Manchester City and the Unpronounced Verdict: When People Need an Excuse to Hate the Strong

There was a silence in the press room that I still remember vividly. It was not the silence of a man weighing each word, but the silence of a man who had prepared his answer long before the question was asked. Jurgen Klopp sat there, both hands on the table, and when a reporter asked what he thought about Manchester City being found guilty of serious financial breaches, he simply said he was reluctant to comment, that his respect for Pep Guardiola was too great for him to take a side. I sat in the fourth row, taking notes, and asked myself: is this nobility, or is this a move calculated down to the millimetre?

When I began following professional football thirteen years ago, I believed the biggest moments in this sport happened on the grass. I was wrong. The biggest moments happen in closed meeting rooms, in audit reports, and in corridors where lawyers talk to lawyers. The match is only the tip of the iceberg. The submerged part is finance, governance, and the nods of independent commissions that no spectator ever sees.

This story is not a match. It is a verdict. Manchester City has been found guilty of serious financial breaches, the club is expected to appeal, and the sanctions are still to be determined. Those three pieces of information, placed side by side, create what I call "legal fog" — a period in which no one knows exactly what will happen, but everyone is already behaving as if they do. And in that fog, the only thing that remains clear is hatred. A title never comes from the fixture list, but people need an excuse to hate the strong. Now they have it.

To understand why this story is so big, we need to place it in the context of nearly a decade of accumulation. UEFA's Financial Fair Play and the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability rules were created with a nominally beautiful purpose: to stop clubs from spending beyond their means, to protect the sustainability of football. But like every body of law written by those in power, it has a second, hidden purpose: to protect those who have long been in the game from newcomers with more money.

Before Manchester City, Everton were docked points. So were Nottingham Forest. Those clubs did not have world-class legal teams, commercial revenue in England's top four, or a coach once considered a tactical genius of his generation. When Everton were docked points, I remember writing that it was a good signal for the integrity of the league. I was half wrong. It was a good signal for integrity, but it only touched the weak. Now, when the verdict touches the strong, we finally see the true face of the system.

Manchester City's financial structure is an almost perfect machine on paper. Broadcasting revenue is high, stable, in the Premier League's top four. Commercial revenue is also high and stable. Wage expenditure is high but rated stable, though with a medium warning flag. Net debt needs verification, but the trend is recorded as flat. Looking at that table, a naive analyst would conclude: this is a healthy club.

But that is precisely the blind spot. A club healthy in operations is not necessarily healthy in governance. And in this case, the risk is not solvency, but regulatory imposition — something no balance sheet can predict. The sanctions remain "yet to be determined," and it is that indeterminacy that is the most dangerous weapon. It creates a gap in which commercial partners hesitate, long-term loan deals freeze, and players begin to wonder about their own futures.

What the media calls "the biggest case in Premier League history" is really a test of the speed of justice. And justice in football is not fast. It is as slow as a match postponed by rain, but this time no referee is telling the crowd when play will resume. The sanctions are yet to be determined, the club is expected to appeal, and the appeal process could take six to twelve months. During that time, the team still takes the field, still scores, still earns points, while behind the scenes an invisible court weighs whether to erase all of it.

This is where I want to talk about what I consider the most overlooked point: the nature of the risk here is not financial, but reputational. Manchester City can still earn hundreds of millions of pounds a year. They can still sign top players. But what they cannot buy back is the legitimacy of their trophies. A title whose legal status is questioned is a title stripped of half its soul, even if it still sits in the cabinet.

If the sanction is a points deduction, the biggest question is not how many points, but which season it applies to. A fifteen-point deduction could push a club from the title down to mid-table. But if that penalty is applied retrospectively to past seasons, it is no longer a penalty — it is a rewriting of history. And English football history has no precedent for being rewritten this way. This is the difference between the Everton case and the Manchester City case: Everton were docked points for the future, while Manchester City could be docked points for the past. One is a penalty, the other is a historic verdict.

I spent many nights rereading the precedent reports. And what I realized is that the system was never designed to handle a strong party committing a serious offence. It was designed to handle weak parties committing small offences. When a mid-table club overspends, a points deduction is a tidy measure: it does not break the league's structure, does not shake the global transfer market, does not threaten broadcasting revenue. But when a leading club is found guilty of a serious breach, every option hurts the league itself. Too heavy a deduction breaks the product. Too light a deduction breaks credibility. No deduction breaks everything.

