Is the Premier League about to eat itself? | Man City VERDICT

0:02Nedum Onuoha:This is a global production. And when you see where we're at today and what is being reported with Citi and the charges that they are reportedly have been found guilty of, how does that make you feel?

0:22This is obviously a story of huge public interest. It's all about uncovering wrongdoing. We're talking about one of the most important whistleblowers in Europe and maybe the world, Rui Pinto. He had access to data that proved systemic wrongdoing. Did you know what you were looking for? It was like children in a candy store. Very stupidly started typing in words like Cristiano Ronaldo. This is how a contract looks like in the Premier League. It's quite clear that Manchester City has been paying high-level lawyers to delay the proceedings as long as possible because they don't want a guilty verdict to come out in the end

1:13Nedum Onuoha:hello welcome to the sports agents nadam alongside me for this one and on today's show nobody really knows do they what's going to happen well they don't do this so we've basically got a podcast of guessing because it's all about manchester city is this one loads of clubs reportedly considering legal action so we'll ask how would they do that what does it mean for them what does it mean for city what does it mean for the premier league first though we're going to take you back to how it all began and how a team of german journalists working with a portuguese whistleblower uncovered the emails that have got us to this point christoph winterbach of der Spiegel was the journalist who first found those city emails and he joins us to tell us the story of what happened next.

1:59Christoph, nice to see you. Hi guys. Nathan, I want to know right away, you were there. Tell me everything.

2:06Nedum Onuoha:Listen, everything was fine. There was nothing to see. You know, Christoph, I don't know what you're talking about. It's all good. But yeah, it's about that point. It's been an interesting few days or say a few years because people have come to players around that time and ask them about how it looks. But how it looks is how it looked for most of the years throughout our careers anyway, because we were just essentially playing the games. All the stuff that has been uncovered and has been spoken about, a player, for the most part, just never knows. You never know those things, never know those conversations, do you?

2:39Yeah, you don't negotiate the ATR contracts.

2:44Nedum Onuoha:No, no, no, not at all, thankfully. Take us back to the beginning, Christoph, and how you first became involved, how you first became aware, I suppose, of the website Football Leagues, first of all. Yeah, I used to be a football fan, to be quite honest. And when Football League started, I was right on the brink of becoming a professional journalist. I was making the jump from university to journalism school and then trying to find my first real job and moving from journalism school right to Der Spiegel was a big, like I got very lucky because I was at the right place at the right time, especially in that moment where at Der Spiegel they started to research the football league's trove and they needed someone who was interested in football and wanted to do investigative stuff and wasn't afraid of dealing with lots and lots of data.

3:44And fortunately for me, they knew about me. And I was like pretty much doing an internship next door. And they brought me in. And I stayed at Der Spiegel since then for like 10 years by now.

3:56Nedum Onuoha:So basically, there was a reporter, Raphael Buschmann, and he made contact with Rui Pinto from football leagues and eventually was given two hard drives. and that was what you were put in charge of, was it, of going through? I think around that time it was really a race from a couple of journalists, investigative sports journalists, to find Rui Pinto and to actually just talk to him because I think he was very much trying to avoid any direct contact with anyone. It took quite some time to gain Rui Pinto's trust, and I wasn't a part of that process. I was just part of the team when Raphael had succeeded and came back to Hamburg with a couple of hard drives that contained lots and lots of documents.

4:53And then we were very fortunate to work for Der Spiegel, who still allows it for their investigative units to actually take their time and to really dive into a topic. And it might take months and it might not yield anything. But that's what investigative journalism sometimes is about, to really have an impact and to change things, to put a focus on systemic issues and actually have the people in charge then react to it is, I think, a very wonderful and powerful factor of investigative journalism.

5:29Nedum Onuoha:At its peak here, I think you probably had about 70 million files available from football leagues. Did you know what you were looking for? In the beginning, you don't even know what to look for, no. Sometimes when Rui Pinto would provide material to us, he would give a hint and say, you could look into that direction. but it was always very vague and he never knew what we were going to do with it. He never told us what to publish and what not to publish. He didn't know what the articles would look like. And most of the times there was just this massive amount of data and you just very stupidly start typing in words like Cristiano Ronaldo and maybe your favorite club or maybe your favorite player and see how many hits you get for those search terms.

