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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7644529\/2026\/09\/30\/manchester-city-sham-financial-charges-punishment\/?source=athletic_moneycall_newsletter&campaign=19934032&userId=16438468",
    "parsed_content": "City's achievements, such as their 2017-18 title win (above), have been tainted Lynne Cameron\/Getty ImagesAt this stage, the narrative changes. No longer should it be a debate about whether the Premier League would dare to drum Manchester City out of England\u2019s top division. Now the question takes another form: how can you justify anything else?Attitudes can only harden now that the first official judgment has been published, subject to an appeal, and the sheer scale of deception is increasingly, and jarringly, clear.Nobody ever thought it would be pretty. We knew, City being City, that the numbers would be eye-watering. We knew there would be mountains of paperwork, legal arguments, redactions and recriminations.Even so, it was still quite something to read the initial 40 pages of findings issued by the independent commission and learn more, in detail, about how the club manipulated, doctored and abused the system to ensure English football was lopsided in their favour. We knew it was going to be bad. But this bad? No. It is on a different scale to anything the Premier League has seen before.Just consider one of the key strands of the document \u2014 published by the Premier League on Tuesday \u2014 and what it says about the club who have changed the landscape in the English game since Abu Dhabi moved into power there in 2008.Anyone who has closely followed this story would be aware that City had been accused of cooking the books via suspicious partnerships and sponsorship arrangements to \u201cartificially inflate the club\u2019s revenues and reduce its costs\u201d, as the commission found. Now, though, it is on record that it was worth more than \u00a3900million ($1.2bn) during the nine-year period (2009 to 2018) that has been investigated.\n \n \n \n \n What You Should Read Next\n \n \n \n \n Man City\u2019s \u2018sham contracts\u2019, spending-limit breaches and \u2018disguised funding\u2019: Breaking down the findings\n \n \n The Athletic has broken down the findings from the core decision of the independent commission in the City case\n \n \n \n \n \n It is, in short, a scandal. Or, to use the word that keeps coming up in the findings, a \u201csham\u201d.Take the three seasons when City won the league (2011-12, 2013-14 and 2017-18) during that time. According to the club, they received \u00a3360million in commercial income over those years from Abu Dhabi-based sponsors. In reality, the commission found that just \u00a343m came from legitimate sponsorships. The remainder was secretly siphoned in via Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the club\u2019s owner.In total, City reported \u00a3949.4million arriving from sponsors over nine years. The real number was \u00a3119.2m. ADUG forked out the remaining \u00a3830.7m in what the commission described as a \u201cdisguised funding scheme\u201d.These are the details that demonstrate how the odds were stacked against those clubs who tried and, for the most part, failed to keep up with this new force of English football.City are alleged to have overstated their revenue by \u00a3854.5million over nine years. It is more, to put it in context, than the total revenue in that time for all but eight of their domestic rivals \u2014 the other five members of the \u2018Big Six\u2019, plus Everton, Newcastle United and West Ham United.And that is still only one part of a much wider story.What about the cover-up detailed in the commission\u2019s findings? The alleged lying from \u201cdishonest\u201d witnesses? The \u201cmisstated\u201d accounting? The attempts to delay and obstruct the commission?The key line comes from Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League. \u201cThis disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history,\u201d he says.It is not even close. No other club has swindled English football so brazenly. Nobody has gone about it in such a devious and heavy-handed fashion. It has disfigured several years of competition and, for that alone, City\u2019s fans might have to understand why they should probably brace themselves for the heaviest of punishments.Enough to bring about relegation? It feels increasingly inevitable and justified, yes.Put it this way: there would be uproar, absolute uproar, if this form of serial offending encountered any kind of leniency. City deserve what is surely coming.\n \n \n \n \n Daily Play\n \n \n \n \n Play Connections: Soccer Edition\n \n \n Group soccer terms that share a common thread. A new puzzle is available each day.\n \n \n \n \n \n That is not said with any pleasure after three decades of living in Manchester, covering the team from their days in the third division, their move from Maine Road and, in latter years, often acclaiming the football served up by the teams of Pep Guardiola, Manuel Pellegrini and Roberto Mancini. It would, of course, be awful for the club\u2019s supporters.But the official papers, laid out in black and white, confirm that City were guilty of \u201cextremely serious, significant, sustained and intentional or reckless breaches of rules\u201d \u2014 far, far worse than anything Everton or Nottingham Forest did to incur points deductions during the past few seasons.What have Manchester City actually been charged with?Tifo FootballThe paperwork spells out how City constructed and bankrolled their title-winning teams through a sustained campaign of financial chicanery that could otherwise be described as grade-A cheating. Their riches brought them elite managers, top executives, star signings and huge transfer splurges, year after year. And they made it happen by using a level of deception that could make ordinary football fans pine for the sport in a different era.That deception took many forms, according to the commission, which noted that the club filed \u201cmisstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from auditors and football regulators\u201d.As a result, City would have breached both the Premier League\u2019s and European football governing body UEFA\u2019s spending limits by a \u201cvery substantial amount\u201d if they had accurately reported their income and expenditure. But that didn\u2019t happen, according to the commission, meaning the club were free to carry on splashing the cash in a way that was restricted for many of their rivals. And just look at the trophies it helped them greedily accumulate.