Let’s start by going back to December 2016. And a gathering of the world’s media in London to hear lurid details of how more than 1,000 Russian athletes cheated across 30 sports with the help of spies, a cocktail of steroids mixed with whisky and vermouth, and massive state interference.
First the law professor Richard McLaren tells us that London 2012 was “corrupted on an unprecedented scale”. Then he reminds us that, at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, an agent from the FSB, Russia’s security service, was disguised as a plumber and used a mouse hole in the walls of an anti-doping lab to switch drug-tainted samples for clean ones.
“It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes,” McLaren tells us. “Coaches and athletes have been playing on an uneven field. Sports fans and spectators have been deceived.”
We know what happened next. Unprecedented crimes led to unprecedented punishments. Dozens of Russians were stripped of their medals and their country’s flag, anthem and officials were banned from the Olympics, the first time that had happened to a country.
Now just imagine if McLaren had instead said: ‘You know what? We should only drop Russian athletes 15 places in this year’s world rankings. But they can keep their medals and compete next year.’ He would have been laughed out the room.
I bring this up because the biggest sports trial since Russia was in the dock has just got under way, with Manchester City facing 115 Premier League charges, but already there is a sense of fudge in the air.
The thinking goes like this: the stakes are so high for both sides, as well as Britain’s relations with Abu Dhabi, that no more than a fine, or a points deduction large enough to stop City getting into Europe while avoiding relegation, is on the cards. Would anyone be surprised, as my colleague Barney Ronay wrote in Saturday’s paper, if we got a result that allowed everyone involved to live with the outcome?
I respect his logic and instincts. I just don’t see how we get there. The charges are so serious and egregious, and grouped in such a particular way, that it is hard to see how such a compromise will be found without eyebrows being raised and questions asked.
Take, for instance, the 35 charges that relate to City’s alleged failure to cooperate with Premier League investigations between 2018 and 2023. Logic dictates that City will either be found guilty or cleared on all counts.
Similarly, the Premier League alleges that between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons City made 54 breaches of rules requiring accurate financial information “in utmost good faith” and between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 seasons breached the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) seven times. Could we get a clean sweep of innocent or guilty verdicts here too? It is probably more likely than not. And if there are dozens of guilty verdicts, a slap on the wrists won’t wash.
Remember, too, that Everton were docked six points last season for just one PSR offence and for supplying information that was “materially inaccurate” and “less than frank”. That also sets a precedent.
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City deny all charges and say they have a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to support their claim of innocence. If they prove it, then the Premier League and its clubs will owe them a huge apology. However if the most serious allegations are proved – that, essentially City cooked the books with hugely inflated sponsorship deals and gave secret payments to Roberto Mancini and Dimitri Seluk, the agent of Yaya Touré, both of whom deny the charges – then City must face an unprecedented punishment.
And if it means stripping the club of league titles, just as those Russians also lost their Olympic medals, then so be it.
We are still far from that point. Especially as City have shown the tenacity of a rottweiler in fighting the various cases against them.
However the butterfly effect of being able to outspend rivals by so much at the start of a 14-year period when City won seven Premier League titles, six League Cups, three FA Cups and the Champions League is undeniable. Without such a huge investment, who knows if stars such as Yaya Touré and David Silva would have arrived at City in the same week in 2010 and then led them to the title two years later? And don’t forget, either, that the club faces serious allegations in individual seasons too: one of the campaigns in which City are accused of violating PSR rules is 2017-18 – when they won the title.
Whatever the final verdict, which is due next year, one prominent lawyer I spoke to last week said it showed how setting up a global independent body for football finance – think a World Anti-Doping Agency – might not be a bad idea. Remember before Wada was formed, the International Association of Athletics Federations had to pay the 100m star Katrin Krabbe for a loss of earnings even after she failed a drugs test for clenbuterol. Krabbe admitted taking the drug but won as the German athletics federation’s rulebook did not list the drug as banned. Since then, thankfully, the system changed for the better.
The argument is for another day. In the meantime, let us resist the idea of a Goldilocks punishment in the City case – one that is deliberately at the right temperature for all sides – as a potential solution. City should be either vindicated or damned.