6:28And then slowly you start to get a feeling about, okay, going in that direction, we can actually build a working group that focuses on this topic. So it takes a long time to actually, in the beginning, you're not looking for the needle in the haystack. You're really just combing through it and trying to understand, like, what sort of hay is this exactly?

6:52Nedum Onuoha:In regards to, say, that much data and the, say, software used to search for certain words, I think there were two questions in particular that, say, you asked to try and figure out within that data. But when there's that much stuff, did you ever leave and think there's something that maybe you've missed? You spend weeks and weeks looking through stuff and you maybe look at one topic and you think, I really want to uncover something. I've read news reports about this. We've got to have some sort of proof or evidence about this certain thing. and the material and I at some point I like went home on Friday night after a full week of doing nothing but like clicking next file next file and reading everything and I had to say okay this whole week from Monday to Friday I I did not find anything like my dreams became very boring I at night I would dream about like sitting in front of computer like click click click and looking at one document after another so in the beginning it's it's very like you got to be patient and um some some stories pursuit stories turn out to be dead ends and sometimes you get lucky and you you strike up something that um that deserves uh more attention um and did you literally to use your phrase strike lucky and stumble across one email one document that led you on this trail as far as the city story is concerned so at some point we realized that we did have quite some extensive uh material about manchester city also about uh psg and um back then like we're talking 2018 it was four years prior that there had been those settlement agreements with those two clubs and UEFA about their breaches of financial fair play regulations and I as a football fan back then in 2014 I read the news reports and I think many people had the same feeling they were very puzzled because it seemed quite obvious that both of those clubs had been quite clearly in breach of the regulations.

9:05And then the news came out, we had a settlement agreement and this is the end of it. So we as a team, and not only at Der Spiegel, but also with our partner organizations, media organizations in all of Europe, we concluded that this might be a very interesting topic to follow and to look at that specifically. So we had a special digital forensic software that is used by investigators, by auditors, and we were able to cross-check search terms, search by keywords, filter by date, file type, addressee, and all those kind of things. And we would look around the dates that those settlement agreements were formed and try to find something, for example, in relation with Manchester City, if there was some communication regarding these negotiations.

9:59And that's where it all opened up and we went from there.

10:03Nedum Onuoha:With the investigative journalism that goes on and you see something, there's a thread, you pull on the thread, you see more, you find more. And then you put something together. What is the feeling like just before, say, you release that information? Because I think it's fair to say, even looking at the world today, some of the stuff around whistleblowers and leaks and so on, people don't feel comfortable to a certain extent putting their face towards it like have you felt outside pressure or did you feel outside pressure rather when you were initially sort of creating um creating a story as such it's a high pressure situation for sure for weeks and months before publication um because like looking for those documents is only the first step like um you got to make sure the material is totally authentic, which it was proven to be.

10:59You talk with experts, you talk with people behind the scenes that you know, some sources, some informants. And then when it comes towards the production of the story, like we have a very diligent fact-checking department at Der Spiegel and they literally like print out the articles and like cross off every single word and trying to verify every single word and every claim and every name and age and number that is in the story and you've got to got to back it up with everything and we have a legal team that of course we were in close contact with who we talked to and said we're going to make those allegations um we we approached for example manchester city so they could comment on the allegations like we we send them a questionnaire with i don't know 100 questions maybe um and they came back with one general statement and so the legal team says okay you've got to print that statement obviously um and then at some point it like the story hopefully doesn't end with publication but it only like starts like it actually the whole process just starts when you when you kick it out in the open um but you can never predict if there's going

12:12Nedum Onuoha:to be a wave about it uh or not part of city's defense i think initially was how these documents were acquired, whether hacked or stolen. What do you make of that? And are you comfortable with where the documents came from? Does it matter? So far as from a media legal perspective, it is very important that the material is authentic, that it's not fabricated, and that if we publish it, it is of public interest. And I think this is obviously a story of huge public interest. And we're talking about one of the most important whistleblowers in Europe and maybe the world these days, Rui Pinto, who is very idealistic.

