Manchester City’s ban is completely politically motivated and FFP was used as a means to an end. While PSG did bow dow to the European football overlords and got a seat with them, Manchester City decided to fight for wanting to pump whatever money they wanted into the club.
The only standards here are UEFA’s double standards. This isn’t about fairness or justice, just using it to admonish those that don’t abide by the politics in European football.
I’m just calling how it is. This isn’t about Guardiola, especially because it won’t affect him one bit. After all he’s off England in a few months anyway. Hopefully not to Juventus…
Here’s a prediction of mine: Manchester City will win the appeal against UEFA and force them to pay a massive indemnity fee. This will break FFP for good and football owners will be able to spend whatever they want again.
Not only that, overturning UEFA’s verdict against Manchester City could become the biggest impact in European football since the Bosman ruling.
Manchester City needs to try and completely invalidate Financial Fair Play in the court rather than overturn a two year ban. It will be the difference between succeeding or failing.
I don’t care a bit about financial doping, let’s get this out of the way. It’s a silly argument when many football clubs since the 60s one way or the other pumped a lot of money into clubs. City, Chelsea and PSG are just recent cases, and only highlighted because they worked.
Berlusconi pumped a lot of money into Milan when he bought the club, it’s the one most successful and overlooked story. What did that bring? One of the greatest football sides of all time, so I couldn’t care less about financial fairness in football. It’s never been the case.
What’s bloody fair about a dozen European football clubs monopolising most of the money? Nothing. Bayern, PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and other of the super clubs already are out of control, there’s no going back. There’s no fairness.
Thirty years from now if the top five leagues stay the same, we’re likely to have Barça and Madrid with 90% of La Liga titles, same for Bayern in Germany, PSG in France and even Juventus in Italy. UCL will be only won by the top clubs, forget smaller club fairytales.
The top five leagues won’t stay the same, the European Super League is an inevitability and will come to life this decade. Watch this space. The super clubs want more money and they will get it.
Even Liverpool and Manchester City could turn into an out of control duopoly. Arsenal have Kroenke; Tottenham are Spurs after all; Chelsea might but Abramovich looks legitimately disenchanted; and Manchester United with the Glazers don’t look good.
This fear that a billionaire owner will ruin football by pumping billions into a club is completely unfounded. Billions aren’t a guarantee of success in football.
Barça spent over €400m in trash since Neymar left, PSG over €400m on two players that didn’t bring anything in the UCL. Look at Manchester United’s spending!
What many football fans don’t want to see are clubs investing the owner’s billions smartly and being successful. City’s success are owed to their impeccable management from top to bottom… just like Liverpool who didn’t need billions from the FSG for that.
Different means of achieving success? Absolutely! Liverpool’s are rightfully romanticised, myself included, but the core of it is the same. Get a top football club management in order, success will follow.
