Manchester City v PSG is a reminder of the path not taken in sanctions battles

N asser al-Khelaifi was among those unhappy with the timing of the release of Manchester City’s guilty verdict by the Premier League a fortnight ago, although his visit with Paris Saint-Germain to the Etihad Stadium for a Champions League game on Wednesday provides a timely reminder that it could have been far worse.

The two clubs are linked by more than their ownership by Gulf states, being among the first found to have broken Uefa’s financial fair play rules in 2014 , and by a magnitude that would make subsequent offenders pale in comparison.

Uefa’s investigators found that between 2011 and 2013, when the maximum permitted loss for clubs competing in European competitions was €45m (£38m), PSG’s deficit was €218m and City’s €188m, yet both clubs avoided charges by signing settlement agreements .

With hindsight the terms seem generous to say the least, with sanctions limited to a financial penalty of €20m each, plus more onerous restrictions on their spending in subsequent years. City and PSG were made liable to pay a further €40m if they broke the terms of their settlements.

Uefa said in April 2017 that both clubs had “fully complied with all the requirements” but it remains an issue of contention whether City stuck to those spending limits. In 2020, after an investigation by Uefa’s investigatory chamber, the club was suspended from the Champions League for two years for “overstating its sponsorship revenue” between 2012 and 2016, before this was overturned by an appeal to the court of arbitration for sport, which found: “Most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred.”

Then, last month, the Premier League announced that an independent commission convened to examine more than 100 charges against City had found that between seasons 2009-10 and 2017-18 the club was “significantly in breach” of Uefa’s spending limits and had “filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances”. City have appealed against the commission’s verdict.

PSG, where al-Khelaifi has been the president and face of the Qatari ownership since 2011, were fined a further €10m by Uefa in 2022 for not complying with financial rules since 2018, with another €50m suspended.

Part of al-Khelaifi’s annoyance at the Premier League last month stemmed from the fact that the release of the independent commission’s core judgment on City overshadowed the general assembly of European Football Clubs in Copenhagen, including his keynote speech, which featured City’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, sitting in the front row before scurrying away from television cameras.

In his speech as EFC’s chair, al-Khelaifi outlined his plans to make it a global organisation and aimed some barbs at Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, over the importance of good governance, a far cry from his attitude towards Infantino a decade ago.

A 2018 investigation from the German publication Der Spiegel claimed that Infantino, then Uefa’s general secretary, had played a key role in ensuring PSG and City avoided more severe sanctions in 2014, including meeting with officials from both clubs for “secret talks, even supplying them with confidential materials” that involved suggested “compromises that he was unauthorised to propose”.

Der Spiegel also published an email from Infantino to City’s chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, sent on 2 May 2014 in which he outlined the terms of a proposed settlement . “You will see that I’ve sometimes chosen a wording which ‘looks’ more ‘strong,’” Infantino wrote. “Please read the document with this spirit.”

Settlements with both clubs were agreed that month, although not before the head of Uefa’s investigatory chamber Brian Quinn, a former senior official at the Bank of England, resigned amid reports he considered the agreements too lenient.

“In cases where clubs overspend and balance their books only thanks to money injections, a settlement agreement has always been the preferred solution,” Uefa said at the time. “In such cases, the focus is on limiting the revenues coming from outside football.”

Infantino said his “job entails having discussions, having conversations, exchanging documents, drafts, ideas” and that he had been carrying out his duties “in an honest way, in a professional way and trying to defend the interests of football”.

PSG insist they have “always acted in full compliance with the laws and regulations enacted by sports institutions” and City’s protestations of innocence are well established, but the clubs now find themselves on different sides of the divide.

Whereas al-Khelaifi will arrive in Manchester as the face of the establishment, with EFC joint shareholders with Uefa in the commercial company that runs the Champions League , City remain the insurgents, continuing to rage against the machine.

Many City fans will continue to show their disdain for Uefa by booing the Champions League anthem, but some may be quietly wondering whether their Abu Dhabi leadership could have followed the more diplomatic path taken by PSG.