I wonder if,in future,players will have to play in bare feet to see if their toenails may be offside?
With the expectation that the team who finishes fifth will qualify for the CL, or course the Narrative is now talking about The Sheffield United Fairytale™ ...in other words, we're the baddies again
I'll believe Man City is banned from the CL when I see it. Up to now, FFP has served a number of purposes: 1. It's been a fig leaf for a football world where money buys everything and everyone. 2. It's been a sop to the existing powers, since it should tend to discourage the new money clubs from pushing the existing powers too fast and too hard--though should be and has been in this case are two different things. 3. It's motivated the new money clubs to send money and support FIFA's way to keep themselves out of trouble. If Man CIty is actually banned, the question would be, why start enforcing FFP now? Plenty of clubs, including Man City, have clearly violated it in the past and gotten at most a slap on the wrist.
The thing is that, until now, FFP has been enforced - but enforced against the small fry, for example Malaga got stung pretty quickly when their Qatari owners arrived while the likes of Dnipro and Anzhi (CTRL + C) Makhachkala were both jumped on the second they looked like they might qualify for the Champions League, but so many blind eyes were turned to Chelsea, The Sheikh Mansour Team or PSG At a guess, the fact that The Sheikh Mansour Team have gone to such lengths to take the piss for so many years, for example the repeated uses of shell companies to cook the books, is what's brought this on - and just for a reminder, I'll repeat what I said a couple of years ago As documented in this month's WSC, their dodginess that Football Leaks has uncovered is a lot more sordid than that, for example... * In 2013 the club claimed that Etihad paid £35m in sponsorship for the stadium naming rights, but in fact Etihad paid just £8m - the other £27m was paid via a holding company owned by a certain M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan * An offshore company going by the name of Fordham paid €30m a year in non-specific marketing rights, but it has emerged that €9.8m of those marketing rights are paid by an individual going by the name of M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan * The club failed FFP when sacking Roberto Mancini, as the £9m payoff sent their balance into the red, so their solution was twofold: increase the value of their sponsorship deals, and backdate them to the start of the season - and this happened to be the same year where they were paying 75% of their own stadium naming rights * As a result of the above, Etihad were said to be paying £67.5m a year for the naming rights of the stadium - yet were still only paying £8m, with the remainder once again coming from the canyon-sized pockets of M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan * In relation to their backdating sponsorship deals to game the FFP system, when a club finance officer queried what was going on he was told by non-executive director Simon Pearce "We can do what we want" * Club president Khaldoon Al Mubarak outright threatened then-UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino in an e-mail where he stated that, rather than meet FFP regulations, they would "rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world and sue them for the next ten years" I'll also repeat what I said last year Football Leaks has also turned up some interesting comparisons with the transfers TSMT have made over the years Sergio Aguero €12m up front €12m in 2012 €12m in 2013 €250k for every season he scores 15 goals €250k for every season where he makes 25 league appearances €1m for every league title €500k for every Champions League quarter final aggregate win €1m for every Champions league semi-final aggregate win However, the rumoured "Don't sell him to Los Ladrones" clause does not exist Eliaquim Mangala €30.5m for 56.67% of Mangala's sporting rights An obligation to buy out the remainder of his rights, 33.3% owned by Maltese-based hedge fund Doyen Sports, and 10% by Danubio ...in other words, rather than the £32m they reportedly paid for Mangala, they actually paid £41m
Man City aint being banned for failing FFP. They were given a joke fine for that in 2014. They have been banned for lying about their spending when they provided evidence to UEFA. That is why they have been dealt with more harshly than PSG.
So now the Shiek will have a record so he will be sent back home because we always treat people the same don't we
A large part of the answer is Aleksander Čeferin becoming President of UEFA in 2016. A large part of his mandate is to try to better represent the poorer nations and clubs and to address some of the piss taking. To be fair to the bloke, he is attempting to implement change and make it work... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...erin-considering-luxury-tax-big-spenders.html Banning City is more than most expected, including me. More power to his elbow.
As Gerald Nabarro once said " British justice is the best in the world as long as you can afford it " .....showing my age here
That is a throwback. He was often the butt of jokes on The Goodies. His family knew about the law though. His brother was Senior Partner of Nabarro Nathanson (as was). My grandmother was his family's housekeeper in Willesden after leaving the pub trade. A number of them came to her funeral, although Gerald was long since dead by then.
I remember that well. I didn't like Nabaro's politics but I liked the man. I remember it as him standing on the steps ot the (I think the high court) saying. If you want justice in our land you need to be a wealthy man and I'm a wealthy man. He had 7 cars if I remember with each one on a personal number plate of NAB 1 to NAB 7 I was impressed that a rich Tory would highlight the unfairness of our legal system.
I'm no fan of Russell Brand, but one of his quotes always seems very appropriate for today's politics: “When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want to talk about inequality.”
