This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 20, 2023 - February 26, 2023

Pelé, rest his soul, never delivered a follow-up to his most famous quote. Yes, “football is a beautiful game”, but, off the pitch, it’s a dirty, rotten business. Just as the European club season is about to serve up a mouth-watering climax, spectres are already looming over the feast.

The English Premier League (EPL) has declared war on its most successful club while the European governing body, Uefa, has brought only shame upon itself by its handling of its showpiece event.

According to its own inquiry, it bears “primary responsibility” for the near “mass fatality catastrophe” at last year’s Champions League final in Paris. Yet Uefa blatantly smeared Liverpool fans even though it knew its own safety failures were to blame.

Meanwhile, the Super League (ESL) corpse has twitched to renew its guerrilla campaign against Uefa; and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are jousting for the right to pay the hated Glazer family billions for ownership of Manchester United.

The unthinkable distortion of the EPL title race by points deduction or even expulsion of the reigning champions is now a possibility. And the agonising wait for a ruling may be prolonged if the lawyers opt for a war of attrition. It seems that even Britain’s shining light has a dimmer switch.

The more football dazzles on the field, the more mud it kicks up off it and no one seems more adept at either than Manchester City. Five times EPL champions in the last six years but accused of having achieved this supremacy by cooking the books.

City bosses deny all charges but in the eyes of rivals and the media, they’re presumed guilty until proven innocent. At least that’s how it felt when the full scale of City’s alleged misdemeanours was announced.

No less than 115 charges were unleashed against City owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), going back to their takeover in 2008. Former Uefa investigator Yves Leterme is one of many executives who were stunned by the scope of it. He told Belgian broadcaster Sporza he is “convinced fraud has been committed by Manchester City”.

Others spoke of “dishonesty” and “a failure to disclose information”, while ex-City financial adviser Stefan Borson tweeted: “Alarmist or not, the sheer extent of the EPL charges are at a level that IF found proven, must lead to relegation.”

The charges relate to Financial Fair Play (FFP) that Uefa introduced to try to rein in the runaway finances of top-end football clubs. In their haste to catch up with the established elite, City’s owners are accused of flouting FFP by inflating sponsorships to enable them to recruit top players and managers, some of whose incomes they cunningly concealed.

If such “verdicts” sound like jumping the gun, it’s because we’ve been here before. In 2020, the Blues were banned for two seasons by Uefa and fined €30 million. However, on appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned the ban by 2-1, allowing the club to play in Uefa competitions. The fine was reduced to €10 million for not co-operating. As Gordon Gekko might have said: “Co-operation is for wimps.”

But even for the “Greed is Good” EPL, City are beyond the pale. After a four-year investigation that was more Poirot than Clouseau, it has nailed them again. And this time, there are no time-barred loopholes through which expensive lawyers can squirm to earn a replay.

In 2020, not all evidence was time-barred, it must be stated, but for football’s authorities to be continually on their case has convinced many City fans there’s a vendetta against the club. There is no such thing, but there is a whistleblower.

For WikiLeaks, read Football Leaks and for Julian Assange, read Rui Pinto who, like Assange, is in custody. The 34-year-old Portuguese fan-cum-hacker is another Robin Hood figure who splits opinion on whether his modus operandi is simply criminal or heroic for exposing the bad guys. German magazine Der Spiegel took the latter view when Pinto passed over four terabytes of data including damning internal emails on City.

When news of the latest charges broke, you could almost hear the cheering in football’s boardrooms — and feel a deep sense of victimhood from City. The vehemence of the club’s denials and siege mentality whipped up by manager Pep Guardiola left no doubt it will be another long and bitter wrangle. It is the last thing a divided game needs.

Guardiola said City are alone against 19 clubs and even named the nine who asked for his club to be thrown out of the Champions League. To them, City are the new rich kid on the block who throws his weight around. Their arrogance is epitomised by former executive Simon Pearce, who declared: “We can do what we want.”

Last week, Arsenal fans held a banner that made a not-so-subtle dig at their title rivals: “Arsenal: class and tradition. Something oil money can’t buy.” City fans’ response was: “We’re Man City, we’ll cheat when we want.”

City claim that the timing of the EPL’s charges is no accident. The UK government wants to appoint an independent regulator for football, which the EPL opposes. This long-awaited show of strength is seen as the league demonstrating that it can look after itself.

But a swift conclusion is unlikely. City have already hired a lawyer who earns as much as their star players and, given its complexities, the case could hang over the league like the sword of Damocles.

If City were to win again, the EPL would surely have to accept clipped wings under a regulator. And even if the league wins, appropriate punishment would have to be handled carefully. Too lenient and the EPL would undermine its own effectiveness; too harsh and it could send City into the arms of the ESL rebels should they re-form.

As it is, this moribund group looks like no more than a desperate attempt to outflank the EPL with whom the rest of Europe can no longer compete. And without the biggest clubs, what chance does it have? But if City are hit hard and permanency in the top flight cannot be guaranteed, it could be a game changer and have consequences way beyond the field of play.

It might make certain equity companies and sovereign wealth funds think twice about investing billions. Sports-washers might even decide to rinse their dirty laundry elsewhere.

Multiple ownership is another hot potato now that half (10) of the EPL clubs are owned by Americans. No one is suggesting that Joe Biden is likely to have a quiet word with the Video Assistant Referee when Liverpool play Manchester United, but for clubs with owners in the more monocratic Gulf regimes, collusion could become an issue.

However, such speculation is unlikely to deter oil-rich states from bidding for Manchester United which, among trophy-hunting Arab rivals, is considered a prized catch.

The European governing body certainly has a lot on its plate. According to The Guardian, the report on the 2022 final “presents a devastating picture of Uefa and the state of the European football ‘model’, a catastrophic absence of leadership, democracy and accountability which cannot be allowed to continue”.

Shakespeare did not football know, but he had a phrase for the current goings-on off the field: “There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Bob Holmes is a long-time sportswriter specialising in football

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