Gianni Infantino is ‘clear member of the cheating-complicity cohort’

· Football365

Manchester City are not the only ones complicit in this mass fraud. And there are still lots of opinions on this subject.

Manchester City are not the only ones complicit in this mass fraud. And there are still lots of opinions on this subject.

If you have anything to add (we’re not sure there’s anything more to say), then mail us at theeditor@football365.com

Will other fans be asked to apologise if Man City are innocent?

Just a thought. If Man City are ultimately found innocent on appeal by a panel of, I would presume, highly qualified legal experts, will Dave Tickner encourage followers of United, Arsenal and Liverpool to show the same acceptance of the ruling that he demands of City fans — and perhaps apologise for the vitriol poured forth? Or does the advice about avoiding cognitive dissonance only apply when the verdict goes the other way?

Mark (WBA)

Can City owners be forced to sell?

In response to Jdb in the weekend mailbox.

Personally, I think a forced sale is actually unlikely – it should be enforced since they have proven themselves to be unfit owners, but I have no trust that the Premier League or Britain in general would turn down money from questionable sources.

However, the idea that them making a profit on the sale of Man City would mean it wasn’t a punishment doesn’t make sense to me.

Firstly, they have more money than most, so making a few billion profit really doesn’t mean that much to them. They could probably spend that without flinching. Secondly, the purpose of buying Man City was to enhance their reputation in global standings – if they are found eventually punished for cheating, then their sportswashing programme has effectively failed?

The unfortunate conclusion though is that they have already achieved their aims and are now embedded in society through investments which they are unlikely to be forced to withdraw, so I guess there really would be no punishment?

Jack (Far too many variables to make an accurate guess as to what will happen) Manchester

…The big nail in the coffin for City was the fake sponsorship money that left a trail independent investigators could follow. Part of the agreed sum came directly from the sponsor and the rest came from elsewhere. It’s obvious that City are still funded this way, a cursory glance at their year on year revenue shows no interruption in growth since 2018 (apart from the covid year) so unless you believe Pep began magically shitting £200mn at the end of every season then they are still cheating.

Now we have to assume after this all came out that City wised up and have made this money trail more opaque, they’d be stupid not to. Really all they would have to do is add one extra layer of concealment by routing all the money through the sponsors so they can pay City the full sum. The Premier League can see the clubs financials but have no authority to examine the books of a foreign company like Etihad. So as long as the sponsors play along, and being state owned they don’t really have a choice but to play along, then the illegal funding can and will continue.

My point here being that no matter what points deductions or title stripping punishments may be imposed on City, the only thing that actually stops them from continuing to cheat is a forced sale. The breadth of state power will always ultimately overcome any rule imposed on them, they are the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. The only solution is to take away their access to the league and to ensure no state associated entity gets anywhere near ownership of an English football club ever again.

Reforms on club ownership have been laughably slow. It took 18 years for the league to ban the kind of leveraged buyout perpetrated by the Glazers on United and by Hicks & Gillet on Liverpool. Its now 18 years since a state ownership was allowed. There will never again be the opportunity and support from the other owners to enact lasting restrictions.

The league should be the ones to manage the sale of a club, the selling owner goes and finds bidders then hands over the process to an independent team for deep vetting. Governments or any state associated persons/companies are barred from application, as too are corporations or religious bodies, and all prospective buyers must provide open books to prove they meet the financial restrictions. These restrictions should include tighter controls on leveraged funds (the current 65% is still too high) and limits on the amount of private equity can hold (20% at most) as well as detailed plans for debt repayments. Finally any prospective owner must be approved by a vote from the other 19 members with at least 13 votes in favour to pass.

It might be unrealistic but I’d go even further and impose a continual review process for existing owners as well as new ones. Like an Ofsted for football that have carte blanche to inspect and judge clubs for the financial health, the conduct around player welfare, and their treatment of fans. They should have power to instantly impose probation periods to rectify issues, followed by sanctions, and eventually the power to force bad owners to sell up.

Dave, Manchester

Is Infantino slipping by unnoticed?

It seems to me that City’s cheating and lying, and lying some more and obfuscation during the investigation and then more denials and a new defence that contradicts other defences in other trials, the whole thing feels very Trumpian and modern, but the one who slunk away unscathed is our trusty villain, Infantino.

Emails revealed during the hack showed Infantino comforting the City bigwigs and suggesting his public statements were nothing more than an act, presented evidence that Infantino was frontline in sharing confidential information with City to help them navigate earlier charges of cheating, held secret meetings (albeit secret meetings these days seem to be not very secret) and demonstrating Infantino buckles under every threat and concedes to the money men.

Like a scheming Iago, the man with no scruples was discovered as having even fewer than we thought.

