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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14405 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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Two different threads of thoughts not quite coalescing so stay with me for a bit.

Soccer and Cheating

Seismic news in the world of soccer (or football if you're an old-worlder) last Friday where news broke that Manchester City (MCFC) found guilty on almost all Premier League charges relating to financial breaches. On Tuesday, the Premier League released their official statement on Manchester FC, confirming the charges in very strong language (especially if you assume a team of extremely well paid British lawyers reviewed it).

For background, the Premier League (EPL) is highest level of the English professional soccer system, is the most watched in the world and by extension the most revenue, beating the second-in-line La Liga (the soccer league in Spain) by miles. Machester City FC would have been just another random soccer club sharing the same city as Manchester United, rotating in and out of the Premier League, until they were bought out by Sheikh Mansour in 2008. The fifth son of the Emir of Abu Dhabi (the largest, richest, most important emirate of the UAE), Sheikh Mansour is both rich and reasonably politically adept, he would be appointed the deputy prime minister of the UAE the following year in 2009, and then appointed second vice president in 2023.

Since the Sheikh bought MCFC, he pumped a boatload lot of money into it. The club signed top managers. Bought 1.243 billion pounds worth of players between 2009-2018. The club made multiple renovations to the stadium. And with all that money came a lot of success on the pitch itself. They've won the Premier League 8 times, they've won 4 FA Cup and 7 EFL Cup (domestic knockout tournaments parallel to the EPL). And to top it off in 2023, they won the European Champions League, being the second English club to ever completed a "continental treble". The first, btw, is Manchester United.

Now I must explain to you UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) and EPL Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR)(though this has gotten many names and variations over the years). Though the common understanding might be that these rules are to prevent unfair economic advantage on the field, especially since "wages remain the best financial barometer of sporting performance", but actually the rules are meant to prevent clubs from taking on "excessive" debt based on yearly revenue and therefore risk going into bankruptcy. As an aside, for achieving competitive parity, the best example are the US sport leagues, where any team can theoretically win the championship. The charitable take on these rules are to prevent rich owners going on drunken spending sprees then leave the club with debt that cripples or kill the club long term. The uncharitable take is that the rules were created to protect the status quo where big clubs maintain their huge advantages (you will hear the term "red cartel" a lot to refer to the historically important and internationally known clubs Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal). What's especially important to know is that many other clubs have been forced to extreme lengths to avoid these rules such as selling their players, selling their women's team. And if you're in breach, there are fines, embargo on registering full rosters, transfer bans, points deduction.

Between 2016 and 2018, a series of email leaks/hacks and followup news investigations pretty much shows MCFC has never complied with the rules, proactively and systematically engaged in what many consider "financial doping", and with an attitude perfectly summed up in a quote in one of the emails by an MCFC board member: "We can do what we want" (MCFC maintains that this quote is taken out of context). Europe soccer association (UEFA) had their own investigation and initially rule MCFC guilty in 2020, but was quickly overturned on appeal in by the Court of Arbitration for Sports due to essentially statute of limitations. The EPL has no such statute, but was considerably slower as unlike all previous case, MCFC fought every step of the way. The charges span 2009-2018, the investigation didn't conclude until 2023 when it referred its findings to an independent commission, the hearing spanned 3 months in 2024, and it took nearly another 2 years for us now to have a verdict for 114 guilty out of 115 charges. ‘sham contracts’, spending breaches and ‘disguised funding’. Sanctions have not been announced.

The UK Prime Minister had to chime in his concern (btw, his previous office was being the mayor of Greater Manchester)(UK and UAE has close relations). Fans of other clubs are outraged, especially ones that can point to direct monetary harm like losing players to MCFC or losing in the final, losing a spot to the Champions League. Since the EPL is actually the collection of the clubs, many observers note how the tenor of the EPL announcement indicates the emotions of the other owners aren't far off from their club fans. The coaches and players of other clubs are half-jokingly asking about getting their rightful cups and medals and therefore bonuses as well. MCFC released their own statement maintaining their innocence and will appeal "on the basis that the opinion [of the EPL] contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe." Etihad Airways (Abu Dhabi-based flagship airliner of the UAE and major sponsor of MCFC) warns of legal action against the EPL. Most MCFC coaches and players are communicating "wait and see until the process fully plays out, we trust the club". MCFC fans range in emotions, but most can at least argue on the immense benefit MCFC has had on Manchester.

Trade and Cheating

The emblematic example of this I can think of is China and its inclusion to the WTO in 2001. I am also not able to muster up the effort to write and collect links about this, but thankfully Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has a part 1 and part 2 on the "false promises" of China: "Nearly 20 years after joining the World Trade Organization, China remains woefully short of meeting a broad range of commitments and responsibilities, to the detriment of both its trading partners and the international economic system.".

