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Manchester City players celebrate on stage in front of their fans after winning the Premier League Title at Etihad Stadium, Manchester, England, May 12, 2019. /VCG
Manchester City are gearing up for one of the most crucial three days in the club's history as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) will hear the Premier League giants' appeal against the two-year Champions League ban from Monday to Wednesday.
Just a month before the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the sports world in March, UEFA announced that City were found to have seriously misled the European football's governing body and broken financial fair play (FFP) rules. A two-year banishment was then doled out to punish City's "serious breaches of regulations."
City responded furiously with a public statement alleging that the process was "prejudicial, flawed and consistently leaked" and immediately appealed to the CAS. They have denied wrongdoing throughout and denounced UEFA's ruling as based on "hacked or stolen" materials taken out of context by the whistleblowing website "Football Leaks."
Manchester City Chief Executive Officer Ferran Soriano has insisted the club have done nothing wrong. /VCG
"The allegations are not true. They are simply not true," City CEO Ferran Soriano said in a statement. "We provided the evidence but in the end this FFP Investigatory Chamber relied more on out of context stolen emails than all the other evidence we provided of what actually happened and I think it is normal that we feel like we feel."
The Premier League is set to restart behind closed doors from June 17 after being put on hold since 13 March due to the pandemic. If City's ban is confirmed by CAS, the team finishing fifth this season will qualify for the Champions League.
The result of the appeal will also be watched closely by Spanish La Liga president Javier Tebas, who has a long history of opposing everything about City.
In an interview last year, Tebas said City are "a danger to football" and called for "stricter financial controls that limit state clubs like Manchester City or PSG from vastly outspending their rivals and it would also include much firmer financial fair play penalties, which have been a very weak deterrent up to this point."
According to Sky Sports, missing out on European football would result in a loss of revenue of about 100 million euros (127 million U.S. dollars) a season for City and questions would be asked about the futures of some of the club's most valuable players.
