STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's the sound of one of the most dramatic moments in the history of English Premier League soccer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Donatelli. Aguero. Staggering. Just staggering.
INSKEEP: Sergio Aguero scoring a game-winner during the last game of the 2012 season, which won the title for Manchester City for the first time in 44 years. We now have questions about that title and more titles that followed because the Premier League has found Manchester City guilty of hundreds of breaches of financial rules. Rory Smith joins us to discuss this. He's co-hosted the soccer podcast "Men In Blazers" and football correspondent for the U.K. outlet The Observer. Welcome.
RORY SMITH: Thank you for having me.
INSKEEP: What did Man City do wrong, supposedly?
SMITH: So, what they have done, it appears from an independent panel convened by the Premier League two years ago, is they have put equity effectively into the club, disguised as commercial income, which means they have breached the financial regulations that govern how much teams can spend of their own revenues in the Premier League. There are other offenses - there are 115 in total. Some were to do with non-cooperation with the investigation. Some were to do with double contracts for players or managers. There was some stuff around image rights, as well, but the really core allegation is that around $1.1 billion worth of income was presented as commercial income when it, in fact, was rooted from the club's ownership.
INSKEEP: Wow. OK, so the club's ownership being the Abu Dhabi United Group during those years, $1.1 billion. I want to understand why investing money in this football team would be illegal. Are there limitations on what they can spend?
SMITH: Yeah. There are limitations in terms of how much of a club's revenue can be used. So it's not that there's - there's no salary cap. There's no formal kind of rules like that, but clubs are not permitted under the Premier League's rules to kind of just have their owners put whatever they would like into the club. It has to be a portion of the money that you earn yourselves with your actual revenues.
INSKEEP: And where did this money go - for player salaries?
SMITH: Yeah. Most money in soccer, like most money in all sports, goes on player salaries, and in our case, in transfer fees, so the amount of money you have to pay other teams for the right to buy the licenses of their players.
INSKEEP: How does Man City defend itself? I mean, $1.1 billion is a lot of money to just forget in your accounting to put down.
SMITH: Yeah. I think that's what's taken quite a long time to kind of understand in the last week or so, is not so much the fact they've been found guilty, but the scale of the offenses. I don't think anybody over here was really anticipating that. In terms of their defense, they lodged an appeal on Thursday evening, U.K. time. They had until Friday to do that. They've confirmed on Friday morning that appeal is in. We obviously don't know what shape that will take as yet, but the suggestion seems to be they might suggest the money that the Premier League believed was disguised funding was, in fact, a kind of payment from the Abu Dhabi government to the sponsors to help with cash flow issues. That seems to be part, at least, of City's defense.
INSKEEP: OK. So they're going to try to recategorize this money and the appeal. But what if they lose? Do their titles go away?
SMITH: Potentially. As far as we know, the Premier League kind of has the full suite of sanctions on the table. That might involve taking titles away from the affected period. It might mean a massive points deduction. It might be financial. It might even be expulsion from the league. As things stand, all of those options are available, obviously pending the appeal.
INSKEEP: Rory Smith of the "Men In Blazers" soccer podcast, thanks so much.
SMITH: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA SONG, "SHAKE IT OUT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
