Friday's verdict against Manchester City will change everything understood about their Premier League title triumphs, according to football writer Barney Ronay.
Whatever punishment Manchester City and their owners receive at the end of this process, the fact remains, everything is tainted now, Ronay argues in a column for the Guardian.
The age of asterisk
Ronay describes the situation as the "age of asterisk," noting that stolen glory, stolen income, and stolen joy mark the club's achievements. Every chant, every "we won the lot," and every documentary scene about the club now looks odd, sinister, cold, and sloppy, but also utterly absurd.
This is not over, however. The principle of innocent until repeatedly proven guilty still applies, pending mega-bucks final appeals. There could yet be a dramatic reversal at the next stage, and if so, "fair enough. Trust the process." For now, the asterisk itself must be asterisked. City still deny all allegations, even when proven at the first instance, and have not been found guilty of all of the 100-plus charges.
A good day for football and the world
For now, this is a good day for football, and also a good day for the world. In an age of despotism and decline of the rules-based international order, any tribunal that finds a fund backed by one of the United Arab Emirates' ruling families guilty of breaches of minor but vital sporting regulations deserves its own statue outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
Mainly, this is a great day for the Premier League, which must be commended above all for its refusal to bend. There has been frustration at the time taken to reach this verdict. It is eight years since Der Spiegel published the first allegations of industrial-scale cheating. Rui Pinto, the original whistleblower, currently in witness protection after being found guilty of information-related offences, was also right, or right enough.
The punishment is key
The extreme delay is another consequence of taking on an entity willing to spend aggressively on lawyers and threaten to bankrupt the organisation it signed up to serve. An accusation of not cooperating with financial reporting, a charge that could be cleared up in half a day, took three years to reach a verdict.
That punishment really is key. Everything is on the cards, not least the much-trailed potential destruction of the brand. The Premier League has been rigid in the right way. Its legacy would be worth very little if its owners shied away from their own rules and allowed serial champions to shortcut their way to plastic success.
City fans deserve sympathy
City fans are innocent of anything other than wanting their team to win and believing the evidence presented to their eyes. Some will see conspiracy because they want to, but the rules do matter because other teams were abiding by them. Other teams didn't buy players, lost bidding wars, lost games and league titles by fine margins during a period when one team was saying "thanks but no thanks."
There is a legitimate suggestion it is time for those owners to sell up and move on. This has been a disgraceful episode: the casual cheating, the refusal to mitigate or compromise, the assault on English football, the attempt to bleed the rest of the field dry.
Anyone with an interest in justice, equality and abiding by universal rules should be pleased with this result, including City fans. Although there is still a huge opportunity for the process to hole itself below the waterline. Guilt followed by a minor slap on the wrist would provide a complete reversal of all that goodwill.
Little mitigation
There is very little mitigation here. Not reporting financial information might sound trivial in another sphere, but in football, where success is defined by expenditure, this is deliberate and highly effective deceit. Football is a zero-sum game. When you cheat, you're taking money and opportunities out of the pockets of others, not to mention glory, happiness, and life chances.
The list of teams that might have won league titles in those years reads: Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal. Perhaps these clubs will consider suing City for compensation. The Premier League could pre-empt this by stripping titles and reallocating glory.
Last month Bloomberg reported that the UAE had been in touch with the UK government expressing concerns about the Premier League process, and potentially damaging the prospect of that wider relationship. If true, this would demonstrate yet another profound misunderstanding of the culture you're buying into. The law is not supposed to bend to power and influence.
Whatever its ultimate outcome, the entire process stands as a warning for every sport with its eyes in a spin at the offer of transformative financial investment. Look very hard at who you get into bed with. Jam today, pain tomorrow. And it never, ever comes for free.
