Nasser al-Khelaifi sat in Copenhagen last month and delivered a keynote speech about the future of European football governance, with Manchester City's chief executive Ferran Soriano apparently sat in the front row, presumably wondering if he'd misread the room. Soriano slipped away from the television cameras shortly after. It was a moment that tells you almost everything about where these two clubs now stand: PSG's chairman commanding the floor at a general assembly of European Football Clubs, City's top executive quietly retreating from the frame. This was not some quirk of scheduling. It was the visible result of two clubs facing the same crossroads roughly a decade ago and making fundamentally different choices. Wednesday's Champions League fixture at the Etihad is a reminder of exactly what that fork in the road cost, or saved, depending on which boardroom you're sitting in.
The Same Starting Point
Let's be clear about the scale of what both clubs were dealing with back in 2014, because context matters enormously here. When Uefa's investigators went through the books, they found that between 2011 and 2013, at a time when the maximum permitted loss for European clubs was €45m, PSG had recorded a deficit of €218m and City had run one of €188m. Those are not modest overruns. Those are numbers that dwarf anything that came after. When people talk about modern financial fair play controversies, they rarely reckon properly with the baseline: the two clubs at the centre of Wednesday's match were the original, biggest offenders, by some distance.
Both clubs were offered, and accepted, settlement agreements rather than going through a full disciplinary process. The terms that followed, viewed in retrospect, look remarkably soft. Each club paid a financial penalty of €20m, faced restrictions on their spending in subsequent seasons, and were told they would be liable for a further €40m if they broke the terms of their agreements. Considering the scale of what was uncovered, the leniency of those terms would become significant later, and not just in terms of what the settlements meant for the clubs. They became significant for what they revealed about the process itself.
The Infantino Question
A 2018 investigation by the German outlet Der Spiegel made allegations that cast a long shadow over those 2014 settlements. The outlet reported that Gianni Infantino, at the time Uefa's general secretary and now Fifa's president, had allegedly played a central role in ensuring both clubs avoided harsher penalties. The claim was that he had held secret talks with officials from both clubs, shared confidential materials, and suggested compromises he had no authority to propose. Infantino's response was that his role involved having discussions and exchanging documents, and that he had conducted himself professionally and in the interests of football.
But the detail that sticks is the email Der Spiegel published, reportedly sent from Infantino to City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak on 2 May 2014, in which Infantino outlined a proposed settlement and told al-Mubarak: "You will see that I've sometimes chosen a wording which 'looks' more 'strong'... Please read the document with this spirit." It does not take a particularly cynical reading to understand the implication. Whatever the full truth of what happened, those settlements were agreed that month, not before the head of Uefa's investigatory chamber, Brian Quinn, a former senior Bank of England official, resigned over reports that he believed the terms were too lenient.
Different Paths, Different Positions
PSG's subsequent relationship with Uefa's financial rules has not been entirely clean. They were fined a further €10m in 2022 for failing to comply with regulations since 2018, with another €50m suspended. But al-Khelaifi's approach throughout has been diplomatic, in the most calculated sense of that word. He embedded himself in the institutions. He made himself useful. He became chair of the European Football Clubs association, and PSG became joint shareholders with Uefa in the commercial company that runs the Champions League. You might find that kind of institutional maneuvering distasteful. It is, however, undeniably effective.
City's post-settlement history reads very differently. In 2020, Uefa's investigatory chamber found the club had "overstated its sponsorship revenue" between 2012 and 2016 and handed them a two-year Champions League ban. City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which overturned the ban, finding that most of the alleged breaches were either not proven or time-barred. Then, just weeks ago, a Premier League independent commission found that between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons, City had been "significantly in breach" of Uefa's spending limits and had "filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances." City have appealed against that verdict. The contrast in institutional standing between the two clubs could not be starker, and [the Premier League's financial governance battles](/uprise/football/the-premier-league-so-far-draws-underperforming-xg-and-other) are not getting simpler.
The Establishment and the Insurgents
Al-Khelaifi arriving at the Etihad on Wednesday represents something very deliberate. He is the face of European football's commercial establishment. He sits at the top table, shapes policy, and delivers speeches in Copenhagen about good governance with apparent sincerity, even aiming barbs at Infantino himself over the topic, which, given their alleged history, is an almost audacious piece of positioning. PSG have made themselves indispensable to the machine rather than fighting it, and the machine has rewarded them accordingly.
City, by contrast, are the insurgents. They have won on the pitch at the highest level and they continue to contest every adverse ruling through the courts and appeals processes available to them. There is a version of this where you read City's stance as principled, as a refusal to accept rules that were inconsistently applied and overseen by officials with potential conflicts of interest. The Der Spiegel reporting on Infantino's alleged role, and Quinn's reported resignation over settlement terms, give that position at least some air to breathe. There is another version, of course, where City's approach has simply left them institutionally isolated and perpetually embattled, with no allies in the corridors where these things get decided. [How Portugal treated whistleblower Rui Pinto](/uprise/football/portuguese-authorities-took-83-days-to-tell-rui-pinto-his) reminds us that football's institutions are rarely kind to those who resist them.
What City Fans Are Left Thinking
For supporters at the Etihad on Wednesday, it will be the familiar soundtrack: the Champions League anthem drowned out by coordinated booing, a long-running act of defiance against Uefa that has become as much a part of the matchday ritual as anything on the pitch. That hostility is understandable given the history. But beneath it, some supporters will be sitting with a harder question. Could Khaldoon al-Mubarak have played it differently? Could Abu Dhabi's money and influence have bought its way into the establishment rather than into an ongoing conflict with it?
The PSG model suggests the answer is yes, though it requires accepting something uncomfortable: that the establishment's embrace is available for purchase, but only if you're willing to play by its internal rules rather than fighting its external ones. Al-Khelaifi understood that. Whether he was right to is a separate question, one that touches on what legitimate governance in football actually looks like, and whether institutions like Uefa are capable of delivering it. Uefa declared in April 2017 that both clubs had fully complied with their 2014 settlement requirements. Whether City actually did remains, to put it carefully, contested.
The Verdict
Two clubs, same origin, same scrutiny, same initial outcome. One is now a pillar of European football's commercial and political structure. The other is engaged in an appeal against the most serious financial misconduct verdict in Premier League history. The gap between those positions is not just about money, or legal strategy, or even guilt and innocence. It is about institutional fluency, about understanding that football's governing bodies are political organisms as much as regulatory ones, and that the most effective response to their power is often to join it rather than challenge it. City chose the fight. PSG chose the table. On Wednesday evening they'll share a pitch, but they are playing entirely different games.