without (REDACTED)\u00a0knowledge\u201d.There were other schemes deployed by City to conceal equity injections from ownership.One was known as the Fordham Arrangement. This involved a supposed third-party, Fordham, acquiring from the club the entitlement to benefit financially from City players' image rights. However, Fordham, the independent commission found, was \"little more than a front for ADUG\u201d.Paragraph 87 intriguingly states: \"The realities of the Fordham Arrangement were known to REDACTED. The Fordham Arrangement was operated with the knowledge and approval of (at least) those individuals identified in Appendix 19 (which is yet to be published). Those individuals included REDACTED.\"The coda to the independent commission's report \u2014 \"we find the charges set out above proven to the required standard\" \u2014 will make chilling reading for City fans who continue to be told the club is in possession of \"a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence\" that proves their innocence.How have City responded?\"I have nothing to say,\" City chief executive Ferran Soriano said on Tuesday evening when confronted by the UK broadcaster Sky News at a meeting of the European Football Clubs in Copenhagen, Denmark.Soriano has, however, recorded an internal video message for City's employees in which he says, \"The whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation that the owner's personal money was somehow and secretly put into the club via some sponsors from Abu Dhabi. This is just not true.\u201dA City statement said: \"Manchester City FC is both disappointed and surprised by the opinion of the Premier League Commission, that has been published today. The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case. The club will therefore be relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums.\"The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements uncompleted. Manchester City FC will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.\"The club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence.\"The club is obviously restricted in what it can say further until all future proceedings are complete.\"\n Soriano (right) recorded a video for internal viewing at CityMichael Regan\/Getty ImagesWhat could happen next? How would an appeal work?More than three years after the Premier League's complaint, City are yet to prove it is \"just not true\", as Soriano states, and scrutiny of the club only intensifies.The Premier League is obliged, under section 55 of the Football Governance Act 2025, to inform the Independent Football Regulator \"before a penalty, sanction or other requirement (whether financial or otherwise) is imposed, whether by the organiser or another person, on a club that breaches or is suspected to have breached a relevant rule of a specified competition\u201d.City have until Friday to appeal the decision, as my colleague Sian Harrison has explained.According to the rules, either party may appeal to a fresh, three-member commission appointed by the league's judicial panel. Any appeal hearing \u2014 which is a review of the original verdict and not a full rehearing of the case \u2014 is limited to five days and must be completed within 12 weeks of the appeal being lodged, with a decision due no later than 30 days after its conclusion.After the appeal process has been exhausted, either party may also consider an arbitration challenge to a further panel, but these can only be made on limited grounds. Any further challenge could be brought in the commercial division of the UK's High Court, but only against an arbitration decision.The independent commission's opinion, of course, raises questions about the future of City's ownership and board in the event the verdict stands after appeal.Should, for example, ADUG be forced to divest? And what of the board? Should they resign? Would its members be able to pass the \u2018Owners and directors' test without the decision being overturned?We are also yet to see if UEFA is able to reopen its investigation into City's affairs from the period in question.What have Manchester City actually been charged with?Tifo FootballGeopolitically, the outcome of this case could have a bearing on the UK's relationship with Abu Dhabi.Within a week of becoming prime minister in July this year, Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, spoke to the president of the United Arab Emirates, which includes Abu Dhabi, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. A press release about that phone call remarked: \"The Prime Minister began by thanking His Highness for his country's investment into Manchester and the incredible impact it has had on the city.\" It concluded: \"The two leaders look forward to speaking again soon.\"In the meantime, the process remains ongoing.\"Remember, we have been here before,\" Soriano said in his video message to staff. \"In 2020, we were also wrongly ruled against for many of the same issues. We appealed to an independent body in CAS, and we won. We will now be relentless in our work. We will focus on the independent appeal process and also all legal avenues open to us in order to win the case. And we will take all necessary action to protect the club and seek compensation from any party that seeks to damage it, now and in the future.\"The night is darkest just before the dawn, and as much as Soriano continues to project confidence, the publication of the independent commission's report must go down as one of City's bleakest hours.\nJames Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio.Follow Sep 30, 2026Connections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports termsPlay today's puzzleWhat did you think of this story?MEHSOLIDAWESOME",
    "published_at": "2026-09-30T06:01:42+00:00",
    "author_name": "James Horncastle",
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    "ai_headline": "Manchester City found guilty of financial breaches: What the independent commission\u2019s findings mean",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Manchester City found guilty of financial breaches by independent commission",
    "ai_excerpt": "Manchester City has been found guilty of serious breaches of Premier League financial regulations between 2009 and 2018, including artificially inflating income through 'disguised funding' schemes. The club maintains its innocence and plans to appeal the 'damning' verdict.",
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