Thanks for the clarifying article, I hadn't been able to decode the subtext and understand the true scope of this. The previous articles I found made it sound much more benign, but this is the Clippers / Kawhi Leonard scandal writ very, very large. And it sounds like there are probably more shoes to drop with the Clippers scandal.

I can't imagine a 186 point penalty (based on the math of a previous team's infraction in the article). That would be at least two full years of points for a winning team. It feels like they should just be relegated with a one or two year cooling off period before they can be eligible for promotion. Can the EPL force the sale of a team the same way the NBA can?

I'm not into soccer and couldn't have told you Man City was any good the past 20 years but was curious how this was broken. Sounds like someone got some hacked emails/documents and then German newspaper Der Spiegel published them--no doubt after vetting. Good to see free press doing their job just like Clippers/Pablo Torres. 

This feels like something the Premier League/European Football and the UK in general have to take completely seriously and something akin to SMU's "death penalty" after their scandal in the 1980s (which seems quaint by the standards of college football today) is warranted.

I believe they can (and should) force the UAE to sell Manchester City. For historical precedent, Roman Abramovich was effectively forced to sell Chelsea after Russia invaded Ukraine because of his connections to Putin and the UK government is trying to take the proceeds from the sale to give to Ukraine.

In my opinion at minimum the punishment should be:

1. Force UAE/ADUG to relinquish ownership and confiscate proceeds from the sale
2. Kick City to bottom of the pyramid and prevent them from promotion regardless of performance for set number of seasons
3. Strip them of all of their titles during the investigated time period
4. Immediately begin investigating the period from 2019-2026 and enforce fresh punishments when that investigation concludes

Saying this, I think European Football needs to look long and hard at how its currently operating. In light of the results a lot of the City fans were making the argument that based on the current rules there's simply no way for a club that's not one of the established global brands to compete year in and year out, so they are effectively locked out of growing under the guise of "Financial Fair Play" and "Profitability and Sustainability" mandates.

The rules say these clubs can only spend within their means, but their means are wildly different. I'm an Arsenal fan, Arsenal probably makes more money on their fashion lines than City was making in total before these schemes, but Manchester City is supposed to compete with Arsenal on the playing field somehow.

And if you're a smaller club it doesn't even really matter how well you perform on the pitch because you'll never crack the support of the bigger clubs (that you often share a city/potential fanbase with) and your players and coaching staff are going to get poached anyway. Clubs like Manchester City, Crystal Palace, and Brighton missed the boat on soccer's globalization and without a way to catch up they're not going to ever be able to stand on similar footing to clubs like Arsenal, Liverpool, and United.

Regardless of how they adjudicate the City decision, I hope the after-action review addresses the environment that caused this to happen and doesn't just settle with "no state ownership" and stricter financial rules as the solution.

A) I'm struck by the fact that this guilty verdict is based on behavior from 2009-2018, with charges brought in 2023; that delay is just bonkers to me. The delay in detecting the problem(s) and the subsequent delay in bringing formal charges tells me the league lacks the ability and intent to enforce its own rules. It's almost like the league said in 2009 - when the relevant financial rules were approved - "Hey, don't break these new rules. We're not going to seriously check that you're following the rules, and there sure is an embarrassment of money to be made if you break them. And if it's learned you're breaking the rules, we're going to slow roll any investigation to the point of seeming like we're doing nothing, and if you decide not to cooperate you'll have a bunch more time to keep making gobs of money. Ok, good chat, meeting adjourned."

B) I'm so glad this was announced during the 3 week international break in the Premier League, I thought there'd be little to keep me entertained during these 3 weeks and boy this sure fills that gap.