Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 of 115 charges of breaking Premier League financial rules, and senior figures across the game now fear a verdict of that scale might not keep the club out of the Champions League.
The independent commission’s ruling, delivered on 29 September 2026, concluded that City arranged “sham” commercial contracts to inflate revenues by more than £900m between 2009 and 2018, and obstructed the Premier League’s investigation. Sanctions have not yet been handed down; the club has pursued its appeal and remains top of the league while the process plays out.
But the punishment, when it lands, is a domestic matter. Europe runs on a different ledger.
How the UEFA licence works
UEFA licences are issued by the Football Association and administered through the Premier League. Crucially, as BBC journalist Dale Johnson has set out, they are assessed on current information and do not account for sanctions or breaches tied to historical offences.
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The criteria that can actually disqualify a club are narrow:
- Overdue payables to other clubs or players
- Outstanding tax liabilities
- A match-fixing conviction within the past 10 years
- Integrity conflicts linked to multi-club ownership
None of those boxes is ticked by City’s case. The breaches were financial misreporting over a historical window, not an active default or a match-fixing issue. If City finish inside the Champions League qualification places this season, UEFA, on its own rulebook, has no obvious ground to turn them away.
What rival clubs are afraid of
The nightmare scenario inside Premier League boardrooms is a sporting split-screen: City serving a severe domestic punishment, up to and including relegation, while simultaneously collecting Champions League prize money and broadcasting revenues.
Senior figures quoted by Sportbible have said it would not be acceptable for City to earn Champions League income after being found to have broken the rules on such a scale. Another concern is European qualification arriving through a domestic cup route even if a points deduction wipes out City’s league finish.
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The commercial stakes are real. A deep Champions League run under the new format can be worth well over £100m to a qualifying club, money that would flow to City in parallel with any domestic penalty.
Precedent that cuts the other way
UEFA has tried to shut City out before. In February 2020, European football’s governing body banned the club from the Champions League for two seasons for financial fair play breaches. The Court of Arbitration for Sport later overturned that ban and reduced the fine to €10m, finding that most of the alleged breaches were time-barred or not established to the required standard.
That outcome shapes the current calculation. UEFA’s regime has since been rebuilt around current-period financial checks rather than historical investigations, and the rules Johnson references are the ones City’s situation would be measured against today.
What happens next
The sanctions hearing is the next big date, and City remain in this season’s Champions League while it approaches. The club play Paris Saint-Germain at the Etihad on 14 October in the competition’s league phase.
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If City are punished domestically but qualify for Europe on the pitch, the licensing question moves from theory to practice, and the Premier League, not UEFA, will be the one explaining how a club found guilty of 114 charges is still cashing Champions League cheques.
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