by Simister » Sun Feb 16, 2020 10:14 pm
Good article taken from The Athletic...
“Now, more than ever, we have to show them that we are not money, we are talent,” Pep Guardiola is understood to have told his Manchester City players at a training ground meeting on Saturday.
It came less than 24 hours after UEFA had announced that the club would be banned from the Champions League for two years for allegedly overstating sponsorship revenue and failing to co-operate with the subsequent investigation.
With Guardiola and his players returning to England on Friday night after their winter break, there was always going to be a team meeting before training and the resumption of their season, but nobody expected it to be under these circumstances.
Sources say the mood in the room was defiant, with one describing the message as being along the lines of, “If UEFA don’t love us, **** it, we’ll show them.”
Guardiola was in full flow as he bid to rally his troops for their biggest match of the season, the Champions League knockout game against Real Madrid on February 26.
He reminded his players of their previous Champions League travails, of the mistakes that have cost them dearly in big games against Monaco, Liverpool and Tottenham. He stressed that he believes in them, echoing the message he had told friends on Friday evening, that he is convinced they can knock out Madrid.
But, in light of the intense focus on the club’s fortunes right now, he urged them to be more concentrated and focused than they have ever been over the next fortnight. Forget about everything else. No parties, no events, eat well and look after yourselves better than ever.
The players looked relaxed as they took to the training pitch afterwards, a contrast to when the news broke on Friday night.
It is understood the squad had no idea the announcement was coming and were in “complete shock”. As The Athletic revealed yesterday, the club contacted the players’ agents on Friday evening and told them to stay calm, assured them that they would overturn the ruling, and to make sure the players did not say anything on social media.
By the time UEFA’s decision was the lead item on news channels across the world, Guardiola was back in his Salford apartment. He had been in Barcelona all week and found out what was coming when he arrived back in Manchester at about 4pm on Friday.
As the world reacted to the news that evening, amid all the analysis of the huge court battle that will follow, the financial hit that City will take, the future of the players, the owners and the manager himself, Guardiola had his mind on the immediate challenges.
He told friends how happy he is that City are playing West Ham in a rearranged fixture next Wednesday, because it will give them extra rhythm before the now seismic game with Real Madrid. Guardiola has been worried about his side’s problems in front of goal of late — even before their 2-0 defeat at Spurs — but on Friday night he spoke of his certainty that his players have what it takes to progress in this season’s Champions League.
And, above all, he let it be known that his future is not in any doubt and privately dismissed any suggestion that he is ready to walk out on his employers a year before his contract ends in 2021.
With as much certainty as he would convey to his players the next day, he stated that he is as committed to City as ever, and extra motivated to triumph in Europe this season.
City had found out what was coming around 2pm on Friday. Ferran Soriano, the CEO and one of only four or five people at the City Football Academy to have been abreast of the situation all the way through, was ready to fly away on a skiing holiday with his wife and daughters when UEFA’s email dropped into the club’s inbox, indicating that they would be announcing their punishment later that afternoon.
City circled the the wagons. Nobody — and they meant nobody — privy to that information should tell anybody else. Many more staff than usual were now aware of the outcome and City’s entire CAS appeal could live or die by leaks to the media.
City asked UEFA for the wording of their statement, prepared their response, and told the governing body to get on with it.
One source indicates that those select City staff expected UEFA to make their announcement hours earlier than they eventually did, which was about 6.30pm on Friday. As the hours passed by some began to suspect that UEFA was playing a game, testing to see whether, at this late stage, a leak would come from City.
Usually UEFA’s message has been more direct. Sources indicate that whenever City employees or lawyers have gone to the Nyon headquarters they have been effectively told “not to waste any more time” because UEFA expected the strength of its case to be crushing.
Certainly the sanction when it came was unprecedented: a two-year Champions League ban and a fine of €30 million, with UEFA damning of City’s “serious breaches” and conduct.
Soriano had to kiss goodbye to his four-day skiing trip to be at the training ground on Saturday morning, and he will be back in the office on Monday, with staff from across the club to be addressed on developments over the past few days.
For a time City had expected to avoid a ban in the first place. Sources close to the club pointed out on Saturday that Silver Lake, who invested $500 million at the start of December, would not have done so without the most thorough due diligence process.
They are a club who are planning to sign at least five players in the summer. If Lionel Messi becomes available, they will go for him. They are not a club expecting to miss out on Champions League revenues and have been preparing a case to take to CAS ever since UEFA announced its decision to investigate the club’s sponsorships in November 2018.
City’s appeals could drag on and it could suit them if they are allowed to participate in next season’s Champions League pending the outcome. For one thing, a source close to the City squad believes some players will want to leave if the ban is not overturned. The club’s leading names have no need to line up potential moves before the outcome of the CAS case as they know they will not be short of suitors.
