Punishing Manchester City has to be the first step towards transforming how football is run
Sportswashing and financial doping are a stain on the people’s game, but football’s problems are much more deeply rooted than Manchester City’s business model
As a diehard Manchester City supporter, it has been a little disappointing – but of course not at all surprising – to witness the outbreak of whataboutery among fellow fans following news that the Premier League will charge the club with a litany of financial misdemeanours. If found guilty, City could face a points deduction, the voiding of several trophies, and/or relegation from the Premier League.
For the most part, I welcome it all. While I have lived and breathed every moment of City’s barely credible adventure since the former Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, bought the club in 2007 – paving the way for Abu Dhabi’s sportswashing project – it will be a blessed relief to see it all come crashing down. For better or worse, we might get our club back.
But will punishing Manchester City be the first step towards football fans in general getting our sport – the so-called people’s game – back? I doubt it. It would be unwise to assume that the decision to charge City emanates from a desire to clean up football governance. If such an agenda existed, I would expect to see a great deal more scrutiny of how all clubs are run, and indeed a move towards alternative ownership models which recognise stakeholders such as supporters and communities.
Sin bin
In the absence of such an agenda, the whataboutery arguments are actually rather strong. The case for singling out Manchester City collides with a reality in which:
There are very few ‘big clubs’ in England without sin. Others may not have actually breached financial rules in the same way as City, but none are innocent of the broader crime of betraying the integrity of the sport, and indeed of profiteering off the back of ‘ordinary fans’ in a way that Abu Dhabi has largely not done at City;
It would simply have been impossible for a once-great but long-suffering club like Manchester City (or Chelsea a decade earlier, or Newcastle United a decade later) to compete at the elite end of European football without the willingness of wealthy owners to run the club at a loss. Leicester City in 2015/16 is a fairytale which did not convert into enduring success domestically, let alone internationally. It may be possible for lesser clubs in other European countries to break into the elite, but this is effectively impossible in England because the greater number of ‘big clubs’ means regular Champions League qualification is incredibly difficult (i.e. prohibitively expensive).
The first argument offers an anarchic vision of football governance. All rules are bound to be imperfect and, to some extent, arbitrary. So why bother? Football is above all supposed to be about entertainment and escapism, and nobody can deny that Manchester City have delivered on this in recent years.
On the other hand, the entertainment product depends on a degree of competition, so it makes sense that there would be rules which prevent a small number of clubs monopolising the world’s most talented players, just as there are rules which govern how the game is conducted on the pitch. If we had not been (allegedly) inventing fake sponsorship deals, we might as well have been bribing referees. Perhaps it is unfair that City alone (so far) have been caught out, based on the precise configuration of current rules, but at least it serves as a deterrent to prevent the worst excesses by other clubs.
Protection racket
The second argument is arguably stronger. It rests on the assumption that if football is to continue to entertain, competition must be prioritised, and therefore it must be possible for clubs to join the elite ranks (by whatever means necessary). Accordingly, the rules that Manchester City have been accused of breaking are not at all imperfect or arbitrary; instead they are expertly designed to protect (a) already-wealthy clubs in Spain and Germany who require regular European glory to compensate for an inferior domestic product, and (b) the Anglo-American model of financialised governance which characterises most big clubs in England.
This is the same protectionism which led to the European Super League proposal, which would have severely damaged domestic leagues - it might have provided more entertainment in the short term but, by stifling competition, would have had the opposite impact over the longer term. Manchester City were part of this proposal, but were also the first to back out, when our club’s owners realised the idea clashed with the footballing ideals of City fans, undermining the whole point of sportswashing (and note that Qatari-owned Paris St. Germain were never signed up). The fans of other big clubs share these ideals, obviously, but their owners are more dependent for enrichment on the global TV and merchandise revenues the ESL would have created.
Nevertheless, the correct conclusion is not that there should be no financial restrictions on football clubs, but rather that the sport as a whole needs a new framework for club ownership.
