When there’s a threat of reputational damage in sport, you can generally expect ‘commercial partners’ to be first out the door.
Chelsea lost their shirt sponsor, Three, when Roman Abramovich was sanctioned. Coca-Cola axed Wayne Rooney after some marital infidelity. A string of Marcus Rashford’s partners, Levi’s, Burberry and Beats, have dropped him amid his descent into personal chaos. No one wants the bad optics and fundamental embarrassment.
Manchester City await judgement in a case which could tell us their success has been built on systematic financial deceit – cheating, to you or me – and inflict gross humiliation on them and their commercial associates. Yet the corporate world does not seem to feel any notion of risk.
Puma signed up on Tuesday to a 10-year City kit sponsorship deal worth £1billion, as if the evidence in the Premier League case which concluded 221 days ago pointed to minor infractions, not the allegation – which the club trenchantly deny – that their success has been built on Abu Dhabi pumping in vast wads of petrol dollars disguised as sponsorship cash.
City have certainly perfected the art of the long-term Monopoly money deal during the wait for a decision from the Premier League’s independent commission which is considering 115 charges against them.
In January, they announced an agreement to pay Erling Haaland more than £400,000 a week for a period of nine years. And now we have Puma’s significant uplift on the £65million-per-season kit deal it had been paying them since 2019. The new £100m-a-season deal comfortably outstrips that of any other Premier League club.
Manchester City announced a staggering £1billion kit sponsorship deal with Puma on Tuesday
In January, City signed Erling Haaland to a nine-year deal worth more than £400,000 a week
‘Top of the food chain’, City’s social media team tweeted on Tuesday in a promotional push for Puma to mark the new arrangements. Despite their largesse, the German sportswear company certainly need all the help they can get, six months after a 23 per cent drop in their share price and the replacement of their chief executive with a former head of sales from adidas.
Out in the real world, beyond the astronomical numbers which seem to laugh in the face of the notion City and their associates are facing any kind of jeopardy, the football world is beginning to wonder if there will ever be a conclusion to a case which has cast a shadow across it for so long.
Tuesday also marked a month until the start of the Premier League season, yet still we don’t know if City are to be absolved or hit with a punishment on those charges of financial chicanery. An out-of-season conclusion is desperately needed by all those clubs who embark on a tooth-and-nail fight for Premier League survival at this time of year, as well as those with designs on the division’s higher reaches.
Relegation to a lower tier for City – which seems utterly inconceivable to me – would allow the leagues to be realigned, with Sheffield United, last season’s Championship’s play-off finalists, or Leicester City, who finished 18th in the Premier League, presumably contenders to take the vacant position.
No one inside football is even discussing this. The City charges seem to have vanished onto the periphery of public consciousness. We appear to have become stuck on permanent hold.
Puma have always been very brash in their public pronouncements that legal decisions would go City’s way. When UEFA found the club guilty in 2020 of using state-owned Abu Dhabi companies such as Etihad Airlines and telecoms firm Etisalat to funnel money under the counter, the firm declared themselves confident the decision would be overturned – which it was.
The company have been rewarded very handsomely by the Abu Dhabi state. Puma have a big factory outlet in Abu Dhabi and were selected to produce a ‘Visit Abu Dhabi’ clothing range – the value of which is unclear. They have become part of the family.
Puma do know a fair bit about PR nightmares when it comes to the Premier League. After Chelsea’s Marc Cucurella slipped twice while wearing a pair of the firm’s £220 boots in a game against Tottenham last winter, he posted an Instagram image of the discarded items in a rubbish bin.
Puma have been handsomely rewarded by the Abu Dhabi state who have strong ties to City, including the club’s owner Sheik Mansour (left, in scarf), who is the vice-president of the UAE
Marc Cucurella’s Instagram post mocking Puma’s boots after he slipped over twice in a match
The firm turned the humiliation into a marketing ploy, picturing Cucurella next to a ‘wet floor’ sign with the tagline: ‘It’s not how you slip, it’s how you bounce back.’ Everyone laughed.
A sassy comeback would not be so easy if City were found guilty of what would be one of the most significant episodes of financial deceit in football history, though no one is thinking that way.
One month out from another season, the spending goes merrily on and the printable version of the message from the club and their sponsors is: ‘Sod you. It’s business as usual here.’
Come on Zak, have a crack
The crackling tension between the English and Indian players was brilliant, wasn’t it?
I have to say I was with Shubman Gill amid his finger-pointing at Zak Crawley about the dark arts being employed to limit the Indians’ bowling time at England on Saturday evening.
I don’t recall an England batsman stepping back in the way Crawley did when Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding were powering in during the 80s. Or Michael Atherton trying to break Allan Donald’s rhythm like that, a decade later.
Man up, play the game and face what’s coming down the track.
Shubman Gill did not take kindly to Zak Crawley’s backing away rather than facing a ball from Jasprit Bumrah
Wimbledon’s tech is out of line
The All England Club seemed affronted when we challenged the electronic line calling system which was one of this Wimbledon tournament’s lower points.
Will they now be broad minded enough to consider how the union of humans and machines continue to create sublime moments in Test cricket?
The evidence was there on Monday, when the referral of the KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja lbw decisions, both overturned on review, provided two outstanding moments of drama at Lord’s.
Proof that a hybrid judging system, with living, breathing human beings as constituent parts, works extremely well. And that Wimbledon’s decision to sack the line judges and ship in some cameras was the wrong one.
Sinner by name…
Jannik Sinner did not bow to the Princess of Wales when receiving his Wimbledon trophy on Sunday night
Call me old-fashioned, but it mattered that Carlos Alcaraz afforded the Princess of Wales a modest and understated bow as he approached her in defeat on Sunday.
It suggested to me that being there was something precious to him. No such gesture from Jannik Sinner, who looked like a man for whom this was a relatively important win.
Perhaps sentiment is just harder to discern in a player who twice tested positive tests for Clostebol, a banned substance, and barely felt the consequences.
Did FIFA know there was a football match on?
FIFA were hyperventilating in their Club World Cup final press release on Sunday, promising musicians J Balvin, Doja Cat, Tems, and Emmanuel Kelly and, a little later, a football match involving Chelsea and PSG.
‘Football and music superstars to deliver nonstop spectacle at FIFA Club World Cup Final,’ screamed the PR people – demonstrating in the process that the football itself was no longer enough.
Limited attention spans for a pointless tournament required serious musical heft.
