On Friday (25^th September), Manchester City Football Club were found guilty of 114 out of 115 charges of breaching the financial rules of the Premier League.

For the uninitiated, Man City were bought by Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, in 2008, who made his trusted ally, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the new chairman. City then bankrolled their way to multiple Premier League titles, other domestic trophies, and – three years ago – a Champions League, the jewel of European footballing competition.

This is not without precedent in English football. In the earlier 2000s, Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club and proceeded to procure the world’s biggest talents for vast sums of money, effectively granting the club its first English top-flight titles since the 1950s.

The Premier League brought in Financial Fair Play rules from the 2013/14 season to stop ultra-wealthy men simply burning untold amounts of cash in pursuit of glory at clubs which they have no historic connection with while all other clubs, and their fans, attempt to live within their means and are left behind.   

This contrast – between traditional English football and rich playboy upstarts with far more money than sense – reached fever pitch with the ‘Super League’ proposals of 2021 whereby 12 clubs announced that they would start a new European league from scratch in August of that year. Football fans themselves mobilised to shoot down this proposal which would have seen a self-selecting group of billionaire owners achieve permanent elite status within a division that nobody outside of this group, and gleeful broadcasters hoping to reap the profits, had any say over.

The Manchester City case has been bubbling away in the background. The club – historically a mid-table side which has spent time in the lower divisions – was transformed by its purchase by an oligarch. So was Chelsea. These clubs have collectively won an audacious 13 Premier League titles in men’s football this century.

Nobody is doubting that these clubs and the teams that they have brought together have achieved great things. Nor that they might have brought more eyes to the Premier League – although English football was always prominent. The problem is flagrant cheating. Many clubs have highly wealthy owners but very few have actual oligarchs in charge who simply burn through legions of cash to win trophies – denying clubs who have grown to a large status of their own accord in the process.

This is the key point. Sporting success is sweetest when it is authentic – you know that your football club and its owners and supporters alike have really earned an accolade. Raking in billions from somebody with no connection with the club or area to simply surpass nearly all the competition and put yourself on the international stage is unacceptable and stops other clubs and fans who have earned their position in those finales from prevailing – in many cases.

Financial Fair Play was an attempt to prevent this pattern repeating itself in English football, and the Man City verdict – if it holds – is a welcome strike against the edifice of oligarchy within the recent history of the Premier League. This presumes that the verdict is married with sanctions against the club itself sufficient to deter similar behaviour from others – although Man City’s longstanding fans should not be forgotten in this process, who themselves had no say in their club being purchased and used for whatever purpose by particular owners.

Ultimately, football is a microcosm of wider society – and wider society is increasingly riven between a vast majority mired in cost-of-living crises and an ever-wealthier minority searching for outlets for their excessive riches. But since football is so popular with the masses it can prove a source of incendiary resistance to the whims and distortions of the ‘other side’ – if you’ll pardon the pun. May this moment live on.