The argument that the elite stratum of European football needs be more permeable rings a little hollow when you notice that the pursuit of elite status by Manchester City, and other interlopers, is at least partially at the expense of clubs even lower down the football pyramid. City fans like to point out that few clubs have been as successful at turning local kids into superstars recently – but this is a story of having the resources to churn through hundreds of youth players each season, depriving other local clubs of the opportunity to operate sustainably by nurturing talent.
To clarify, I see no reason that football should not be allowed to generate vast sums of money: as long as this money is managed for the good of the game, rather than the glory of owners.
Gender politics
There is perhaps a third argument in favour of sparing Manchester City, albeit not one that many City fans have actually yet made.
Manchester City are one of the few Premier League clubs to have invested heavily in the infrastructure of women’s football in recent years. For sure, England’s Euro 2022 victory would have been impossible without this cross-subsidy.
Deep down, we probably all know that whatever happens to Manchester City’s men’s team, the penalty will ultimately have little or no impact on how men’s football is organised: the ‘one bad apple’ narrative is already being drafted. So, if City’s punishment puts any dent at all in the growth of the women’s game, it could do a lot more harm than good. (Wyn Grant’s Political Football places the development of women’s football in the context of dysfunctional and corrupt governance processes across the sport.)
This is obviously not to suggest that the ends justify the means – because Abu Dhabi’s support for women’s football is not a meaningful end, rather another aspect of sportswashing. The growth of women’s football is, in my view, a public good which should be financed by the state. But no such funding is available.
A fourth line of argument might point out that Manchester City is not a hermetically sealed unit. Our money (which may have been obtained fraudulently) has been shared with other clubs — most obviously when we buy their players, often at highly inflated prices. And most intriguingly, the current Premier League leaders, Arsenal, are benefiting from a coach and key players who improved immeasurably during their time working under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City (a coach who we presumably should not have been able to afford).
Owning up
Football will only be transformed when we reimagine (or rediscover) what we want football clubs to be. Yet there is no easy path from where we are to where we need to be. It is tempting to say clubs should be franchises, not individual business entities, and therefore more heavily supervised by the football authorities who would ‘own’ the sport and its competitions. But, firstly, let us remember who the relevant football authorities are: the FA, UEFA, and FIFA. It would be naïve, to say the least, to assume bureaucratic benevolence.
Furthermore, organisational autonomy at least allows for the possibility of supporter and community ownership of clubs, which is probably the best antidote we have to the exploitation of football’s cultures and traditions for the benefit of financiers and nation-states with non-sporting motives.
Of course, in a capitalist economy, any model of club ownership is going to be vulnerable to appropriation by such actors. And the sport is always going to be vulnerable to some clubs monopolising resources, therefore undermining competition, even if the opportunity to do so arises through on-field success rather than off-field business practice. Fan ownership is as likely to drive as it is impede this logic.
As such, if the autonomy of clubs as businesses is going to be retained, it has to be accompanied by a strict licensing system which allows for the collectivisation of revenues. Financial transparency must be absolute, and there must be robust mechanisms of redistribution within and between leagues, as well as from the professional game to the community infrastructures that serve as football’s breeding ground. These infrastructures have been starved of investment and detached from the professional game’s ‘conspicuous consumption’ for far too long.
It is painful but necessary to acknowledge that Manchester City’s defenestration might be for the best. We deserve to be punished for financial wrongdoing – but that is not why I welcome whatever is to come.
Instead, it is primarily because I no longer want my club to be owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi – things were bad enough when we were owned by JD Sports. I do not even want City to be coached by Guardiola, whose overpowering presence only serves to hollow out what the club once was.
We have sold our soul and diluted our identity, in return for a few fun years that ultimately do not mean very much. Success was never worth the moral compromise.
However, it is easy to envisage a situation in which punishing Manchester City is not the first step towards football cleaning up its act, but rather a one-off show trial designed to further insulate the Premier League’s elite from being scrutinised and challenged. In this latter scenario, football will be no less doomed.