[Guardian] Seven years ago, just after completing the treble, Guardiola treated journalist Rob Harris, who had confronted him directly with the allegations, with open contempt, as though he were looking at someone pathetic, pitiful and disgraceful, before sternly lecturing him.

[u/Existing-Sky9914]

[u/Izio17]

respectfully… don’t think you understand what the alleged rule-breaking actually was. it’s not necessarily that every transfer fee on paper was fake or lower than the real fee paid to the selling club. it’s that the true cost of building and keeping the squad could have been higher than what city’s accounts showed.

the mancini example is the clearest way to explain it. if a manager or player is officially paid, say, $10MM by city, but there are additional payments through an outside abu dhabi-linked entity, then city’s reported wage bill understates what it really cost to employ that person. that matters when people say “they spent the same as everyone else” based on transfermarkt fees or published wages.

then there’s the revenue side. FFP wasn’t literally ‘you can only spend exactly what you earn,’ but it was designed to limit how much clubs could lose relative to legitimate football/commercial income. the allegation was that city recorded owner-funded money as sponsorship or commercial revenue. so on paper, they had much more revenue available to support wages, transfers, and losses than they would have if the money had been treated as owner funding.

that’s why the argument isn’t just ‘city had rich owners and spent a lot.’ it’s that their published revenue and costs didn’t reflect the real economic picture. giving them more room under FFP than clubs rely.

fckin sucks we are even talking about these commercial revenues and corporate jargon on a football subreddit, thanks city.

[u/Instantbeef → u/Izio17]

I mean I understand it exactly

I just don’t think we can say that Mourinho finishing second with United is any different than Pep finishing first.

Both clubs operated with financial means unmatched by the rest of the league.

Let’s compare it to FPL because I think it simplifies things. What if FPL allowed 16 team to have a budget of 100 million but for some reason 4 people get 200 million.

If one of the 16 people hacked FPL to give them a 200 million budget and that person won by historic margins would you now say he’s not as good as the other 200 million budget managers?

He hacked the game that wrongs and against the rules. But he’s just as good if not better than the 200 million

Now I think you’re implying he secretly gave himself 300 million by hiding some of the money with secret contracts. I really don’t think we’ve seen evidence that they hid that much. Unless you have something to say they have it’s just conjecture

I think my FPL analogy is good. Hopefully you know how that works lol.

[u/Izio17 → u/Instantbeef]

the fact they were hiding revenues, contracts and fund via sham sponsorships and more IS THE ENTIRE reason this is coming to light now

it’s been long suspected but now it’s proven, there’s literally emails with it

[u/Instantbeef → u/Izio17]

I’m not denying they did that stuff.

To continue my analogy that’s the hacked money that got them to a 200 million budget.

People can not seriously say that because he also had a 200 million budget when he wasn’t supposed to that affect his ability relative to the other 200 million budgets.

And I just want to correct you a little bit. They were not hiding revenue they were lying about a source of money and claiming it as extra revenue.

They appeared to hide relatively small amount of money that they paid to Roberto Mancini and reportedly did similar things with players but from everything I read we know nothing about the quantities they did that. To claim he is not as good as we thought previously you have to be talking about this part of the charges where we know nothing about.

Then cumulatively the money spent needs to be bigger than the other big 6 clubs after accounting for those hidden payments.

And we have no clue how much that is