Open Questions

What is the best way in which liberal-ish democracy-ish Western-aligned-ish polities should deal with its illiberal-ish totalitarian-ish non-Western-aligned-ish polities? What is the balance?

Is this just the gears of history turning oh so very slowly and that comeuppance will come due?

Personal conclusions

I'm glad I got away from those culture and societies and systems. I'm glad that even though the rich and the ruthless can fuck the small and the naive but at least in Western society there is a realistic way of fucking them back (even if it's hard, complex, slow, etc.). I feel a little guilty that I didn't stay and tried to make an impact or change something. I am reminded of the importance of the rule of law and norms and how this helps in interaction and not harming each other and redress grievances.

Edit 1

I think it was my fault for putting too much energy into the soccer section and making the other sections lopsided. But I really want to draw attention the open questions I have. The rules of the Western order is always breaking down but it seems there is thick molasses with which Western society and the leaders of society are reacting to the present situation of the day. Was the West naive about how a monarch from a monarchical society would not bend or break the rules on his own whims, or at least let his underlings do so? Was the West arrogant and greedy for the labor to think the Communist leadership would be convinced by the power of capitalism and liberal order and therefore would also acquiesce to the same rules and norms?

There is a quote that went around that is really funny and was certainly how I thought about Russia communists:

Lenin’s core of Bolsheviks, and the socialists like Trotsky who joined them, were many of them highly educated people, literate in multiple European languages, learned in the scholastic traditions of Marxism; and they preserved these attributes even as they murdered and lied and tortured and terrorized. They were social scientists who thought principle required them to behave like gangsters.

...

Stalin had been a gangster who really believed he was a social scientist. Khruschev was a gangster who hoped he was a social scientist. But the moment was drawing irresistibly closer when the idealism would rot away by one more degree, and the Soviet Union would be governed by gangsters who were only pretending to be social scientists.

source: https://fluidself.org/books/history/red-plenty

But after listening to enough Stephen Kotkin, I think I was wrong. Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, and so on, they really thought they were social scientists, they really believed in it, no hope about it, no pretending about it, they just all thought the previous guy was wrong. They were all delusional, maybe not collectively (heh), but certainly the system led them all to be deluded in the same way. And someone who grew up in and benefit from an absolute monarchy with tribal-autocratic rule would also care not for democratic rules and norms. He certainly never suffered enough consequences. Even now, the EPL makes it very clear that redacted redacted is not guilty and never authorized any of these dealings.

There has been much harm and mistakes with regards to America's policy of the Cold War. Vietnam is probably the canonical example where there were multiple opportunities for Ho Chi Minh to be funded by the US and not Russia. But one can say the containment policy is at least a theoretically sound solution to the tolerance of the intolerance paradox. Say what you will by the EU but they got it right that there are strong rules and requirements about levels of corruption and elections for even looking at admission of a new member.

I'm still not sure what, specifically, Manchester City did wrong. This feels like some trademark European "regulatory superpower" bullshit.

I like the comparison to the Los Angeles Clippers-Kawhi Leonard scandal. The rules in the NBA are relatively straightforward. There is a maximum salary a team can pay a given player. It is against the rules for a team to provide compensation to a player outside of his salary. The NBA found that the Clippers paid third parties to pay Kawhi Leonard tens of millions of dollars in mostly-fake endorsement and sponsership deals, thus breaking the rules.

Uhmm, actually that's exactly the right comparison but instead of one player, imagine every player, and even the coaches too, over nearly a decade.

The rule in a nutshell is pretty simple: a club can only spend what it legitimately earns through ticket sales, TV rights, and legitimate commercial sponsorship, and the owner is not allowed to simply inject hundreds of millions of their own money to buy players if the club hasn't earned it.

Abu Dhabi (Clippers) pretty much had their airline Etihad Airways (their third party) sponsor MCFC with endorsements and sponsorship deals. And the emails showed that the best part is they recorded it down. They were explicit about how much money would Etihad Airways send over (about 10-12% year to year) and how much Abu Dhabi United Group (owner of MCFC) has to give Etihad Airways so that the money can then be sent to MCFC.

I guess it's just weird to me that the regulatory scheme is based on the internal cash flow structure within each club. If the goal is to maintain competative balance, then it would be more effective to regulate compensation paid to players and coaches instead.

Maybe this is my American capitalism-brain talking, but I don't see why it matters whether player salaries are financed by jersey sales or by capital infusion. If the club is a money pit, that is the club's problem.

