Manchester City is fine with the villain role, and is increasingly defiant in the wake of the club’s two-year UEFA Champions League ban.
City is telling players and their agents that the Champions League ban will be overturned and manager Pep Guardiola has been using the outside schadenfreude as a rallying cry for his players.
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On top of that, City will go on the offensive to ask why anything they did was any different than several big names rivals, including Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, and Bayern Munich.
It’s all a part of a Sunday morning blockbuster report from The Athletic.A dossier on Europe’s biggest clubs’ financial dealings that City have been collating over more than a year could soon come into play. These are all routine dealings but City will ask why their own sponsorship agreements are any different.
City will want answers about the finances Juventus receive from Fiat, which is owned by the Agnelli family. Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus president, is a member of the UEFA executive committee and is said to have brought PSG’s president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi into the fold.
They’re naming names! If City’s going to go down, it’s taking the whole scene with it.
City is said to have “meticulous records” on how UEFA treated PSG in its investigation of the signings of Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.
The Premier League outfit is said to be skeptical of how PSG and Juventus both have similar sponsorship arrangements but have escaped punishment and have their club presidents on UEFA’s executive committee.
It’s sensational stuff, and a must-read from Sam Lee, David Ornstein, and Adam Crafton. Check it out here.