There is a recognition that it would be harder to attract new players without the opportunity to play top-tier European football, not least because most players have clauses related to the competition in their contracts.
City posted a profit of £10.1 million last season but brought in £77 million from the Champions League, not including gate receipts.
The financial shortfall for the players is not limited to missing out on Champions League match bonuses, either. Clubs often pay bonuses for awards, such as the Ballon d’Or, which is considered far more difficult to win if a player is not competing in the Champions League.
One agent with experience of working with players in the Champions League suggested players will miss out on commercial windfalls, worth up to five figure sums, through participation in events and sponsorships linked to European competitions.
But the message out of City to stakeholders on Friday night was that none of that would matter. As well as assuring agents that they need not worry, there were messages coming the other way — Jorge Mendes is understood to have offered his support.
Sources at Puma, the club’s shirt sponsor that began a 10-year partnership worth £650 million last summer, were relaxed about the prospect of missing two seasons of European football, if that does come to pass. They pointed out that they are committed to City for the long haul, and that Newcastle’s relegation from the Premier League had barely made any difference to another sponsorship agreement.
Beyond the assurances and the shock at the timing of and perhaps severity of the announcement, there is anger, too. Sheikh Mansour, the owner of the club, has been kept up to date right from the start and is said to be livid with how the affair has played out.
The fight will continue. As City said in their public response on Friday, “the club has always anticipated the ultimate need to seek out an independent body and process to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence in support of its position.”
Put simply, they believe UEFA’s process has been flawed, and they believe a separate institution will find in their favour. That is the stance privately, too.
Senior figures in the game believe that the most likely outcome of the appeal is that the two-year ban is reduced to one year, while some believe that in a less “political” arena at CAS, City will escape any ban but pay an even higher financial penalty.
There is anger among those in the City hierarchy directed at Qatar and Paris Saint-Germain’s owners. There is mutual antipathy between the two and this latest development is likely to play badly in the region, given it relates to deception and knowingly cheating. If the goal was for Abu Dhabi to bask in the glory of a sporting giant, there is not much glory to bask in right now.
Yet City’s owners believe they have been treated very differently compared to a similar investigation into PSG, and that could gain some traction at CAS, where precedent and proportionality are important factors.
“CAS Two” — following City’s initial failed case in November — could well drag up meticulous records regarding how other top European clubs have been financed in recent years. They will almost certainly refer to UEFA’s decision to absolve PSG’s alleged wrongdoings relating to sponsorship agreements in the year they signed Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.
A dossier on Europe’s biggest clubs’ financial dealings that City have been collating over more than a year could soon come into play. These are all routine dealings but City will ask why their own sponsorship agreements are any different.
City will want answers about the finances Juventus receive from Fiat, which is owned by the Agnelli family. Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus president, is a member of the UEFA executive committee and is said to have brought PSG’s president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi into the fold.
Last year a new deal with Jeep, which is owned by Fiat, increased the car company’s annual sponsorship of the club by £20.7 million per season, bringing the total to around £40m per season.
City may also bring up Bayern’s recent contract extension with official car supplier Audi, which owns an 8.33 percent stake in the club. That was worth between £45 million and £55 million to the club.
City have also been taking note of transfer deals between some leading clubs that would appear to have benefited both parties.
The club also believe the fact that PSG’s president Al-Khelaifi is on UEFA’s executive committee means he has been in a position to exert pressure over the past couple of months, along with Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, “and the English”, as one senior City figure puts it.
Some sources close to the City case acknowledge that the club may have broken regulations along the way but insist that they have done no worse than any other big club, particularly when FFP was starting to take hold. City have always denied wrongdoing.
The main focus of City’s appeal is likely to centre around UEFA’s alleged “abuse of process”, which is something that CAS showed some element of sympathy towards in November’s failed case appeal, which City figures referred to as “CAS One”.
While the appeals body ruled that City could not bring an appeal to them so soon, because there was no decision to actually appeal against, they did admit that their case was “not without merit”.
In its ruling, CAS said it was “worrisome” that there had appeared to be several leaks from UEFA’s operation. The judges were also “puzzled” by UEFA chief investigator Yves Leterme’s assertion that the leaks could not have come from his team — he called the accusation of “unlawful activities” by him and his team “groundless and unacceptable in tone”.
In any case CAS did not believe that any leaks would have prejudiced the process, so City should not be too optimistic that they will be able to hang their hat on that line of attack, but the club did land a few blows on their adversary.
Almost as soon as UEFA’s judgement was announced on Friday, sources close to the situation indicated that City would “go for the throat”, that there would be an “all-out attack” on European football’s governing body as this unseemly row enters a new chapter.
