In 2006, the Calciopoli scandal left an irremovable stain on Italian football.

Telephone wire taps showed that authorities from top Italian clubs had colluded with referees to favour them in matches and manipulate officiating appointments to give them an advantage in crucial games.

Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio and Reggina were all involved with the Old Lady punished most severely, but of the many dozens of people who took part in this widescale corruption and fraud, do you know how many were actually sentenced to prison?

One, and even they never spent a day behind bars.

As much as it can sometimes feel like it, football does not exist in a vacuum and the murky and grubby dealings of the real world have often made their way into football’s ecosystem.

Calciopoli remains the most egregious example but you do not have to look far for more. The name Qatar has become synonymous with bribes and corruption. At this very moment, Barcelona are being investigated for paying €8.4 million to former referee vice president José María Enríquez Negreira in an alleged bribery case. A former England manager was once caught accepting a bung in a sting operation where he boasted about being able to circumvent the rules of his own employment.

Manchester City’s alleged financial misdeeds may not be as brazen or as criminal but anyone expecting a different end result should be ready to be disappointed.

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The topic has been the elephant in the room since 2018 when the Premier League first opened an investigation into the club. In February 2023, they revealed 115 charges consisting of failure to provide accurate financial information, failure to provide accurate details for player and manager payments, failure to comply with UEFA’s rules including Financial Fair Play, breaching Premier League’s PSR rules and failure to co-operate with Premier League investigations.

Ever since that day, City have rigorously protested their innocence. To best represent that innocence they have employed a squad of expensive lawyers, some of whom have ex-British Prime Ministers as part of their clientele. Pep Guardiola maintains his club did nothing wrong, saying he would walk away if proven otherwise, but as the days, weeks, months and years have ticked on, anger has turned to apathy.

The verdict date has been reported on numerous times over the past few years but each time, the day has come and gone with no such announcement. The Premier League have kept their cards very close to their chest, citing legal processes, but what it has left is a general air of unease, of a neat solution being worked out behind the scenes.

A report this week suggested that an end to the waiting was almost upon us, that a verdict would soon be announced. A verdict that could see ‘a(chǎn)ll hell break loose’. But is anyone seriously expecting anything more than a slap on the wrist? Those saying City are relegation-bound are living in a world where the Premier League does not directly benefit from having the club as one of its 20 shareholders.

City have the best manager in the league, the best striker, one of the best midfielders and one of the best goalkeepers. Since being injected with Abu Dhabi money, City have become one of the strongest clubs in England and remain its most recent Champions League winner. With respect to the many Championship clubs that would want to take City’s place should they be relegated, would any of them draw as much international attention as City do? Would any of them guarantee as many eyeballs on screens or shirts sold?

Let us also not forget the UK government’s potential part to play for they may not be so willing to lose the tax money they receive from City paying their players ￡400k a week.

If found guilty of all 115 charges, should City be stripped of their titles and relegated? Probably yes. Will that happen? Almost certainly not.

The most likely outcome is City will be either proven not guilty, in which case they may launch legal action of their own for defamation, or that they are found guilty and are punished with a relatively minor points deduction or fine.

A smaller punishment works for both parties. The Premier League can claim they take the laws seriously, City can claim their titles were legitimate while still competing at the top end of the football pyramid. That is simply the way the world works.

The City case has exposed a flaw in the Premier League’s ability to investigate rule-breakers. Why would the league ever want to upset one of its best selling points? The Premier League is not beholden to any of the hundreds of thousands of fans who walk through a turnstile each week. The Premier League is answerable to the 20 clubs that make it up.

An Independent Football Regulator was created as a result of the Super League failed experiment and has been hoped to correct football’s course but even that is unlikely. Their listed core objectives are to protect and promote the financial soundness of regulated football clubs, protect and promote financial resilience of English football and safeguard the heritage of English football. Nowhere does it say they have the power to protect the actual rules of how clubs compete.

City’s fate will one day be announced and guilty or not guilty, the world will keep spinning. The days of football being an honest person’s game are long gone and any hope that this case could be the turning point is one based outside the realms of the reality we all live in.

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