Misleading Video BRITAIN’S BIGGEST FOOTBALL SCANDAL
By: Ted Fred Franky, Refuting misinformation, February 9, 2024 6 months ago
A very expensive professionally produced pack of lies
This video has been going around for a while now. It has had over 2m views. Many Liverpool fans quote it as if it were the truth. Before I take issue with what it says, have a look at the quality of it.
The post production is definitely TV Broadcast Quality. The sound is very good, the special effects, transitions and so on are all what you would expect from a full onTV Production Company. This video must have cost £50,000-£100,000 to produce maybe more. The revenue from YouTube would be no more than half that, so why make it to such a high standard? Well, the more professional it looks the more beleivable it is.
Furthermore, it is on a channel where nothing has been published before, which suggests it lacks authenticity. It was published on 29th June 2023, and the following day 30th June 2023, ThisISAnfield is reporting on it. A channel with no previous content is suddenly known about by everyone??
It is produced by a lady called Kirstie McClure, who has no previous content anywhere on the Internet…and so the wierdness of this goes on.
Almost all of the interviews (Nick Harris, Thomas Kistner etc) are from other interviews and were conducted before City’s successful appeal at CAS. I am sure many would change their comments now.
So here we go:
28 seconds
After an introduction it claims CAS made what many consider to be the most controversial in football. Then we have quotes from klopp and Mourinho to add gravitas to that opening line.
Let’s be brutally honest the UEFA case against City was a sham, and CAS acted professionally and within the law overturning UEFA’s corrupt decision. If you read the CAS report you can see this clearly is the case. Some of Mourinho’s comments about it deonstrate he has no idea what he is talking about.
The Video then outlines the claims made by Der Spiegel against City and then it gets really silly.
“1.55 we exclusively reveal uefa’s damning verdict the club accounting was designed to conceal the source of the funding”
Well this accusation by UEFA is in the CAS report released in 2020 after City were cleared,s o there is nothing at all exclusive about publishing it as new news in 2023! but hey when you’re s[inning a good yarn, who cares about facts hey?
We then have a few people talking as if this is some sort of gangster documentary with people fuzzed out too frightened to show who they are in case they get bumped off. It’s a joke! This is the text:
“2.15 football insiders speak out for the first time – for us it was clear that the Manchester
2:22 City was cheating with its commercial income and was deflecting the system is essentially a charade
2:29 where it looks like there’s regulation then maybe at the beginning a tough sanction when the investigators have
2:35 done a great job then it moves to a higher level and because of some technicality the tough sanction
2:42 evaporates there’s a fear that if you do speak out and rock the boat you will be thrown
2:47 overboard situation that we have today which is
2:53 that the rules are effectively finished“
Firstly, as the CAS report stated, the only evidence UEFA presented was the redacted email’s from Der Speigel. So if you believe these emails are true then you can draw this conclusion. However, CAS rightly said these articles in Der Spiegel should only be considered as hearsay. If you look at Der Speigel and their source Rui Pinto, these emails are highly dubious. Even more so when City produced the orginal emails at CAS to show what they referred to, ie they were nothing to do with the Der Spiegel allegations.
Secondly, we have the phrase “because of some technicality the tough sanction evaporates“. This is referring to the time barring of some of the allegations made by UEFA. In fact, CAS gave 8 reasons why they overturned UEFA’s decision, one of which was time barring. So again more misinformation.
So in the first 3 minutes they have presented Manchester City and their succesful appeal at CAS as some sort of shady underhand corrupt affair.
“4:24 in 40 years they never won a major trophy”
City won thr League Cup in 1976, then the FA Cup in 2011, thisis a span of 35 years. So when this video claims it is 40 years. The producers are deliberately misleading the audience, trying to make the period look longer and therefore make City look worse than it was.
“4:40 Sheik mansour through billions of pounds at Manchester City”
By all accounts Sheik Mansour’s total investment in Manchester City stands at £1.8B and he has received of £800m from Silverlake Capital and CITC for shares in the business. So again over stating the expendature to sensationalise what he has done.
“4:58 it’s stunning particularly if you’re a man city fan is this for real that one of the richest countries in the world is about to turn us into a Powerhouse”
So it goes on. City were bought by Sheik Mansour not a country. There is yet another an article in Der Speigel from Football Leaks that claims City are really owned by the State of Abu Dhabi. however there is nothing else to back up these eronious claims, and Abu Dhabi is not a country.
Then it is claimed Sheik Mansour is the Deputy Prime Minister (since 2009) and Vice President (since 2023) of the UAE. They don’t mention that he was in neither of these roles when he bought the club in 2008. So the video is now portraying City as being owned by the country of the UAE, not even the state of Abu Dhabi.
So what we have is a narrative being built up that sensationalises and distorts facts. they might only be small little things, but they are all deliberate.
“5:49 bought for 210 million pounds and a day valued at around 3 billion is the biggest and most valuable”
City have never been valued as the most valuabel club, the last valuation was around £3.5B. Since Chelsea were bought for £4.25B in 2022, a year before this video was made. Jim Ratcliffes 25% steak in Manchester United values them at £5B-£6B. City can hardly be described at the most valuable club! It’s all part of the narrative though.
“7:39 this previously unseen presentation document demonstrates how many outside the UAE see City’s value”
Well they are still unseen, because they are blurred out.
