Broken Rules, Broken Trust
Belle Donnaud, staff writer
For years, Manchester City set the gold standard for all the Premier League until all of that was broken. Manchester City built one of the strongest football empires to date, breaking records and sweeping competitions like a breeze, at least that is the facade they held up. Behind the scenes, they were hit hard with 114 charges for manipulating the league using unchecked financial power for over a decade. The claims cover a few main categories: Making secret, off-the-books salary payments to managers and players. They violated Financial Fair Pay (FFP) rules Profitability Sustainability rules (PSR), and time and time again refuse any official investigations. The 114 financial charges against Manchester City represent a major turning point in English and Premier League football, their unchecked power threatens the future balance and integrity of the league.
In order to fully understand how unfair this is, you need to understand how the rival leagues are affected. The football team's success directly coincides with financial resources. When a club artificially inflates its income, it grants an unfair competitive step ahead. For over a decade they were able to pay a premium to transfer players and build a crazy salary structure that let them recruit the best players in the world for every position. When they continued to win games, their revenue continued to go up, so they were earning more and with each game won, their competitive advantage became increasingly unfair. Rival clubs struggled to keep up while staying in the legal framework, unknowingly to them it was an impossible task. When asked about how he believes the scandal effects the other teams in the league, Joshua Asem said,
"I believe it is not fair because it truly does dismantle other teams when we all know these star athletes are chasing money and when this team has so much more of it to offer it gives them an insane advantage."
He agrees that it is a huge advantage to get that counterfeit funding because it can have such a hefty impact on the way the team will function, which has been proven by just the teams' scores and records alone.
Despite claims that the team was just good and there was nothing suspicious about their ongoing success, an investigation by the Premier League was in the beginning stages starting in 2018 when Der Spiegel leaked club emails. The documents appeared to show that the club may have disguised owner funding as sponsorship revenue to comply with FFP regulations. In 2019, two seperate investigations into the club's finances were launched. After investigating for four years, the Premier League charged Manchester City with 114 alleged breaches of financial resources in 2023. This case is often referred to as one of the largest scandals in football history because of how long it lasted. It completely changed the way people view high level teams and led to a lot of questions about what truly could be happening behind the scenes.