13:07He had access to data that proved systemic wrongdoing and he wanted to do something about it and he did that under great personal and private sacrifice like he has not had a normal life since publication he was he's in witness protection to this day he's been in jail he was sentenced to a suspended jail term there's been a second trial where he was acquitted. But since he was arrested in 2019, his normal life that he used to lead until that point is over. And he was always aware that he endangers himself personally, and he needs to be protected by the Portuguese state right now because of the high level people and organizations that he ticked off with the stuff that he collected and made available to us journalists.

14:02And for us as investigative journalists, it's all about uncovering wrongdoing and totally understanding the motives of everyone involved.

14:13Nedum Onuoha:In regards to Rui, because I believe you visited him in prison in 2019, is his position that now that his life changed, it was worth it? And secondly, from your perspective now with the way that football was then, do you think it's the same today and it's just a case that it's becoming more sophisticated in terms of how some of the alleged breaches and so on are essentially being covered I think you would have to ask him personally if you would say it's worth it my understanding of him as a person I met him twice in person was that he is very convinced and very proud of what he did. And he made a big impact.

14:57And he really changed the way people look at this business. Because I remember the first couple of weeks when we started looking into the material in 2016, when we started the Football Leagues project for the first time, it was like children in the candy store. We had never seen those kind of contracts before. I remember the first couple of stories that we ran were very much, hey guys, this is how a contract looks like in the Premier League, in the Bundesliga. So there was a lot of stuff that was so out of reach because no one ever talked about it publicly. And I think that has changed because we kind of broke that door open.

15:45what was the story from the very beginning was like the obscene amounts that were paid to agents to players the the kind of diplomacy and geopolitics behind closed doors and everything and I think it's safe to say since then since 2016 2018 it has even gone into overdrive since then if you look look at the numbers they're like even even more inflated um what happened during the world cup between jenny infantino and donald trump like wasn't imaginable a couple of years ago like to have them so out in the open and so brazenly so i think uh the football world has just turned even even more extreme and insane in a way is that is that why you're not you said

16:39Nedum Onuoha:you used to be a football fan is everything that you've just said is that why you aren't a football fan anymore or are you not a football fan at certain levels but would still go and watch grassroots football are you disillusioned it's it's a part of it for me sports is a competition where like you should go to a game not knowing who will win that is that is the magic about it and that is why you have federations and leagues that put up rules so everyone plays to the same rules and everyone adheres to those rules and it's a level playing field for everyone and football is not anymore and for quite some time like the richest clubs made sure that they not only stay the richest but also become even more richer like they would get rewarded for being in the Champions League again and get paid an extra sum that the lesser clubs wouldn't receive.

17:42So the system is tilted right from the beginning.

17:45Nedum Onuoha:Was there anything in the files that you found positive? I'm assuming you didn't read all 70 million, but was there? Maybe you did. Well, maybe you did. Was there good stuff in there? yeah i mean obviously most of the things that we read we we didn't publish because they weren't of public interest um there's a lot of like personal stuff that we need to be very careful with um we we did publish a couple of um positive stories um i remember for example the father of martin odegaard saying um that he he doesn't want the image rights of his son to be transferred to the British Virgin Islands because he thinks football players make enough money already and they don't need to hide this income because everyone should pay their taxes.

18:38That was about the story that we were able to publish. But of course it was quite well received by people who it was a breath of fresh air. But it only is that because it is an exception. And it was it was the one person in a whole scheme pointing up and saying, no, I don't want to contribute to that scheme. And yeah, that's an exception to the rule.

19:07Nedum Onuoha:And when you see where we're at today and what is being reported with City and the charges that they are reportedly have been found guilty of, despite the fact that nobody will give us a statement one way or the other on this and everybody's left in limbo. How does that make you feel?

19:31It's been eight years since we published those stories. That's insane. There's something seriously wrong in the way football regulates itself. This arbitration system does not work. if you look at how UEFA kicked out Manchester City from the Champions League for two years and then the Court of Abitration for Sport walked that back with arguments that surprised us. We were very, very intrigued to read the whole verdict when it came out and we were like, this is really the terms on why you say you can't sanction Man City that way. Like you're saying, we spoke to the witnesses from Manchester City, from those sponsor organizations, and they didn't strike us in unreliable witnesses.

