It will be a year on Tuesday since the opening of the ‘Manchester City v the Premier League’ case and the wait for a result takes it into the realms of complex international disputes involving Vladimir Putin and vast mining conglomerates.
A row over Putin seizing foreign-owned airlines took judges six months to rule on. It was a 13-month wait in a disagreement between a mining company and its bankers over a $2billion dollar loan they wanted back.
The City case — 12 months and counting — was one of high stakes, with the reputation of the most successful British club of the modern era on the line from last September at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, at Paternoster Lane in the shadow of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral. But even seasoned experts in the world of commercial law are surprised that there is still no ‘award’, as the verdict is technically known in a legal process like this.
The case, involving 115 charges of alleged financial impropriety and evasion, took three months to conclude last autumn, and the panel assessing it — identities undisclosed — have taken another nine months, and counting, to reach a conclusion. ‘That’s not without precedent,’ says one commercial litigation lawyer who has handled international mediations. ‘But nine months is pushing it.’
City and the Premier League reached a resolution last week in the entirely separate Associated Party Transaction (APT) case relating to the system of policing sponsorship from companies with links to clubs’ owners. That case might have been tactical — brought by City to enable them to secure their main Etihad sponsorship at a level initially rejected by the competition organisers as not ‘fair market value’.
But there is nothing ‘tactical’ about the 115 charges. Any detente between the two parties cannot be viewed as a precursor to an imminent cosy resolution of the case, brought by the League.
Pep Guardiola has enjoyed unprecedented success with Manchester City, winning the Premier League six times in nine years
City players including Kyle Walker (centre) celebrate winning the title in 2024
Some commercial litigation experts tell me that negotiation behind the scenes is possible — and that horse-trading could be a reason for the judgment taking so long to land. But the more prevalent view within both football and legal fraternities is that negotiation in this case is highly unlikely.
‘With both sides apparently having set their stall out at such diametrically opposing positions, it would be hard to envisage a climb down,’ the commercial litigation lawyer explains. ‘For example, how can City suddenly agree to accept, say, 75 charges or the Premier League agree to write off 50 others? Not now the proceedings are concluded.
‘The other clubs would go berserk. I sense that the ruling will be the end of it. My sense, based on nothing specific, is that it was an all or nothing kind of case.’
The view echoes that of Kieran Maguire, co-host of The Price of Football podcast, who concluded in a discussion of the APT ruling on the programme last week: ‘Given that the legal costs are likely to be in the realms of £100million to £120m, can you imagine how the other club owners are going to react to, “In the end, it’s a misunderstanding. We’ll just give them a fine”?’
In which case, the sheer volume and complexity of the cases constructed by the parties would explain the hiatus in this argument. City will have left no attack line untested, given that the reputational damage of the award going against them in the 115 case would deal a major blow to the Abu Dhabis’ wish to project themselves as a people of distinguished and high-class business and governance. Promoting themselves in that way was their main incentive for buying City, in 2008.
The indignity of being accused of fraudulent accounting, in a high-profile case the outcome of which the entire football world is anticipating, has infuriated club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the power behind owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s throne, more than anyone else at City.
Al Mubarak has been the individual with whom some of the top-level City players have communicated over the years, going over the head of chief executive Ferran Soriano with WhatsApp messages detailing their personal gripes. He has never changed his mobile number, making him accessible, though he has avoided direct intervention in squabbles.
He has been reluctant to get into the weeds of a club which represents no more than 10 per cent of his role as overseer and distributor of the Gulf state’s immense petro-chemical wealth. He delegates completely to Soriano.
Pep Guardiola and City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak celebrate together back in 2024
Striker Erling Haaland has been key to City’s continued success in recent years
But where these financial investigations are concerned, it’s been a different story. When UEFA first began pursuing City in 2014, Al Mubarak told club executives that he ‘would rather spend £30m on the best 50 lawyers in the world and sue them (UEFA) for the next 10 years than agree to a financial penalty’. He’s seen it as a personal mission to fight this.
Insiders describe Al Mubarak as a deeply patriotic Abu Dhabi, whose loyalty to the Gulf state is borne of background. His father served as the UAE’s ambassador to Paris, where he was assassinated in 1984, at the age of 36, as he left his apartment building a few hundred yards from the Eiffel Tower. The lone gunman was never caught. For Al Mubarak, fighting UEFA and the Premier League has been a matter of national pride.
There are suggestions that a resolution to this case may come this month, though rumours of an imminent outcome have routinely circulated throughout this year and not materialised.
If the case were being heard in the High Court, a losing party would have permission to appeal and negotiation would still be a material possibility. But this process is ‘arbitration’ — two parties having their dispute decided by neutral arbitrators — and it is binding. There can be no appeal here. Everything is on the line.
