Why now is absolutely the time to question Manchester City’s finances

Mo Farah competed in the London Marathon last month at the end of a week in which a storm of astonishing news had raged. It began as a row between Farah and long-distance running legend Haile Gebrselassie about the British runner’s stay in the latter’s hotel, but the angle of the story turned towards doping after it was claimed by Gebrselassie that Jama Aden, a coach involved in a major doping investigation from whom Farah has distanced himself, was refused entry to said hotel.

What happened when the race finished is captured in a video online. Farah is brought over to speak to assembled journalists and, after a couple of softball warm-up questions, he is forced to answer the serious allegations levelled against him – that he had lied about the last time he saw a coach wanted by Interpol and Spanish police – by the Daily Mail’s athletics correspondent, Riath Al-Samarrai. Farah bristles. “Let’s not talk about it,” he says. He tries to turn the conversation back to the race.

He is pushed on it and asked the very last time he saw Aden, but hides behind a press officer saying “let’s talk about the racing” and another journalist asking about pacing. A minute later, Al-Samarrai goes back again. “When was the last time you had any kind of contact with Jama Aden?” Farah looks awkward, but responds: “I haven’t had any contact since 2016.”

Football’s strange relationship to cheating

"Are you accusing me?"

Man City boss Pep Guardiola was left shocked by a question relating to Financial Fair Play after his side's #FACupFinal win over Watford. pic.twitter.com/Tu9uVV0vbK

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) May 19, 2019

Whenever athletes are caught up in any kind of scandal, the scrutiny they face is intense. Yet football seems to have a markedly different relationship to allegations of cheating.

When the Associated Press’s Rob Harris asked two questions to Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola in the press conference following their FA Cup final win against Watford, it met with an altogether different reaction.

Remember, like Farah and the marathon, the preceding week had been filled with major news; in this instance that City were facing a season-long ban from the Champions League. Harris first asked about the impending conclusion of Uefa’s investigation and received a fairly routine response. Then he asked a second one, questioning whether Guardiola had been paid a separate fee by City to deceptively reduce the club’s wage bill, as has been alleged happened with his predecessor, Roberto Mancini.

Guardiola was furious. “Do you know the question you’re asking me?” he said. “Did I receive money for another situation, right now, today? Do you think I deserve to have this type of question, the day we won the treble, did I receive money? Are you accusing me of receiving money?”

Striking a balance

Put aside, for a moment, the fact that Guardiola didn’t answer the question. Several journalists emailed City back in November when leaked emails were reported by Der Spiegel about the alleged payments to Mancini, but the questions were not answered properly then, either.

Covering sport, a balance has to be struck between recording the action and reporting the news. Would Guardiola prefer he be asked about Uefa’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) investigation in every press conference until the outcome? Or the Premier League’s probe into financial regulations, academy player recruitment and third-party ownership? Or the Football Association’s look into their signing of Jadon Sancho? Or Fifa’s investigation into allegations they broke third-party ownership rules? With roughly three games per week with a pre- and post-match press conference, that’s six press conferences per week.

Yes, when City have steamrollered an FA Cup final to record a never-before-seen domestic treble, it is absolutely the time for analysis of how they have done it, however uncomfortable their off-field affairs, and questions can particularly be asked at the end of a week in which they have been part of a major news story.

Drug cheats or folk heroes?

If there were four separate investigations into Farah from four athletics bodies, he would barely be able to leave the house without being asked about it.

Different sports have different attitudes to alleged cheating, and football is not alone in its desensitisation to it. In boxing, for example, it’s largely OK, too. The career of Tyson Fury, who denied intentionally taking a banned steroid but accepted a two-year ban for it, could have been over by now, but instead he is considered some kind of folk hero.

Justin Gatlin, previously banned for drugs violations, is forever referred to as a drugs cheat, however. Athletics catches more cheats than ever – but is that because it has more cheats or simply because they make more effort to catch them?

Golf, too, is painstakingly self-policed: a pro can be hidden in trees, with no cameras in sight and where not even the caddie can see, but if the ball is accidentally disturbed a player will call a penalty on themselves and take a one or two-stroke punishment.

Does football want to clean itself up?

But cheating is ingrained in football, from top to bottom: from the mass corruption of Fifa to the children on Sunday league pitches emulating their heroes by diving and writhing around on the floor, feigning injury.

“Sometimes we forget how dirty this industry is,” Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, told the New York Times on Monday. Uefa, at least, appears to be taking a lead in the clean-up.

For the most part, though, it’s as if those in charge of the world’s most lucrative sporting product don’t actually want to catch the cheats. In which case, it’s imperative that journalists hold them to account.