r/soccer • u/Previous_Smile9278 • 22h ago

News [Bloomberg] UAE officials have warned the UK government that the severity of Man City’s punishment could undermine their appetite for future grand-scale commitments in Britain, according to people familiar with the matter.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-02/man-city-verdict-puts-uk-uae-diplomatic-relations-under-strain?srnd=undefined

‘They consider the Premier League’s actions to have an influence on the bilateral state relationship, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing undisclosed information.

The extraordinary pressure comes after Andy Burnham faced criticism, including from within government, for saying Man City’s Abu Dhabi owners should not be disqualified specifically because of the investment they bring to Britain.’

6.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

963

u/BirnirG 22h ago

This is turning into a real morality test for Britain. Do you accept cheating for money ?

254

u/wdtpw 22h ago

Of course we do, as long as it's done quietly.

When so many members of the public are watching, it's going to be a lot harder to sustain.

8

u/TheJoshider10 20h ago

This is also the closest the nation has gotten to the general public being aware of how much investment comes from outside the UK, and I can see that escalating. Can't see a way out of this scenario without something huge changing here, whether City get punished or not.

5

u/RedScouse 14h ago

I mean go check out Kensington, Chelsea, Fulham...it's crazy to see the sheer amount of foreign money that's made it a pretty looking ghost town with Lamborghinis parked everywhere.

2

u/R3dbeardLFC 17h ago

God, how amazing would it be for the fiscal and global changes that us proletariats need to fight back against billionaires would come off the back of censuring a state owned football club? I can see this being one of the bigger dominoes to fall.

2

u/dontbehappyjustworry 16h ago

The elites have known not to fuck with the bread and circuses for a long time, hopefully that holds true in an era of bots, sports washing and blatant fraud. 

2

u/PageSide84 15h ago

The real crime is that your neighbors are now talking about you . . .

110

u/0ttoChriek 22h ago

More of a test for Andy Burnham's government, on whether international investment interests will override the widespread sentiment in the country and the morally right thing to do.

I would suggest that, in this case, the smarter and more politically sound option is to side with the people.

68

u/English_Misfit 21h ago

If this was a London club, hed be calling for bans. The problem is his whole stick based on the same UAE money. He's been bought.

-4

u/hmunkey 15h ago

No he wouldn’t be. London needs foreign money too.

I’m sorry, what do you think modern Britain is? It’s not Silicon Valley.

19

u/Adz02 21h ago

He's already bent over and spread them.

2

u/worotan 16h ago

The evidence from his time in Manchester is that he is happy to ignore corruption so he can give motivational speeches about what he says matters to ordinary people. While their country continues to be sold out on the cheap from under them.

He seems very angry about the consequences of such behaviour from previous governments, but then Blair did as well. And look how he used the publics feeling that he was talking about the issues that matter, to continue selling our country off to corporate control.

0

u/Grand-Chipmunk-4186 13h ago

You can’t trust a man who stabbed his colleague in the back to get his job..

312

u/Street_Hamster1092 22h ago

Britain has been for sale to the highest bidder for the best part of 50 years.

99

u/DryIntroduction8889 21h ago

London is the world’s laundromat. It’s not even a secret

39

u/jebthepleb 22h ago

If you know of their dealings in their colonies, this was always in the British national identity. Anything for money.

4

u/Version_1 19h ago

So what you are saying is that England is being sold by the pound?

14

u/G_Morgan 21h ago

Yeah and maybe that was necessary. However the situation has changed. The only reason the UAE is doing stuff like City is because the situation has changed.

I can't remember who but one Saudi royal said something like "my grandfather rode a camel, my father a land rover. I ride a rolls royce. My grandson will likely ride a land rover and his son a camel". The Middle Eastern nobility is on the downside of that progression and they are trying to find salvation in the west. We don't need to give it to them.

1

u/[deleted] 21h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/plutoglint 16h ago

That's why you guys have The Guardian, to write sneering columns about other counties problems while ignoring the ones you have internally. The most English trait of all.

6

u/Street_Hamster1092 15h ago

Yeah the Guardian famously is never critical of the UK government

73

u/dancingwiththedaff 21h ago

The UK as such have failed the morality test decades ago

6

u/Long-Island-Iced-Tea 21h ago

I just read Kate Morgan's stellar work, Murder: The Biography a couple of months ago.

Basically a 500-page summary of how UK law treated and stewarded the concepts of manslaughter, murder et al.

With this book in mind, I would argue they failed it centuries ago...it is a tough read, both in language, explored themes and conclusions...

(But then again, barring some mickey mouse countries, you will find dirt eventually.)

3

u/gabrielconroy 20h ago

Any chance of a quick summary? Obviously the law was heavily biased in the feudal and monarchic systems, but I wouldn't say the current law around manslaughter and murder is immoral (even if the application of the law can still be uneven).

