You can't teach the intangibles required to commit 114 financial breaches
The spreadsheet nerds at the Premier League want to put an asterisk next to Manchester City’s trophies, but cooking the books for a decade requires a level of institutional grit the analytics bloggers will never understand.
The bean-counters are popping champagne in the regulatory offices today, and frankly, it makes me sick to my stomach. If you listen to the modern pundit class, you would think Manchester City Football Club just committed high treason against the crown. The pearl-clutching over Friday’s verdict—which found the club guilty of 114 out of 115 breaches of Premier League financial rules—is exactly what is wrong with the modern game. We have become a culture of hall monitors. We have lost our appreciation for the dark arts.
Rodri spoke up this week, insisting that the players deserved their success and that he still believes in the club's innocence. Well, I am here to tell you that Rodri is absolutely right, even if he is being entirely too modest about how that success was forged. You look at a number like 114 financial breaches, and the compliance officers see a guilty verdict. But I look at that number and I see a front office that was willing to leave absolutely everything on the pitch.
I have covered this sport for three decades. I have been in the dressing room after historic victories, and I have sat in the owners' suites during the darkest hours of relegation battles. And let me tell you something that the data-obsessed generation will never understand: you cannot manufacture the kind of grit it takes to orchestrate a decade-long international accounting conspiracy.
