Man City decision maintains football’s uneasy balance of power

The decision to throw out Manchester City’s two-year European ban has wider implications for all of football, writes Miguel Delaney

Man City will play in the Champions League next season (Getty)

As Manchester City celebrated, and some figures in Uefa raged, there were others within the governing body who were just relieved to see the back of this case.

That’s what a weight it had been. And it could have got even heavier, even had CAS upheld the two-year ban.

This result has prevented what might have been the most consequential legal case in sporting history, given City’s reported intention to go to the Swiss courts, and thereby might have preserved a very delicate balance of power in European football.

This is the wider context to this case, and the whole idea of Financial Fair Play in the first place.

There are two sides to the regulations.

On the bottom, Uefa had long wanted legislation to ensure financial security across European football, something it has actually succeeded in. Clubs aren’t going burst through in the way they did a decade ago. On the top, there has always been concern about unchecked spending, and the erosion of competitive balance.

A huge complication in this – and a fair concern about FFP – was much of football’s 'old money' clubs backed this, because they didn’t want to be outgunned in an arms race with some of the super-wealthy states buying up the likes of City and Paris Saint-Germain.

That balance has proven difficult to strike in FFP regulations, and reflects this very delicate balancing act.

Uefa did feel the need to fight this case, but it has also come in the middle of significant power battles.

On one side were those 'old money' clubs: the Bayern Munichs, the Real Madrids, the Manchester Uniteds, the Liverpools. Figures within this group have long leveraged the threat of a breakaway super league to influence Uefa. What happens next there is open to question.

City and PSG have been involved in discussions for a super league, but represent another distinctive and very different power base. They are this new group of state-run clubs, with that further complicated by the much greater divisions there. Football – and Uefa – have been caught in the middle of an economic cold war in the Gulf.

On one side of that is Qatar’s PSG. On the other side is Abu Dhabi’s City, and maybe Saudi Arabia’s Newcastle United. These clubs are essentially mere tools in wider political aims for these states, which is a tragedy for the game in itself.

The effects of all this have created another problem for Uefa, and maybe the greatest for football as a whole.

The amount of money concentrated at that end of the game has created a chronic inequality that has started to erode the inherent unpredictability of the sport.

Uefa are very concerned about this, but find themselves in a bind as to how to go about it. When the European Leagues body argued in the last round of negotiations that solidarity money to the rest of the game from Uefa competitions should be increased to 20%, some big club powers ensured it was actually reduced, from just over 8% to just over 7%.

This City case has been tied to all of this, and a delicate equilibrium that Uefa is just about managing to strike.

This ruling has probably just about preserved it – for a time. Uefa won’t face an immediate earthquake, or “atomic bomb” as some figures have put it.

City don’t have to embark on a bigger court case with the full might of Abu Dhabi. Uefa can point to other big clubs that they challenged it, and that the principles of Financial Fair Play remain.

The fault lines that led to this very situation haven’t come together, though.

Uefa is going to face other complications down the line.