Uefa quick to reaffirm its commitment to system it maintains has overwhelmingly improved European football’s financesIn the immediate reaction to the court of arbitration for sport quashing Manchester City’s two-year Champions League ban, there was a view that Uefa’s financial fair play system is finished, after such a thumping defeat for its compliance structures. But given the brief Cas statement that presented an odd conundrum to conclude an extraordinary saga, and Uefa’s response, reports of FFP’s death appear to be an exaggeration.Cas does appear to have swung a wrecking ball towards the FFP rules and the Uefa structures that govern Europe’s top-flight clubs by agreement, but perhaps not in the way assumed. The three lawyers on the Cas panel did reverse the guilty verdict of Uefa’s club financial control body’s “adjudicatory chamber” (AC), which found City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, disguised some multimillions of his own funding as independent sponsorships from Abu Dhabi companies. However the circumstances, the Cas finding that City failed to cooperate with, and even obstructed, the investigations of European football’s governing body would normally appear quite damning of a club. Continue reading...
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/13/manchester-city-cas-decision-not-mean-end-of-financial-fair-play-uefa