A clear member of the cheating-complicity cohort, Infantino has managed to hide under the clamour to talk about City and slink out the backdoor.

If Infantino is the mother of modern football culture, City are its btard offspring.

And let’s not forget, with all this being public knowledge it’s still not a given his reelection bid would fail.

FFS!

Alexander Tovey

We actually know few details of Man City cheating

One of the strangest aspects of the Manchester City debate is how confidently people argue about a case whose evidence the public has barely seen.

There are reportedly hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and evidence involved, yet very little of the substance has entered the public domain. Despite that, some City supporters appear to have concluded that the whole affair amounts to little more than an administrative misdemeanour — a few forms filled in incorrectly, perhaps, and nothing that should have any bearing on what happened on the football pitch.

But we simply do not know that.

The allegations are extensive enough that the real picture may prove considerably wider and deeper than the shorthand discussion of “115 charges” suggests. If there has been financial manipulation, concealed payments, misleading accounting or other methods of circumventing the rules, the significance will only become clear when the underlying evidence and findings are properly exposed and explained.

And therein lies the problem. Manchester City are perfectly entitled to defend themselves and use the appeal processes available to them. But if every adverse finding were challenged through every possible avenue, there is an obvious danger that supporters and the wider football public could wait years before seeing anything approaching the complete picture.

There is also what I would call the “Robertson philosophy” of the argument.

Forget, for a moment, whether Manchester City have played wonderful football. They plainly have. Forget whether the players themselves have done anything wrong. That is not really the point either.

The question is this: if breaches of the financial rules are ultimately proved, could this extraordinary collection of players, coaches and resources have been assembled in the same way without those breaches?

If the answer is no, then pointing to the quality of the football as some sort of mitigation misses the argument completely.

If somebody wins a race having broken the rules governing how the competitors were allowed to prepare for it, the fact that they ran beautifully does not resolve the issue. It does not make them ‘winners, they are merely ‘cheaters’.

Manchester City’s football may have been magnificent. Their players may have produced some of the finest performances English football has seen. But if it is eventually established that the platform upon which that success was built was obtained through serious breaches of the rules, then the attractiveness of the football is irrelevant.

Whether alleged cheating looks good on the pitch or not isn’t really the argument, is it?

Until the evidence and the eventual findings are made public, none of us — City supporters, rival supporters or newspaper columnists — should pretend that we already know what this case amounts to.

The uncomfortable truth is that we may not yet know a mere fraction of it.

All the best and thanks,

Mike

Cheating is cheating

Yes City have done what they have done and yes punish them accordingly. But although their crime has involved 100’s of millions of £££££’s, I still think diving or feigning injury is just as bad. Both are cheating. Will this consideration enter the heads of any players/coaches/owners/pundits in the future? I doubt it. Self unaware hypocrites of the highest order.

Shunt

Does everybody cheat to some extent?

I’ve got a few issues with David’s email. Firstly, whilst other teams do cheat through this by things such as diving and tactical fouling, none of these are on such a systematic and egregious level as what City have been found guilty of here. You could maybe, if you turn your head sideways and squint very hard see the tactical fouling of Barcelona as similar but it’s a stretch. And the Bald Fraud (pending appeal) imported that to City so we would just be adding that to City’s rap sheet anyway.

But also, all these things are cheating and seen as such. They are also punishable by the laws of the game with fouls, free kicks and yellow/red cards. That they often go unpunished does not absolve City of blame for their cheating nor is there any equivalence to be drawn. If you’re annoyed about tactical fouling or diving there is a discussion to be had, but they are separate issues.

The other thing I have to take issue with is the debt which sits on my club. This was not accrued so United could fiddle the league. This is absolutely a product of both a leveraged buyout that should never have been permissible in the first place and bad ownership. Absolutely all sensible United fans would rather there was no debt and if the Premier League could pull their collective fingers out of their collective arses and put a rule in place that punishes the club for continuing to run with such a debt and stop our owners from financing it with club revenue we’d all be very much grateful. I’d happily take the Glazers medicine for them, copping a relegation or two to put the club back where it was 20 years ago if necessary. As long as the Glazers bugger off at the same time. If anything Financial Fair Play rules haven’t been strict enough as the Glazers have been able to add to their existing debt Willy nilly whilst still extracting cash from the club.

A quick point on competition: Manchester United, Blackburn, Arsenal and Chelsea title winners before FFP. Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City, Leicester City, Liverpool, Arsenal after FFP. Now you might say city wouldn’t be there without breaking the rules but I still think they probably wouldn’t have eventually. Plus Spurs quite possibly could’ve been added to that list without City’s cheating.

And City just can not use the excuse that rules were made to protect the elite when they voted for them in the first place, effectively drawing up the ladder behind them.

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