\n Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak (left) and CEO Ferran Soriano in 2025Michael Regan\/Getty ImagesAs if that were not alarming enough, we are informed via the findings that some of City\u2019s \u201cimportant factual witnesses\u201d supplied evidence to the commission that was \u201cfalse in a number of respects\u201d.That alone is damning.Was it deliberate? Did people willingly lie? Well, it certainly seems that way, given the follow-up sentence alleging that some witnesses \u201cknew (their testimony) to be untrue and so had been dishonest\u201d.Maybe, in time, we will find out exactly who this is referring to. Will any action be taken against them individually? In a court of law, it would be classed as perjury. It\u2019s not the same, of course, in the football industry. Yet it has to be hoped the relevant people have been challenged.All we can assume is that they wanted to distort the commission\u2019s views and cover up what seems, on the face of it, to be a carefully orchestrated campaign of subterfuge and non-cooperation.This took the form, according to the investigators, of City concocting several \u201csham contracts\u201d with sponsors, as well as \u201csham commercial deals\u201d and various other \u201csham arrangements\u201d to manipulate the figures and keep the club in a position whereby, under spending rules, they were still allowed to splurge huge transfer fees and salaries.In total, there are five mentions of \u201csham\u201d in the statement released by the Premier League on Tuesday. That four-letter word will haunt the modern version of City. \u2018Sham FC\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s already started on social media. And it will just get worse. The truth? The rest of the money was secretly being pumped into the club by their owners.One of these shams involved a \u201ccircular arrangement\u201d with an entity that purchased the players\u2019 image rights. It was called Fordham. The idea, according to the commission, was to \u201cenable the club to record lower operating expenses than actually incurred\u201d. Further investigation revealed that Fordham was, in fact, \u201cfunded by ADUG\u201d. And you wonder whether the various statues outside the Etihad Stadium \u2014 David Silva, Vincent Kompany and so on \u2014 would be better if posed with their hands placed across their eyes.City maintain they are \u201cinnocent of all the accusations\u201d, that they are the victims of a wretched miscarriage of justice, and that there is, despite everything, nothing to see. It has been a bullish response. \u201cThe club will therefore be relentless and, where necessary, proactive in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums,\u201d a statement added.David Ornstein on how sad the Man City verdict is for footballDavid OrnsteinLet\u2019s see about that.Large swathes of their fanbase will always take the club\u2019s side. The reality, though, is that the commission\u2019s investigation lasted three and a half years, taking in a 42-day hearing, and City\u2019s protestations are in danger of invoking what could be termed the Jacques Chirac defence.To borrow an old quote from former French president Valery Giscard d\u2019Estaing about his political rival: \u201cJacques Chirac could have his mouth full of jam, his lips can be dripping with the stuff, his fingers covered with it, the pot can be standing open in front of him. And when you ask him if he\u2019s a jam\u2011eater, he\u2019ll say, \u2018Me? Eat jam? Never!\u2019\u201dHow many of Sheikh Mansour\u2019s senior staff have sticky fingers?At the very least, City might have to understand how strange it appears that, on the one hand, they claim to have \u201ca comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence\u201d proving their innocence when, simultaneously, a major part of the hearing has been about the club\u2019s apparent refusal to cooperate with the inquiry.City were found to have committed \u201cmultiple breaches\u201d on that front. So why not just hand everything over at the start of the investigation if it was, indeed, irrefutable? And why did so many people not tell the truth before the commission?There are so many questions.Did Guardiola have any inkling this was coming when he left City at the end of last season? Did the new manager, Enzo Maresca, not fully appreciate the risks when he took over? Or were they both blindsided by what they were told from the top of the club?\n New City manager Maresca during the Community Shield in AugustCarl Recine\/Getty ImagesWhat does this mean for Omar Berrada, City\u2019s former chief operating officer, now that he is the chief executive down the road at Manchester United? It must be awkward, to say the least, when you consider how United have suffered from the growth of their neighbours?Does the Premier League have the stomach to investigate events beyond 2018, too? If City are capable of committing well over 100 rule breaches over the nine years analysed in this case, can we really trust they have been squeaky-clean in the eight since?\n \n \n \n \n What You Should Read Next\n \n \n \n \n The Manchester City verdicts as viewed by the rest of the football world\n \n \n The Athletic spent the weekend talking to executives and officials at clubs and organisations to see how they view the situation\n \n \n \n \n \n Unless their appeal is successful, there will also have to be some difficult questions about whether their current board, most notably chief executive Ferran Soriano, can remain in position to oversee whatever happens next. How can they justify their roles if the punishment accurately reflects the way, to quote Masters, the club \u201csystematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade\u201d?And what about the players? How are they feeling? Imagine being Erling Haaland, with a contract until 2034. Or Elliot Anderson, freshly signed this summer from Nottingham Forest. Or fellow newcomer Enzo Fernandez, formerly of Chelsea. Any of them.As for the rest of us, it is another reminder, perhaps, why Gareth Southgate often used to talk during his years as England manager about loving the sport but not necessarily being in love with the industry.In the coming weeks and months, we will hear many City fans expressing the same sentiment.\nDaniel Taylor was named Sports Journalist of the Year at the 2025 British Press Awards, the third time he has won the award. He is also a four-time Football Journalist of the Year and the winner of numerous other awards for his reporting, investigative work and feature writing. Daniel, a senior writer for The Athletic, is based in Manchester and was previously the chief football writer for The Guardian\/The Observer. He has written five books.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": "2026-09-30T15:26:13+00:00",
    "author_name": "Daniel Taylor",
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    "ai_headline": "City's achievements, such as their 2017-18 title win (above), have been tainted Lynne Cameron\/Getty ImagesAt this stage, the narrative changes. No longer should it be a debate about whether the Premier League would dare to drum Manchester City out of England\u2019s top division. Now the question takes another form: how can you justify anything else?",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Manchester City Financial Charges Reveal Sham Contracts and Deception",
    "ai_excerpt": "An independent commission's findings reveal Manchester City manipulated financial records, using 'sham contracts' and 'disguised funding' to inflate revenues by over \u00a3900 million. This deception allowed the club to bypass spending limits and accumulate trophies, leading to calls for severe punishment, including potential relegation.",
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