re: Manchester City 'hid' £30m from UEFA FFP investigators. Football leaks going crazy

This is one of those scandals that is so obvious that it isn’t even a scandal. Everyone knew that Man City and PSG were in violation of FFP. Johnny Baby gave them very soft fines but the only thing that’s really new in the leaks is how little they were officially fined. Now teams know they can spend 30 million in lawyers, act hard and get a 20 million euro fine.

The losers in this are Turkish and Russian teams that actually followed the rules or got close to it. The main difference is that in order to get by with a 20 million euro fine and a 30 million euro legal bill , you have to spend 250-300 million Euros on your team. 45-50 million is not enough. It’s the epitome of too big to fail in sports. Man City and PSG are Goldman, Citi, and Morgan Stanley.

Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, CSKA, and Zenit are like the small banks and hedge funds that had a guy go to jail or get banned for life from the securities industry. No one hit the middle spot to be Lehman or Bear Sterns. That would have made things interesting.

I doubt the level of outrage in this article moves the needle very far. The Arabs are certainly brazen though.