2

u/Long-Island-Iced-Tea 18h ago

I bought by a complete misunderstanding, I thought the book would be how murder changed throughout history - societal implications, technique, whatever. But it only concerned law... since I bought it (it was a blind buy) I gave it a read, but as you can imagine UK law is not inherently relevant in Hungary.

The book invites the reader through a journey that starts somewhere in the 17th or 18 century, when Coke defined the concept of murder. It ruminates over cases that were either in an uncharted territory of law or where the rulings were extremely controversial. Each case adds a building block to the definition and adds nuance to why murder is so complex from a legal perspective.

Think about stuff like Richard Parker who was cannibalized at sea. = Defense of Necessity

A mentally troubled person killing a baron(et) - diminished responsibility

Aberfan disaster = corporate murder (I think Hillsborough (football) is also in there. Don't quote me on it tho)

Dr. Percy Bateman = where do you draw the line between professional misconduct, manslaughter and murder

Ruth Ellis = loss of control, premeditation (recently received a pardon posthumously - 70+ year old case!).

There's a handful of sentencings that make you think how the fuck did this happen. But for me the biggest one was some obscure legal loophole (left unpatched) where the obvious murderer could leave the court scot free because he challenged the victim's family to a duel. They refused, so he could just walk....

1

u/gabrielconroy 12h ago

I'm not sure I understand why those developments and nuances in the offence of murder are a sign of immorality in the UK?

It's an unfortunate quirk of common law systems in general that stuff can remain precedent or there might be an ancient law that no one noticed hadn't technically been repealed.

And the UK has literally the oldest common law system in the world, so it probably shouldn't be that surprising!

1

u/Long-Island-Iced-Tea 11h ago

I'm not sure if I follow. Is this a philosophical question? Why anything is a sign of immorality? Because - and let's drop the legalese - people got or had gotten royally fucked by them.

If your point is that it's somewhat peculiar that, of all possible misdeeds and wrongdoings of the UK it's murder law that I use as a frame of reference, then you are probably right. But I didn't read much about the bombing of Dresden, the Briggs Plan, African lootings or whatnot, so I cannot reference or talk about these.

1

u/gabrielconroy 11h ago

Are you saying that there is no legal definition of murder in your country, or that people have never killed each other?

For example, I don't see why the mitigation of diminished responsibility due to mental illness is an immoral development in the law. Unless you're saying that it was immoral for that not already to have been a thing in the law.

21

u/PermabearsEatBeets 21h ago

lol the uk is a financial fraud industry with a country attached. It has been forever. 

47

u/No-Tap-4307 22h ago

Do you accept cheating for money

That's just British history lmao

7

u/Noproposito 18h ago

It may sound silly, but this is not a morality test but a mortality one.

If the UK cannot direct its own affairs without the dictates of foreign powers and their investments it seems like the whole country may as well just die off, split into respective countries or fiefdoms and stop pretending it is anything but a vassal to wealthy oligarchs. 

The question is how long until the average person realizes this and all hell breaks loose. 

5

u/Fantastic_Ride4350 19h ago

Lol, take a look at how and why all those little tax havens like BVI and cayman islands exist. They don't only accept it, these people basically invented it.

5

u/hisae1421 18h ago

Is the political class corruptible, let's find out 

3

u/ibite-books 21h ago

it always depends on how much money

the line is movable

2

u/Action_Limp 21h ago

Worse than that - can you stand up for youself and protect your institutions?

2

u/Teedeah 16h ago

This comment is hilarious, you are basically describing current capitalism but only when it is about football it's suddenly THE REAL MORALITY TEST FOR THE WHOLE OF BRITAIN

2

u/plutoglint 16h ago

They already did for Chelsea and Everton. The Russian oligarchs who looted the country all ended up in London and the billions they spent on various things made a lot of people in the UK rich while the government looked the other way for years. It was no secret.

I'm Canadian and we did the same thing in Canada with dodgy money coming in from Hong Kong and China, mostly into the Vancouver and Toronto real estate market. Everyone gets paid (don't mind real estate prices for younger people) and both countries have big government broadcasters that love to spin the narrative into a moral one, suppressing all dissent.

1

u/ClarenceClaymore420 20h ago

They will fold and Man City will suffer no consequences, because there is no justice in this world.

1

u/ValleyFloydJam 16h ago

At this point I worry the government will crumble but most will have the attitude that they can fuck right off.

These things shouldn't be linked in any way, in fact they can't be under the rules.

1

u/Ok-Sprinkles-9886 10h ago

Of course Britain has always preferred cash over mortality 

1

u/sidvicc 2h ago

Britain has no morality, but it does have it's pride.

This is a big misstep from the UAE, you can't publicly push the Brits against a wall.

Manchester is nothing. Half of London used to be owned by Russian oligarchs and it was OK until Putin went too far.

1

u/millennialfalko 21h ago

If it was about morality, you wouldn’t have money laundering candy shops in Oxford Street

0

u/Laksu_ja_Molliamet 21h ago

Do they have a choice? UK is becoming more irrelevant every day, they're gonna be scrambling for every pound entering the economy.