I mentioned it in the following passage:

Though the common understanding might be that these rules are to prevent unfair economic advantage on the field, especially since "wages remain the best financial barometer of sporting performance", but actually the rules are meant to prevent clubs from taking on "excessive" debt based on yearly revenue and therefore risk going into bankruptcy. As an aside, for achieving competitive parity, the best example are the US sport leagues, where any team can theoretically win the championship. The charitable take on these rules are to prevent rich owners going on drunken spending sprees then leave the club with debt that cripples or kill the club long term. The uncharitable take is that the rules were created to protect the status quo where big clubs maintain their huge advantages

So you're exactly right, most people thought the rules are about "maintaining competitive balance", this might be true but it's only secondary importance to "maintaining the club's long term financial solvency". If the club is a money pit, that is the club's problem is true, but usually this means the livelihood and finances of local communities that these soccer clubs are from. In a way, we can have the other example and think about how the Chinese are just smarter and work harder so even though they're communist they're better at capitalism and therefore those industrial heartlands deserve to die, and I think many people would reconsider that calculation now.

I mean it's the clippers scandal but worse. They violated the local equivalent of the salary cap, and did multiple other things beyond that, and did additional major norm violations - for instance teams usually comply with investigations and have even self-reported before. Manchester went kicking and screaming the whole way and was probably doing the same stuff outside of the window that's been "proven."

It's really really bad.

The official statement indicates some similarities to the Clippers situation.

The independent Commission found that Manchester City arranged ‘sham’ commercial deals with a number of its sponsors during the period, which were part of a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees. The remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club. As part of the scheme, further ‘sham’ arrangements, funded by ADUG, were entered into to enable the club to record lower operating expenses than it actually incurred, as well as a ‘sham’ circular arrangement with Fordham, an entity that purchased the club’s players’ image rights, that was funded by ADUG.

The purpose of these schemes was found to have been to artificially inflate the club’s revenues, and reduce its costs, by more than £900 million during the affected period, to appear to comply with financial rules. The consequence of this, as the Commission found, was that the club filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators. The Commission concluded that ‘by its conduct the club clearly intended to circumvent the PL Rules‘.

As a result, Manchester City failed to accurately report its income and expenditure for the purposes of the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules and UEFA’s Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Rules. The Commission found that, had all of the relevant agreements been reported accurately in the club’s accounts, it would have been in breach of both the League’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount.

In addition, during the course of the four-year investigation conducted by the Premier League, the club committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and utmost good faith towards the League. The Commission concluded that the club had ‘made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the PL investigation’.

How likely is it that similar things were happening at other big clubs? What made MCFC so special that they could get away with it for so long?

There were plenty of similar things happening. The rules were created and strengthened throughout the years partly because of the drunken spending of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich while he co-owned Chelsea. There were other teams that were found guilty as well after the rules are in place, most recently Everton and Nottingham Forest. The difference is that it was in the open and they weren't denying it but simply different interpretation of the rules. They also didn't fight the EPL every step of the way.

A.1. Everton was arguing that their stadium loan interest payments counts as infrastructure investment while EPL counts it as operating expenses.

A.2. Nottingham Forest delayed selling a player until outside the accounting window because they knew other teams were underpaying (because they knew Nottingham Forest was under pressure to balance their books). Nottingham was arguing that they might not be following the letter of the law (selling and balancing books on time) but they certainly were following the spirit of the law (ensuring long term sustainability by getting a better price)

Manchester City in contrast had "sham contracts" and was found to deliberately mislead auditors:

An example given of the disguised funding scheme in action: plugging an unexpected shortfall in May 2013.

Less than a week before the end of that 2012-13 financial year the club knew they were £9.9m short of complying with Uefa's financial rules.

In a matter of days, without sponsors even being approached, a number of modified sponsor agreements were generated which increased recorded sponsorship fees to pay bonuses for events that had already taken place and to pay for a US tour.

The feared Uefa FFP shortfall was thus "plugged".

SourceL https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c65y51l3gzq4o#:~:text=An%20example,plugged%22%2E

Not soccer but the NBA finished an investigation into the LA Clippers (owned by former Microsoft Exec Steve Ballmer of Developers! infamy) doing something similar. Avoiding their salary cap via sham endorsements funded by the team acquiring do nothing services. Ownership has to be pretty rich to want to pay way over the salary cap, so you're probably not going to see NFL teams owned by founding families doing it, but I'd guess every sport with a cap and super rich owners probably has one fudging the cap at least a littlem.

Australian sports has had a bunch of medium scandals for salary cap avoidance, though NRL and AFL salary caps are about 10m USD each so there's a lot more effort to squeeze relatively paltry sums

The act of spending too much money for otherwise legitimate purposes seems to be a non-central example of "cheating" in sports. I thought it would be match fixing, doping. Not about bureacuratic violations nothing to do with the actual matches.

Not about bureacuratic violations nothing to do with the actual matches.

The bureaucratic violations do affect the matches though, because City were able to field consistently stronger and deeper squads than other teams because of it. People often commented that Manchester City's bench players might be able to win the League on their own.