“8:30 Alex Phillips formerly uefa’s head of governance and compliance played a key
8:36 role in drawing up the ffp rules the key part of it was the break even
8:42 rule so that clubs could not spend more than they earn the concept was meant to
8:47 ensure that people couldn’t come in and simply buy success”
This is a very interesting statement from Alex Philips, because it directly contradicts the reasons Michelle Platini gave for introducing FFP. The purpose was allegedly to prevent clubs overspending and (almostt) going bankrupt, in the way Chelsea, Leeds United, Liverpool, Newcastle united, Barcelona and Real Madrid had done. Alex Philips appears to have completely exposed the dishonesty which was sued to introduce UEFA’s FFP.
“9:02 so money that the teams did not generate from their day-to-day activities so broadcasting hosting
9:08 matches and selling product the three revenue streams”
So now we are being told that three of professional football club’s biggest revenue streams ie prize money, selling players and sponsorship just don’t exist? Obviously, these are two revenue streams where City excel, so it helps with the later arguement of how can City in a smaller staidum with fewer fans generate so much money?
According to Nick Harris who says:
“9:45 Manchester City benefited from extremely high sponsorship deals from entities
9:51 based in Abu Dhabi including but not only Etihad Airways etisalat and other
9:57 entities which you can’t really believe would be paying those sums if they were
10:03 genuinely arms length deals City“
What is his opinion based on? According to Brand Finance, the Etihad sponsorhsip of Manchester City was in the top ten most effective deals sponsorhsip deals in world football when it ws intorduced and with City’s success is now the most effective. Brand Finance highlight how City’s Eithad sponshorship deal is far better value for money than the Emirates deals for Arsenal and Real Madrid. Nick also draws a link with the fact that Etihad is also from Abu Dhabi. Nice spot but since the Glazers bought Manchester United they have only been sponsored by US firms, and since Henry bought Liverpool they too hve only had American sponsors. why is this any different to that?
The documentary then goes on to say they have seen secret documents (ie the emails published in Der Spiegel) and outlien exactly the same things Der SPeigel alleged in 2018. So nothing new here.
They then quote Thomas Kistner talking about Rui Pinto:
“15:49 obviously he he was hacking
15:55 and this makes it difficult to look at him as a hero I don’t buy the story that
16:04 he’s a fan of the game and he wants to uh to show to the world and to the will
16:10 help the fans to understand what’s going on behind the curtains I don’t buy this story“
We have already seen here what Rui Pinto is about so then we have another unnamed UEFA source disputing this, arguing the Football Leaks emails are the truth.
The docuemntary goes on to talk about the UEFA investigation citing Yves Leterme as the former Belgian Prime Minister to add gravitas. they fail to mention that he is actually the disgraced former Belgian Prime Minister for attempted to corrupt the Belgian justice system.
The video then tries to undermine CAS as some sort of secretive organisation:
“34:21 accountable enough and when something is not accountable enough or transparent enough there are problems both actual”
“34:28 and perceived well why is it so secretive I don’t know you have to ask them what I can tell you”
“34:35 is that it ought not to be so secretive I believe that the problems those”
“34:40 institutions have is that there are no adequate rules of governance and that there are conflicts of interest”
This is what I kow about CAS, they publish
- who their judges are (leading barristers across Europe)
- how they select their panel of judges for each case, and
- how they adjudicate cases
- detailed reports on each case, citing the laws they have used to determine their decisions
This is why we have the CAS Report fully expalaining how they came to the decision they did. They produce these rreports for all their cases. They are completely open. yet this video is arguing the complete opposite with again hidden unnamed sources at CAS.
“43:34 there were also doubts in the Sports World about the selection of the
43:40 arbitrators each side gets to choose one arbitrator
43:47 the third appointed independently by Cas“
The viideo then goes on to spread another myth, that City appointned the third CAS arbitrator.
This simply is not true. There are a panel of 22 arbitrators who can be chosen, about 6 specialise in football. City chose one and UEFA chose one, leaving 4 others. City and UEFA are then supposed to agree on the third, if they can’t then CAS will decide. One party, City, suggested the third arbitrator and UEFA agreed. That’s it nothing clandestine or unfair. At the end of the day it could only really be one of four people?
“53:25 unlike UEFA the premier league has no time
53:30 limit or Time bar this means the etisalat deals will be admissible so too”
Again this is not true. Arbitration has to be done in accordance with English Law so the Staute of Lmitations applies ie another 6 years before 6th Feberuary 2023 cannot be considered.
“54:01 City’s legal assault has led them to even challenge the lawyer leading the
54:07 premier league case for bias because he supports Arsenal”
The Arsenal fan in quesiton is Murray Rosen KC, his only roel is to select the panel that arbitrates on the City case, so he is not the lawyer leading the case against City.
Yves Le Terme (you knnow that corrupt guy) is then quoted as saying
“55:35 I am convinced that fraud has been committed by Manchester City”
This whole video ends stating the UEFA is caught between investigating wrong doing and it’s commercial incentives and that CAS (in totally independent body which rules on all sorts of sports) should be replaced as it is not fit for purpose.
So basically this video is a direct attack on the result of a perfectly legal arbitration process, littered with misleading inaccuracies.
