La Liga president Javier Tebas has told the Premier League to come down hard on Manchester City if the hearing finds the champions guilty of breaching financial rules.
In a conversation with Give Me Sport, La Liga president Javier Tebas told the Premier League not to be lenient on Manchester City with the ruling against alleged breaches of financial rules. An independent hearing into over 100 charges spread across 14 seasons (2009-2023) began on Monday at an undisclosed location. A three-person panel will decide the City’s fate.
Tebas said, “The Premier League shouldn’t give in to pressure, right? The Premier League shouldn’t differentiate between big or small, or important and ‘non-important’, clubs. Manchester City is a member of the association that has committed irregularities and should receive the sanction it deserves. If not, the competition’s authority will be lost.”
The fabric of the Premier League can potentially change forever in the foreseeable future. Manchester City fans are waiting with bated breaths as the Premier League champions await the decision of an independent hearing into more than 100 charges spread across 14 seasons between 2009 and 2023.
The Premier League champions have been under the scanner for a long time, first through UEFA in 2014, as they probed breaches against Financial Fair Play. While the football world expected a harsh punishment for the Citizens, they got away with a fine worth £49 million, with £32 million of those suspended.
The next sanction came in 2020, as Manchester City received a two-year ban from European club competitions for “overstating sponsorship revenue between 2012 and 2016” after UEFA probed revelations from German newspaper Der Spiegel. However, the Premier League champions successfully appealed that suspension via the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which overturned UEFA’s decision due to “insufficient conclusive evidence”.
While Manchester City escaped without much sanction from the first two rulings, the latest hearing has left the fans worried and rivals excited. However, the Premier League champions have strongly denied any wrong-doing while assembling a lineup of star lawyers, including the highly-acclaimed Lord David Pannick, to get their wish again.
The Citizens insist they have “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” that supports their position. However, it will be interesting to see if the Premier League will, as Tebas has advised, come down hard on the reigning champions if the independent hearing leads to a guilty verdict.
