UEFA’s investigators were “right” to ban Manchester City from European competition after finding they had breached financial regulations, its president Aleksander Ceferin has said.
City were handed a two-year suspension in February 2020 by UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), but the penalty was overturned at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in July of that year.
CAS found some of the alleged breaches were “not established”, while others were time-barred. The club’s fine for failing to co-operate with CFCB investigators was reduced by CAS to 10 million euros (£8.6m).
Ceferin, however, has backed his organisation’s process.
“We know we were right. We wouldn’t decide if we didn’t think we were right,” Ceferin told the Daily Telegraph.
“As a trial lawyer for 25 years, I know that, sometimes, you win a case that you are sure you will lose,” he added.
“And, sometimes, you lose a case when you’re sure… You have to respect the decision of the court. I don’t want to speak about the case in England. But I trust that the decision of our independent body was correct.”
The case in England Ceferin mentioned was the decision of the Premier League in February last year to refer City to an independent commission, charged with more than 100 breaches of the competition’s financial rules.
City said they looked forward to presenting “irrefutable evidence” to the commission against the charges brought.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters told the Culture, Media and Sport select committee last week that a date has been set for the commission hearing, but declined to say what that date was.
Defending the length of the City process when compared to other cases such as Everton’s brought under the league’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), Masters said the City case was different “in volume and character” to Everton’s case, or that involving Nottingham Forest.
