High-profile legal teams assembled by Manchester City and Uefa will begin a landmark case next week to decide the future of football’s financial regulatory regime, as the sport’s authorities grapple with the ambitions of free-spending Middle Eastern club owners.
On Monday, the English Premier League team will appeal against a two-year ban from the Champions League, the continent’s most prestigious and lucrative club competition, at the start of a three-day hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, a body considered the ultimate arbiter of global sports disputes.
Uefa, European football’s governing body, delivered the unprecedented sanction alongside a €30m fine in February for “serious breaches” of so-called financial fair play rules designed to stop overspending on players in the pursuit of trophies.
If the ban is upheld, the club owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a billionaire member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, faces a revenue hit worth £100m a season and the task of convincing a stellar squad of players, led by head coach Pep Guardiola, to stay.
Legal experts and football executives say the seminal case will test how far Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which have invested heavily in sport as a form of soft power, can be brought to heel by football’s authorities.
The final decision could also upend the FFP system at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is causing strain on clubs’ finances.
“The calibre of the legal teams shows that the stakes are very high for both parties,” said Daniel Geey, a sport lawyer at Sheridans.
Manchester City is being represented by David Pannick QC from Blackstone Chambers and Monckton Chambers’ Paul Harris QC, according to people familiar with both sides’ legal teams.
Each will act on a separate strand of the case. Lord Pannick is one of Britain’s leading barristers who acted for anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller in a successful move to overturn Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament last year.
He will be supported by leading lawyers from London-based law firm Clifford Chance while fellow “Magic Circle” firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer will instruct Mr Harris.
Switzerland’s Kellerhals Carrard is also involved.
The people said Uefa’s legal team is led by Jan Kleiner, head of the sports law practice at Swiss firm Bär & Karrer, and Mark Phillips QC, from London’s South Square Chambers, known for his expertise on sports and financial cases such as successfully defending the Bank of England in a high-profile misfeasance claim brought by liquidators of Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
