After six years of investigations, delays and behind-the-scenes battles, a hearing finally began this week into allegations that Manchester City used a yearslong cheating scheme to transform itself into a global soccer powerhouse and a serial Premier League champion.
The hearing is among the most consequential in British sports history, the culmination of a case that has been the talk of English soccer since the Premier League charged Manchester City with more than 100 violations of its financial regulations last year.
The charges — that City corrupted the world’s richest soccer competition for a decade or more — threaten to rewrite years of Premier League history. And the repercussions might go well beyond the soccer field. In accusing City’s owner, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, of presiding over years of rule-breaking, the case could veer into the highest levels of international diplomacy.
And then there are the fans. With the suggestions that cheating helped to deliver trophies to City while wealthy rivals were left empty-handed, the hearing has incited the passions of tens of millions of soccer followers around the world.
Whatever is decided will shape the Premier League for years to come: Either Manchester City will have been found to have corrupted the world’s richest soccer competition, or the league will have been unable to enforce its rules against one of its most powerful members.
What is the Manchester City case about?
It is now 19 months since the Premier League announced a set of charges against Manchester City so wide in scope that the reputational damage to the team’s decade of success will most likely be stained even if it prevails. The charges date back to 2009, a year after City’s purchase by the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi. That acquisition began a turbocharged era of spending — and success — for a club that had not won a championship since 1968.
The Premier League has accused City of 115 specific rule breaches. The bulk are related to violations of its financial regulations, including failing to provide accurate financial information; submitting inflated figures for sponsorship deals involving Emirati companies, such as the airline Etihad and the telecoms company Etisalat; and hiding off-the-books payments that supplemented the salaries of managers and players. Other charges accuse City of not cooperating during the investigation, which took almost four years and millions of dollars to complete.
The case has done little to slow City on the field: The club has won the past four Premier League championships as well as, in 2023, its first Champions League trophy.
How long will the hearing take?
The hearing, which some news outlets have described as the “trial of the century,” will take place out of view, inside a building in London’s financial district that is home to the International Dispute Resolution Centre — a privately owned facility for businesses to untangle conflicts away from prying eyes.
Manchester City, which has long leaned on lawyers to defend itself or to delay any reckoning, has assembled a cast of some of Britain’s most expensive legal minds. Its defense is being led by David Pannick, a lawyer whose hourly rate puts him in the same wage bracket as Erling Haaland, the Norwegian striker whose goals have carried City to its most recent titles.
Tuesday was the second day of a hearing that is expected to last 10 weeks, and a verdict is not expected until early next year. That means the case will shadow more than half of the current Premier League season, in which Manchester City is already atop the standings as it pursues a record-extending fifth successive domestic title.
What is City saying?
Manchester City has consistently denied all of the charges, even before they were enumerated by the Premier League last year, and has said that its case is supported by a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence.”
It has never provided that evidence publicly, however, saying the claims are based on “illegal hacking and out-of-context publication of City emails.”
Wait: illegal hacking?
The City case has roots in the publication of a trove of documents called Football Leaks. They were released by a Portuguese computer hacker, Rui Pinto, after he gained access to the internal files of some of the biggest teams in global soccer. His supporters called him a whistle-blower; the clubs labeled him a thief.
The thousands of documents, messages and emails he uncovered, though, pointed at an ugly underbelly to the multibillion dollar soccer industry, and led to embarrassment and, in a few cases, legal fallout for some of the biggest personalities and institutions in soccer. But it is the City case that has always seemed to have the most ramifications given the size of the Premier League and the owner of Manchester City, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who, apart from his political clout in the United Arab Emirates, is one of the richest men in the world.
Mr. Pinto has been imprisoned in Portugal and faces other charges related to his activities targeting the soccer industry. The City case, he said in a statement released by his lawyer, “clearly demonstrates once again the importance of the Football Leaks revelations, its public interest and its generalized value that outweighs other interests.”
What could happed to City if it loses?
There is no precedent for a punishment on the array of charges City faces. Everton, a team that was found guilty of only one charge of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, was initially hit with a 10-point deduction in the standings last year, the biggest penalty in the league’s history. (The punishment was later reduced to six points on appeal.)
The range of potential punishments Manchester City faces includes huge fines, a significant points deduction or even the ultimate sanction: expulsion from the Premier League. Any penalty could lead rival clubs to press claims for honors they feel were denied them. And a significant sporting punishment — such as banishment from the Champions League — could lead to the breakup of the dominant, star-studded roster assembled by City’s Spanish manager, Pep Guardiola.
The hearing even has high stakes for international relations. The British government appeared to confirm discussions between the Foreign Office and the United Arab Emirates when it declined Freedom-of-Information requests about talks regarding the case, arguing that “detailing our relationship with the U.A.E. government could potentially damage the bilateral relationship between the U.K. and the U.A.E.”