That is why I believe what we are witnessing is not a case, but a prolonged governance crisis. And in such a crisis, what gets dissected most is not the balance sheet, but the psychology of the people inside it.

This is where I want to leave the spreadsheet and step into the dressing room.

Over years in this profession, I learned that applause in an empty stadium is the echo of fear, not of joy. I heard it during the COVID months, when Ligue 1 returned without fans, and I wrote about it in my podcast "Football in the Empty Room." When there is no crowd roar to fill the void, you hear things normally drowned out: a coach shouting, a ball hitting the post, and most importantly, the sound of fear itself inside players' heads.

Now, in Manchester, I hear something similar. Not fear of missing fans, but fear of missing certainty. City's players are playing in a suspended state: they win on the pitch, but every win is questioned somewhere they cannot reach. Erling Haaland scores, and somewhere someone says that goal could be erased. Kevin De Bruyne assists, and somewhere someone says that assist was paid for with illegal money. This is a kind of pressure no training session can prepare you for.

I once interviewed a former player who went through a similar governance crisis at a smaller club. He told me something I never forgot: "When your club is under investigation, you no longer play for yourself. You play for the president's lawyers." It is a cruel line, but it is true. Players are the last to be consulted and the first to be affected. If the club is heavily docked, if they are pushed down a division, those who suffer are not the owners in the meeting room, but the legs on the grass.

And this is the point I want to pull away from the crowd. Many people are celebrating. Many Liverpool fans are talking about a parade, about titles handed back. I understand that feeling. I too have sat in stands where people believed justice had finally arrived. But I want to ask an uncomfortable question: if your title comes from a courtroom instead of a stadium, is it still your title?

Klopp, the man who twice finished just one point behind Manchester City, understands the value of that question better than anyone. And that is why his reaction this time is so interesting. He once joked that if titles were handed back, he would be at the parade. Now, he says he no longer feels that way. That shift — from the glee of the compensated to the restraint of a grown man — is one of the most sophisticated media moments I have witnessed in my career.

Let me be clear about what I think is true here, because I know I am going against the majority.

When Klopp says he is reluctant to comment, that his respect for Guardiola is too great, he is not merely being noble. He is making a carefully calculated media-governance move. He knows that if he jumps into this mud, he will be dragged into a war no one wins. If he celebrates, he is seen as a petty gloating victor. If he criticizes, he is seen as exploiting the moment to bring down a rival. The only way to preserve the image of a gentleman is to stand aside, speak of respect, and let the court do its work.

But there is a deeper layer few see. By separating Guardiola — the person — from the owners — the lawbreakers — Klopp is defending an important principle: that coaches should be judged by their work on the pitch, not by the ledgers of those who pay them. This is a beautiful position in sporting ethics. But it is also an extremely convenient position for Klopp himself, whose legacy was built on title races against Guardiola. If those races are deemed illegitimate, Klopp's legacy is damaged too. He is not only protecting Guardiola; he is protecting his own memory.

And here is where I want to push the argument further. I believe Klopp's restraint, however elegant, is a sign of something more worrying: that even insiders do not truly believe a heavy enough penalty will be imposed. If he were certain Manchester City would be stripped of titles, he would not need to be so gentle. Gentleness, in this case, is a form of disappointment prevention. It is a way of telling fans: do not expect too much, because this system rarely delivers full justice to those who bought power.

And if I am right, then the scariest thing is not a heavy penalty. The scariest thing is a light one — light enough to satisfy public opinion but not enough to change anything. Such a penalty would be the final proof that in modern football, the law is not applied fairly; it is applied just enough to maintain the illusion of fairness.

I could be wrong. Perhaps the appeal will fail, a severe penalty will be enforced, and I will have to bow and admit I was wrong before a system I doubted. But in thirteen years observing this industry, I have learned that the system rarely bites its own hand. The strong are usually lightly punished. The weak are usually heavily punished. And the fans are usually the last to know the truth.

This is where I need to speak about the nature of this sport, because if I only criticize, I become the pessimist I do not want to be.

Modern football did not kill improvisation; it merely caged improvisation in a tactical cage. And the same is true of football justice: it did not kill fairness; it merely caged fairness in a procedural cage. That cage may look like a verdict, but inside it, people are still playing, still laughing, still crying, still doing beautiful things no court can erase.

