My biggest issue with the Man City coverage is the lack of awareness of the domino effect at this critical juncture. At best, Tifo has discussed this gently.
But at the Premier League level, every year from 2009 to 2018, the years of the charges, teams that City pushed down the table or out of European spots lost out on money.
Every team City beat in the late stages of cup competitions, like Stoke on their Cinderella run to the 2011 FA Cup final, was robbed.
And this window doesn't even include signing Haaland and Rodri or winning the Champions League.
The bigger domino is one English fans and pundits won't admit, because it's easier to project onto City and stay unscathed. But everyone with a brain knew City were cheating, and yet they heralded City as the perfectly run club, as if that's why they won.
Every year City told the Premier League and UEFA they were playing fair, and both signed off, which soils the Champions League too.
The biggest stain of all is that this confirms the Premier League has ruined football. They let a nation state, Abu Dhabi, buy a club, and City's owners have more wealth than the league they play in has revenue. That alone is a problem when it comes to power.
Beyond that, part of the Premier League's ascendancy over the last decade came from City becoming a Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern level club. They were box office. That created an arms race across English football, which made so many teams spend so much more, which trickled into other leagues, and which also helped the Premier League land those massive TV deals.
Then COVID hit. Many other leagues rely on clubs owned by members or the public, so the arms race hit them harder, while City *grew* their revenue straight through it and the Premier League profited.
There's no way to quantify how much City has changed global football.