Also, one might wonder whether an organization that was so willing to cheat so extensively on the bureaucratic side of things might have tried their hand at other methods... For example, the UAE government certainly did like to pay Premier League referees (who do not make that much money given they are officiating for the most valuable sports league in the world) very handsome sums to ref single games in the UAE. Not to mention that the coach for most of this time, Pep Guardiala, was convicted of doping as a player and has a long history of credible accusations of the same as a manager.

Also, one might wonder whether an organization that was so willing to cheat so extensively on the bureaucratic side of things might have tried their hand at other methods...

Pep Guardiola is nicknamed PED Guardiola for a reason - most notably, when he failed his doping test as a player, he blamed his doctor (he was acquitted on the grounds that some people just naturally test positive for nandrolone, so we really can't know if he was doping). Then, once he was a coach at Barcelona, he hired that same doctor...

"Buying your titles" is an old accusation and old traditional scandal. Nice to see a modern club going back to the roots of the game and it's not a sex scandal this time! As ever, Roy Keane has an opinion on this 😁

More seriously, certain clubs having insane amounts of money is why UEFA introduced the fair play/financial regulations in the first place. If you can buy all the best players and scoop other clubs, then it's no longer a (sort of) fair game anymore.

As ever, Roy Keane has an opinion on this

To provide some color for others, there is a bit of a grudge between Roy Keane and the father of Erling Haaland (foremost current star player of MCFC) which culminated in an infamous career-ending tackle to Haaland senior.

I don’t really care because soccer is dumb but it would be like one team in the NFL gets to play without a salary cap. Sure seems like massive competitive advantage.

Yes, this is a foundational question whether you're a neutral observer or the most hardcore of soccer fans when approaching this case. The actual sporting on the field is still pure and and there's no sporting cheating there. But there is no doubt these "bureaucratic violations" has effects on the field. Other clubs, in compliance with the rules, had to sell players, even important ones. MCFC driving up wages of players, forcing clubs to also up their own player wages, but since they're in compliance with the rules, MCFC obviously has an advantage. MCFC players and coaches can talk all they want about no actual sporting cheating occurred and current consensus is it's true their victories and losses on the field were earned. But in the universe where MCFC complied with the rules, no such team of players and coaches would have even existed to earn those victories and losses. The rules may not be right, but when everyone complied with it, at least the rules would be fair. By shirking the rules, MCFC definitively got an "unfair advantage", and that's why "financial doping" as a term was introduced.

The bureaucratic violations are important because most leagues benefit from having parity and stable ownership. Stable ownership helps fans build tribal loyalties to their team. This boost long term revenue. Parity means more competitive matches which means fans are willing to pay more to see those games. The ecosystem of professional system benefits players because higher revenue means higher salaries and benefits owners because they make more money. Fans benefiting by having a better product to watch.

IMO there is a subset of owners willing to take large losses because the money doesn’t matter and their own fandom is fun. Mark Cuban said he had negative fcd on the Mavs and he’s not a rich guy compared to other owners. Ballmer also apparently cheated with the Clippers. He’s rich enough that if he wanted to he could break the other owners by subsidizing losses with his other wealth.

Best I can tell with a potential exception of the NFL most pro sports teams lose money every year. The owners are getting rich because sports team are being valued like pieces of art with a limited supply so the franchise values are going up.

Yeah parity is very important to the long-run success of a league. Nobody cares about "Ligue 1 McDonald's", or Bayern winning the Bundesliga, or La Liga matches outside of the Big 2.5 teams there, but the Premier League has become the global leader by far in revenue in large part because it's consistently dramatic and unpredictable. Unquestioned dominance by a single big-money team hurts the league in the long run even more than it hurts fans of other teams in the short term.

Sports economics can get interesting.

Why does every league restrict free agency until age 26/27?

It’s the median age. You can get the union to approve a deal that limits young players salaries if that means more money goes to the older players and the convenient age to get the majority or 51% is the median age.

Why is baseball the only league without a salary cap? Revenue is dominated by local revenue far more than other leagues and not national revenue. It’s much harder to share local revenue since revenue sharing % effectively act like tax and going much above 50% revenue sharing of local revenue would discourage revenue maximizing at the local level.

Why does every league restrict free agency until age 26/27?

Do you mean 16/17? In football (soccer), this was settled by the Bosman ruling in 1995, in an EU court verdict that was then extended to British law, but youth players are covered by different rules intended to protect underage workers.

It’s the median age. You can get the union to approve a deal that limits young players salaries if that means more money goes to the older players and the convenient age to get the majority or 51% is the median age.

I can believe this is how it works in a more cartelized system like the US. Every other cartelized profession is either there or headed in that direction, just ask a lawyer or a doctor.

I am talking US

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