20:28Why would they lie to us? Like, this is the way how you adjudicate things. and it's quite clear that manchester city has been paying high-level lawyers to like delay the proceedings as long as possible and to obstruct the proceedings the best way they can because they don't want this to end and they don't want a guilty verdict to come out in the end and i i have no idea how long it will take now until we hear about sanctions until we hear about the appeals process, what the result of this is in the end. Maybe they will come to a settlement agreement in the end. Nothing would surprise me. So emotionally, I'm kind of detached from the case by now.

21:15I'm just like an interested observer to see what keeps happening.

21:19Nedum Onuoha:Christoph, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Quick reminder that you can catch up on our previous episodes on YouTube, Global Player, or wherever you get your podcasts, please subscribe, follow and leave us a review whilst you're there. And coming up next, if other Premier League clubs do start taking legal action against City, what happens, not just to City, but to the league itself? Fred Snowball, partner at McFarlane's Law Firm, joins us next.

21:53Nedum Onuoha:just before we get into details and who can do what a minutiae if you just take one step back and look at the whole scenario if they are eventually found guilty Manchester City legally is this going to be as messy as it could possibly be I think potentially it could I mean we really are in uncharted territory for English football, European football. It's hard to think of other examples in global sport, really. I mean, the Premier League structure is such that compensation claims by clubs against other clubs are permitted. And we've certainly seen individual instances in the past, but we haven't seen multiple clubs having claims against another in the way that might happen here.

22:41The short answer is, you know, this is very complex, it's unprecedented and the ramifications are enormous.

22:47Nedum Onuoha:Let's do Burnley-Everton here because that's the one that keeps being brought back up as the example of clubs suing each other. Burnley sued Everton for loss of money of being in the Premier League because if Everton had had more points deducted, Burnley would have stayed up and Everton would have gone down. That case, was that settled in a court of law? Was it a sport arbitration panel? Was it something within the Premier League remit? It was all within the context of a Premier League commission. So the same commission that sanctioned Everton originally then heard the follow-on compensation claims.

23:34And, I mean, it sort of is a precedent for the City case, and it isn't. On the one hand, yes, Burnley persuaded a panel that had Everton complied with the rules, they would have been relegated instead of Burnley. And the panel was satisfied that Burnley suffered a recoverable loss as a result. It was£26 million plus interest. So the principle is there that one club breaching the rules can lead to financial compensation for another. But then on the other hand, well, first of all, there's a pending appeal in the Burnley case.

24:08Nedum Onuoha:Of course there is, of course. Second rule, Everton's breach was a single PSR breach which impacted one season, not multiple seasons as it is with City. The type of breach is different. Everton's breach was, in inverted commas, just a PSR breach based on a simple conclusion that had Everton complied with the rules, they would have spent less on players. um cities breaches or alleged breaches do include psr breaches but have others as well related to expenditure manager and non-disclosure of information it's less clear how those would translate to any compensation claim and then lastly everton and burnley were very close to one another in the relevant season um you know does an overspend of i think it was 19 million in that case amount to more than four points in a single season.

25:06You can see how instinctively that's a slightly easier question to answer than how many points are multiple alleged preachers over multiple seasons worth to multiple clubs who finish further apart than that. So, yeah, it is a precedent in some senses, but also it is very different.

25:23Nedum Onuoha:Was it as simplistic as, you know, we missed out on staying up by four points, they could have had more points deducted, so on and so forth? Because I keep reading about statistical modelling as well, which tries to pan out or tries to then use the data and the analytics to show how a season could have panned out. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So if only it were as simple as taking a sanction, be it a points deduction and saying, right, well, we apply that to the relevant seasons and then we work out what the finishing positions would have been. And we calculated that way. That's not how it works, because the sanction is different from the compensation and they're calculated differently.

26:09so the sanction is the purpose of it is to punish is to deter future conduct compensation is making good losses suffered by another club because but for the breach they would have been in a different position and those are two different things you know the compensation doesn't have a punitive element to it and that's why as you say the process of determining compensation is just so complex because if say the sanction is a points deduction you can't simply apply that deduction you have to sort of model what would have happened in a scenario where the club that's in breach would have complied with the rules what would they have done what would the impact of that have been on other clubs and have those other clubs suffered loss as a result for which you are using statistical modeling.