I have watched Guardiola build one of the greatest teams in history. I have seen moves I will tell my children about. I have seen full-backs invert, midfielders drop as a third centre-back, and a possession system that made opponents feel they were playing against twelve men. Those things are real. They do not disappear just because an audit report says they were paid for the wrong way. This is the complex truth neither side wants to admit: a thing can be both unlawful and beautiful.

But I will not use beauty to excuse unlawfulness. That is what City's defenders often do: they say this team is too good to be punished, that football would be poorer without Guardiola. I understand that argument. But it is a dangerous one. If talent is a shield against the law, then the law becomes a farce reserved for the untalented. And if that happens, this sport will lose what it needs most: the belief that anyone who plays by the rules has a chance.

A hundred-million-euro contract is just a number until someone asks: have you watched him play in the rain? And the same question applies to everything else in football. A title is just a number until someone asks: what foundation was it built on? That is the question that now, at last, people are forced to answer.

I want to return to a detail I consider underrated in this whole story: the reaction of Manchester City's own fans.

In the early days of the case, I followed forums, social media groups, radio shows in Manchester. And what I saw was not anger against the owners. It was anger against the media, against the Premier League, against other clubs' fans. This is a psychological phenomenon I have studied for years: when a group feels attacked from outside, they unite, even when the attacker is truly inside their own house.

City fans are defending their club, and to some degree, I understand it. Football is identity. When someone says your identity is fake, you resist. But that resistance is obscuring a more important question: if your owners broke the law, who truly betrayed you? The one who points out the truth, or the one who lied to you for ten years?

I have written about crowd psychology in my podcast many times, and I always emphasize one thing: the crowd is not stupid, but the crowd needs a story. And the easiest story to accept is always the story of an external enemy. In this case, the external enemy is the Premier League, UEFA, the media, jealous rival fans. That story spares City fans from facing the most uncomfortable truth: that what they love may have been built on a foundation they would never accept if it belonged to someone else's club.

And here is where my dual lens — Vietnam and France — becomes useful. In Vietnam, I have seen fans defend their club to the point of denying all evidence. In France, I have seen fans do the same with more sophisticated arguments. But the essence is the same: football is a religion, and believers dislike those who question their doctrine. This is the truth anyone wanting to understand this case must face, whichever side they stand on.

I want to say something about time, because I believe time is the true protagonist of this story.

The appeal process could last six to twelve months. During that period, Manchester City will still play. They may still win more honours. They may still sign more contracts. And with each passing day, uncertainty will erode a little more of what I call the club's "trust capital." That is a kind of capital that never appears on a balance sheet, but it decides whether a young player joins your academy, whether a global sponsor signs, whether a star at his peak commits his career to you.

And here is my prediction, one I am ready to be tested on: the final penalty will not be heavy enough to change history, but heavy enough to set a precedent. That means Manchester City will be docked points to some degree — perhaps ten, perhaps fifteen — but will not be stripped of titles already won. This is how the system protects itself: it delivers a punishment that looks severe for the present but does not touch the past, because touching the past opens a Pandora's box no one wants to open.

If I am right, Liverpool fans will receive a small consolation but will never receive true compensation. They will be told they were right, but they will not be handed the trophies. That is the nature of football justice: it acknowledges mistakes, but it does not fix them. It says "sorry" without returning what was taken. And within that injustice lies a bitterer truth: that in modern football, even justice is only a form of commerce.

So what does all this mean for the future of football?

I think it means we are witnessing the end of an illusion. The illusion that top leagues can self-regulate. The illusion that money and law can coexist in harmony. The illusion that a club can be built by breaking the rules and still be praised as a model. The Manchester City case is not only about Manchester City. It is about an entire culture that allowed this to happen for a decade, and only now pretends to be surprised.

And here is what I want to leave with you, the reader. Next time you watch a match and see a team play the most beautiful football in the world, ask yourself one simple question: what is this beauty paid for with? Not so you stop loving football. But so you love it more honestly. Because the football we cherish should not be built on foundations we would never accept anywhere else in life.

The verdict has not yet been pronounced. But the truth has been spoken. And in football, as in life, the hardest thing is not hearing the truth. The hardest thing is accepting it when it is against the club you love.