It’s morning everyone.
There was a lot of talk about Manchester City this morning, and apart from the 115 charge, there was also the incident regarding the Premier League’s United Party trading rules. The way it was reported in some media outlets, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a slam dunk win for City.
There is a stark difference between what actually happened and what some of the headlines and social media commentary are saying from people working in football. Did City succeed? yes. Two of City’s complaints were upheld and the Premier League said in a statement:
These factors can be addressed quickly and effectively by leagues and clubs.
They continued to say:
Manchester City has launched a sweeping challenge to the legality, design, framework and implementation of the APT Rules. The club was unsuccessful in most of its challenges. Importantly, the Tribunal found that the APT Rules were necessary, pursued a legitimate objective and were designed to support and deliver sporting integrity and sustainability in the Premier League by ensuring that the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) were effective.
I have to admit that these things leave me cold. It is difficult to properly connect the financial and legal aspects. However, I recommend reading the full statement, which paints a very different picture than what is presented elsewhere. Your guess as to why is as good as mine. Still, it’s not that difficult to solve.
Barney Ronay provides some interesting commentary in The Guardian, while in the Independent, Miguel Delaney outlines the potential consequences of the findings in favor of City. What happens next remains to be seen. Some clubs have presented ‘evidence’ against Manchester City, including Arsenal. Others supported the club, which has won the title in six of the last seven seasons, which has basically converted it into Ligue 1/Bundesliga, where only Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta are legitimate contenders for the top spot. The sense of what I could do was gone. Are Turks voting on Christmas, or is it the reality that money continues to corrupt sports (and everything else)? At least at board level, the Premier League civil war is simmering in the background.
I think that’s a natural consequence of clubs being owned by billionaires, oligarchs and nation-states. These people always get what they want and use the courts and expensive lawyers to get it. However, we are not excluding Arsenal here. I don’t think there’s really a strong moral high ground to take, but as far as I’m concerned we’ve always tried to do things by the book. Let’s not forget that there is only one club in this league facing numerous charges, with ample evidence and experience working with UEFA.
But the sad truth is that money, investment groups, hedge funds and pyramid schemes are at the heart of football these days. Take 777 Partners, who was set to become the new owner of Everton before things unraveled. The details of Josimar (a story co-written by our friend Philippe Auclair) are here and it makes for a grim read. It’s behind a paywall, but for just €30 a year (€2.50 a month) you get access to everything they do, and they’re one of the only publications that consistently produces top-notch investigative reporting on the games we all love.
It’s also a great example of why the multi-club ownership model is so flawed. They ‘own’ Standard Liege, Genoa, Red Star FC, Hertha Berlin, Sevilla, Vasco da Gama and Melbourne Victory and the future of these clubs is now up in the air. This doesn’t even mention how the model can be used to spread money around through player sales or other means. To me it is fundamentally wrong that one entity can run multiple football clubs. This is especially true in Europe where there is potentially a ‘crossing of flows’ in a competitive sense.
There was talk earlier this year about how Manchester United and Nice could face problems in European competitions due to their shared ownership with huge polluter Ineos. Both Manchester City and Girona (part of the City Group) will participate in the Champions League this season. It’s fair to say that the fixture will probably raise a sarcastic eyebrow if they meet later. Even the fact that it is in question is detrimental to the integrity of the game and competition. It’s all incredibly horrible.
As I said above, this is what happens when billions of pounds are poured into any industry. But what makes this a little different is that football doesn’t make a lot of money, at least not financially. Companies may be worth billions of dollars, but I don’t think there is any industry where the demands of the ‘customer’ go beyond simply spending a penny to achieve sporting success. We understand why this might be valuable to some ownership groups. It’s part of a wider plan to present an image to the world, but it’s still a bit maddening when you think about it.
So we’ll wait and see what happens. The Premier League will revise its rules, City will celebrate their victory with the worst client journalism you will ever see, and football’s inexorable march towards some kind of financial black hole will continue.
Have fun!
