Why Impassioned Defense From Man City Opponents Shouldn’t Be Surprising

If Manchester City could count on support from any club at this time, it was always likely to be Paris Saint-Germain and their manager Luis Enrique.

In 2011, PSG were the subject of a similar takeover. For Abu Dhabi, swap in Qatar. Both clubs were fined by UEFA back in 2014 over breaches of financial rules—the reason City fans have spent more than a decade booing and jeering the Champions League anthem.

In Enrique, PSG also have a manager who has been close friends with Pep Guardiola for a long time. Although they lined up on opposite sides of the Clásico divide in the early 1990s, the pair were colleagues on Spain’s Olympic roster on home soil in 1992.

They graduated to the senior national team around the same time and later became club colleagues in 1996 when Enrique controversially swapped Real Madrid for Barcelona as an early beneficiary of the new Bosman ruling. Enrique managed Barcelona B when Guardiola was in charge of the first team and took over the main job himself from 2014 onwards.

Enrique was naturally asked for his opinion on the Premier League’s guilty verdict hanging over Manchester City before the teams meet on the field in the Champions League on Wednesday—Guardiola is expected to attend for the first time since stepping down as manager in May.

The PSG boss expressed “hope” that “everything works out well” for this week’s opponent.

‘Speaking Only About Soccer’

Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique — Luis Enrique values the soccer his friend had Man City play. | QUIQUE GARCIA/AFP/Getty Images

Enrique is seemingly willing to look past almost a decade of financial cheating that built a platform from which the club later dominated English soccer and even conquered Europe, because of the way his friend set up a team of expensively assembled stars to play.

As a minimum, he doesn’t want to see trophies being stripped.

“We just have to wait and see what the final decision will be,” he said. “I hope everything works out well for Manchester City because I think what they have done on the pitch has been incredible over the last few years and they certainly deserved to win on the pitch all the trophies they have won. Now we have to wait to see what the authorities decide.”

City have lodged an appeal against the guilty verdict reached by an independent panel following a multi-year Premier League investigation relating to the period 2009–2018.

"The first thing that you hear, it is a surprise, but we need to respect the process and wait for the final decision,” Enrique admitted. “The authorities are responsible for making these decisions.

“But, speaking only about football, they deserved those trophies. I love their football. Beyond that, we have to wait for the decision. The trophies you win on the pitch remain on the pitch. They deserved to win that and I hope they can avoid the sanction. But we have to wait.”

Man City Stuck in Position of Uncertainty

Enzo Maresca instructs players during Man City training — Man City have to keep playing as if things were normal. | Oli SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

The soccer calendar doesn’t stop because Manchester City have been found guilty of cheating the system to artificially inflate spending power but won’t be hit with formal sanctions until the appeal process is concluded. Other appeals to higher bodies could follow if, come late January when the initial appeal verdict is due, City are still found guilty.

City could face wide-ranging punishments for years of orchestrated cheating, from a huge fine, to both retrospective and forward-looking points deductions.

In the meantime, they have to keep playing, not knowing what or when the end result will be—or how any sanction might be applied if it comes to that point.

City emerged as rampant victors over Liverpool in the Premier League last weekend, a scene dominated by joyous defiance from the fans revelling in the role of pantomime villain.

“We are very good at focusing on our work and being happy whenever we come to work. Our minds are only on that. These are the things we can control and that we have always enjoyed doing so much,” Rúben Dias said this week. “We have complete confidence in the club.”

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