UEFA ban: City to spend £30m on 50 best lawyers in the world ― Owner vows

Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan would allegedly “rather spend £30m on the 50 best lawyers” and sue Uefa “for the next ten years” than accept their punishment.

The Cityzens were rocked yesterday when they were banned from the Champions League for two years and hit with a £25million fine by Uefa.

City vowed to spend £30m after they were found guilty by Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) of falsely inflating their sponsorship revenues when submitting accounts as part of the FFP compliance process.

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And that means they will now be suspended from any Uefa European competition for the next two seasons as well as being hit in the pocket.

The guilty verdict follows an investigation that was triggered after German magazine Der Spiegel “leaked” emails and documents in November 2018.

They appeared to provide evidence that City owner Sheikh Mansour of the Abu Dhabi ruling family was mostly funding the £67.5m-a-year sponsorship of the club’s shirts, stadium and academy via his nation’s Etihad airline.

One of the emails leaked claimed that just £8m of that sponsorship in the 2015/16 campaign was funded directly from Etihad.

The rest came via Mansour’s own company vehicle for the ownership of City, the Abu Dhabi United Group.

The Sun football