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MANCHESTER, England – According to Arsène Wenger, Manchester City's problem was not simply the fact that it had a seemingly bottomless mine. It was that the city was smart too. "From the essence and ideas," said Wenger, the former director of Arsenal. "Money and quality"
Of course, Wenger spent much of his career fighting the inexorable drift of football to conquer oligarchs and plutocrats. It was Wenger who introduced for the first time the idea of "financial doping" in sport, preaching parsimony during a gold rush.
In the end, even though he did not believe that City's success could be explained solely by his track record. His pre-eminence could have been achieved without the billions of pounds and more provided by his support, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, but it would not have been as complete if this money had not been spent so wisely.
The most obvious. The manifestation of this has been on the field: Pep Guardiola's team won the Premier League last season with more points and more goals than any other team in the modern era. . He did so with such a style, a ruthless impulse that England as a whole "will always be grateful" for Guardiola's presence, as former striker Gary Lineker said. When the English national team reached the semifinals of the World Cup last summer, many acknowledged that Guardiola had helped, at least in part, to facilitate the introduction of the World Cup. a more modern approach.
However, the modern city has also become a modern city. a point of reference for many. City Football Group, the umbrella organization that owns City and its interconnected network of sister clubs has been consulted by the Chinese Super League on how to manage its teams in a more sustainable manner. In the United States in particular, Major League Soccer used the vast database of information held by City's recruiting department to badess potential signatures in minor European leagues.
Even Real Madrid, a club more accustomed to directing than to follow, was impressed by the model of the city. The leaders of Santiago Bernabéu explained to the director general of the city, Ferran Soriano, that it was not something they could copy – the prestige of Real would be diluted by the franchising, they felt – but they admired the concept. Like everyone in football, they recognized that the city was not limited to oil: it also had ideas.
More and more, it seems that this combination is just too much for the rest of the Premier League. Guardiola's team have lost just four points this season; he remains on track to equal or beat his points total of last year. He will take part in Sunday's derby against Manchester United as a favorite of the match; United, the City of Shadow has not been able to escape for so long, now seems the underdog. On Tuesday, Guardiola was asked if the league as a whole would end up suffering from City's impeccable excellence. "I do not know," he said, "if it's a problem."
A similar success in the Champions League, the competition that its leaders – if not its fans – cherish more than any other, has proved more difficult to achieve. City does not need the trophy, however, to know that it has already joined the top teams in Europe. In the documents published by the opaque Football Leaks denunciation platform in the German magazine Der Spiegel, five Premier League clubs were invited to participate in a plan to launch a dissident European super-league – replacing the Champions League – in from 2021. City was among them. The essence and ideas brought City to the main table.
However, these documents painted a totally different picture from that of City, which had convinced so many of its opponents to follow its example.
There are details of inflated sponsorship deals designed to mask the secret money injections of club owners; closed payment loops with fake third-party companies for the image rights of the players; the salary of a former director who appears, at least in part, to have been reinforced by a role of "advisor" to another club owned by Sheikh Mansour; a secret partnership with a Danish team that could have violated the rules of club influence; legal threats not only to UEFA, but also to the accounting firm responsible for examining the club's accounts; and behind the scenes with Gianni Infantino, at the time Secretary General of UEFA and now the most powerful man of FIFA.
Nobody comes out of the revelations: not Infantino, crazy and creepy; not UEFA, willing to pursue minnows while sharks swim freely; not the clubs, led by Bayern Munich, who talked about leaving not only UEFA but FIFA itself in search of more money; not Javier Tebas, the president of the Liga, who called for punishing the guilty of "tricky shots", which would help by chance several teams in his competition; not the clubs or organizations that should be just angry at the flagrant violations of the rules but have kept the accomplices silent; and certainly not City – or even Paris Saint-Germain – who subscribed to a set of rules and immediately looked for ways to break them.
The New York Times did not see the source documents that Der Spiegel got. and can not check them. But City has said none of the information reported as being false. He simply described the documents as a "clear and organized attempt" to tarnish the club's reputation.
It could also indicate, of course, that he has already been punished for failing to comply with financial fair play – 60 million euros. (approximately $ 68 million) in 2014, even though some of it was suspended or subsequently reimbursed – even though, as the documents show, intensive lobbying meant that the fine was much less onerous than it could have been. 'be.
believe that the relief was also justified. The club hardly concealed that he was convinced that financial fair play was a ruse invented by the traditional elite of the game to stay at the forefront, like City and P.S.G. in their place. If City was trying to get around the rules, it was only because the rules were unfair.
In addition, even if the allegations are true and tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars more were injected into City compared to the club's accounts. recorded, it does not change the fundamental truth, even that recognized by Wenger: this money alone is not enough.
This is certainly Guardiola's point of view. "When I was in Barcelona and Germany, I always heard that Manchester City had just money," he said this week. "You have to accept it when people say that you simply win because of money. We think we work a lot: not just the manager, the staff and the players. If people say that it 's about money, we accept it, but this view is completely false. We work a lot, in a good way, and that's why I always defend myself.
In other words, the city has fuel and ideas.
There is however a larger problem, which extends beyond knowing whether the city has been punished enough. or if FFP was well designed in the first place, zooming in on these problems, it's getting lost in the weeds.
Even as a city – like PSG – would have spent a lot of time, effort and spending to violate UEFA rules, while facing any threat of punishment with anger and anger, wondering if a potential fine could be better spent in a team of rising jurists.When the sum to be paid would eventually City could easily say that tens of millions of euros did not materially affect its activities.
This is the true image of last week's revelations. beyond the interest of the tribe: not of a single club, but of a whole host of them who believe that the rules must be modified to meet their needs; teams so swollen with success that they can now ignore the dictates of their governing bodies; teams too big to fail, beyond control.
This is what prompted City to deceive and then scorn UEFA. This has led to the endless changes in the Champions League and adjustments to national cup competitions and a series of bans prohibiting young players from approaching or signing illegally: essential arrogance, a contempt for the consequences, a conviction that could be right. This is what threatens the fundamental breakdown of the structure of the game that is best reflected in this plot concocted by Bayern for a dissident super-league that would involve removing players from all international football matches, including included in the World Cup.
City attempted to circumvent a set of rules designed, to a large extent, specifically to protect the teams it was attempting to encroach on its competitors. Perhaps it was justified to fight, tooth and nail, at the thought that she might be punished by what she sees as a rigged system. Maybe UEFA was lucky not to go to court. Perhaps also that to condemn the City owners for all this would be a proof of a distorted morality, but not for the alleged human rights violations and oppression they suffered from United Arab Emirates.
this, as the game authorities seem to do, consists in helping once again to inaugurate a game with a rule for the rich and another for the poor; a game of ruling organs that tremble under the trembling fist of the great and the good; a game of teams that decide which rules suit them and when, and authorities acting at the request of their most powerful subjects and their fans who are embarrbaded to praise actions that might otherwise provoke contempt. It's embracing a game that is not run in the interest of the majority but of the minority and in a world where the quality of an idea can not compete with a quantity of money. 39; gasoline.
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