The Premier League’s investigation into alleged rule breaches by Manchester City has entered its fifth year with senior football figures believing the delay is an increasingly bad look for the English game.
A High Court judge said in July 2021 that it was “a legitimate public concern” that an investigation launched in December 2018 had made so little progress, but 18 months later it is still going on.
The Premier League launched its inquiry after documents obtained by a computer hacker were published by the German news website Der Spiegel, alleging that City’s Abu Dhabi owners made payments to the club instead of sponsors and also made secret payments to agents.
One senior figure in football has described the delays as “disgraceful”, especially at a time when an independent regulator is about to be brought into the English game. Although the regulator would not take over disciplinary functions from the leagues, clubs could land themselves in serious trouble if they provide inaccurate information to a statutory body.
City have always denied wrongdoing and their lawyers told the court in 2021 that “it may be that no charges will ever be brought”.
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Last May, Der Spiegel published City’s contract with Roberto Mancini, their manager from 2009 to 2013, detailing how more than half of his basic salary was paid to his company via a consultancy contract with the Abu Dhabi-based club Al Jazira.
After the leaks, City overturned a Champions League ban imposed by Uefa, as many of the alleged offences were time-barred, but no such time restriction operates in the Premier League.
The July 2021 court ruling revealed that City had lost a challenge over an arbitration panel’s right to hear the case and had been obliged to hand over documents.
Cycling crisis
British Cycling is at a “crisis point” and is “failing its membership”, its former chairman Brian Cookson has claimed in a scathing post on his blog.
Cookson, also the former president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), pointed out that British Cycling had targeted increasing its membership from 150,000 in 2021 to 250,000 by next year, but instead its numbers have fallen by 2 per cent.
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He blames a succession of chief executives, three in six years, adding: “British Cycling has been damaged by people who have been parachuted into the organisation with no real knowledge of, or commitment to, the sport and pastime, and have no empathy with the people who participate and make cycling happen.”
Hewitt’s Fifa bid
The FA’s chairwoman, Debbie Hewitt, has made a late decision to challenge Northern Ireland’s David Martin for the British Fifa vice-presidency.
It had looked as though Martin would be unopposed but amid disquiet that he did not offer any support in the Fifa row over several European countries — including England and Wales — wanting to wear “One Love” armbands in Qatar, Hewitt has entered the fray.
The vote for the $250,000-a-year post will be held by Uefa’s 55 nations at its Congress in Lisbon in April and sources say Hewitt is the early favourite, with Martin desperately trying to shore up his support.
Olympic bigwig all at sea
One of the most senior figures in Olympic sport has been fined and given a warning after being found guilty of interfering with the election of World Sailing’s president.
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Ng Ser Miang of Singapore, an IOC vice-president, was found guilty by an independent panel, chaired by the London-based lawyer and former Premier League footballer Gareth Farrelly, after the 2020 election, in which Kim Andersen of Denmark was narrowly defeated by China’s Quanhai Li.
Ser Miang was a member of World Sailing’s ethics commission at the time but claimed this week that the international federation no longer has jurisdiction over him, as he resigned in December 2020.
Rebel yell
The European Super League rebels are refusing to go down without a fight despite an European Court of Justice (ECJ) setback against Uefa.
The company A22, which has been behind the Super League bid orchestrated by Real Madrid, is co-organising the Future of Sport Governance in Europe conference in Brussels next week.
It has secured Melchior Wathelet, Belgium’s former deputy prime minister and a former ECJ advocate general, as the keynote speaker, so no guesses as to which side of the legal argument he will take.
