Manchester City’s UEFA competitions ban lifted by Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Nearly six months of waiting, Manchester City have won their appeal and their Champions League ban has been lifted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The Cityzens were handed a two year ban and €30 million ban in February after being found guilty of “serious breaches” of UEFA’s financial fair-play rules after an investigation. However, the club has maintained their innocence and swiftly filed an appeal with CAS although the coronavirus pandemic has forced them to wait for quite a while.

a.) MCFC has contravened Article 56 of the Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations.

“The CAS award emphasized that most of the alleged breaches reported by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the CFCB were either not established or time-barred. As the charges with respect to any dishonest concealment of equity funding were clearly more significant violations than obstructing the CFCB’s investigations, it was not appropriate to impose a ban on participating in UEFA’s club competitions for MCFC’s failure to cooperate with the CFCB’s investigations alone,” reads the statement.

“However, considering i) the financial resources of MCFC; ii) the importance of the cooperation of clubs in investigations conducted by the CFCB, because of its limited investigative means; and iii) MCFC’s disregard of such principle and its obstruction of the investigations, the CAS Panel found that a significant fine should be imposed on MCFC and considered it appropriate to reduce UEFA’s initial fine by 2/3, i.e. to the amount of EUR 10 million.”