Mancini, 115 Charges and Four Days a Year: Which Hand Did Manchester City Sign With?

A consultancy contract paying 2.03 million euros for four days of work per year. The signatory was Roberto Mancini. The payer was Manchester City. The timing: while Mancini was still sitting in the manager's chair at that very club.

Fifteen years later, at Italy's Coverciano training centre, Mancini told the press: "I don't think Manchester City were found guilty, quite the opposite. It's not a problem that concerns me, and it isn't anything new. Manchester City are not guilty, and on the double contract it isn't my problem, theirs if anything."

I have followed Manchester City since the night of 13 May 2026, when Sergio Agüero scored at 93:20 against Queens Park Rangers and turned a club that had been English football's punchline into Premier League champions for the first time in 44 years. I sat in front of a screen in Osaka and screamed loud enough that the neighbours knocked on my door. I believed, like millions of others, that this was the fairy tale of modern football.

Fourteen years later, I look back at that fairy tale and ask myself: what did we miss while we were screaming with joy?

The answer lies in a stamp, a signature, and four working days a year.

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I declared war on defensive football back in 2026, and no one has yet been brave enough to accept the challenge. But there is something I hate more than defensive football: accountancy football. The game played not on grass but on a balance sheet, where the defenders are lawyers, the strikers are agents, and the fans are the last people to learn the score.

The Manchester City case is the biggest fixture of that kind of football in this decade.

Context: 115 charges and a nine-year window

In February 2026, the Premier League formally issued 115 charges against Manchester City. The substance concerned financial rule breaches spanning roughly nine years, from the 2026/10 season to 2026/18. Within that window sit Mancini's four years in charge, from December 2026 to May 2026.

The most striking name in the file is not a player but a side contract. According to a Der Spiegel investigation published in 2026, Mancini received a standard salary of 1.75 million euros a year from Manchester City, plus a further 2.03 million euros from a second agreement. That second agreement was reportedly signed with Al-Jazira, a club based in Abu Dhabi, under the guise of a consultancy deal. The fee: 2.03 million euros. The workload: four days a year.

Four days.

I have worked as a sports podcast host in Japan for nearly a decade. I know what a genuine consultancy contract looks like. I hold content consultancy deals with platforms, and I pay for them with time, with brainpower, with crackling Zoom calls at two in the morning. Four days a year for 2.03 million euros is not consultancy. It is a cash flow dressed in the correct legal form.

The problem for Manchester City does not lie in how much they paid. It lies in whom they paid, through which channel, and whether that channel was ever declared.

What nobody wants to say out loud: the owner-client structure

Put the map on the table.

Manchester City are owned by Abu Dhabi United Group, an investment vehicle with direct ties to the Abu Dhabi royal family. Al-Jazira is a football club in Abu Dhabi. Etihad Airways, City's shirt sponsor for years, is the national airline of Abu Dhabi. City Football Group, the parent company, has expanded its ecosystem worldwide, from New York City FC to Melbourne City, from Yokohama F. Marinos to Girona.

Do you see the wiring?

In the language of football finance, this is called a "related party". Transactions between related parties must be valued at fair value. That is the root of the whole story.

When a club signs a sponsorship deal with a company that shares its owner, the money on the contract is no longer a market price. It is equity capital disguised as commercial revenue. And in football, commercial revenue is what determines how much you are permitted to spend under financial fair play.

That is why the Mancini affair matters more than its surface suggests.

A 2.03 million euro consultancy contract for four days of work, if signed with a genuinely independent company, is merely a foolish business decision. If signed with a related party, it becomes a mesh in a system of money out and money in designed to massage the accounts. Cash leaves Manchester City's books as an expense, then lands in a manager's pocket in a form that is not salary. The result: the wage bill on paper sits lower than reality.

I once said on my podcast: "The transfer market is the saddest play on the sporting stage, where owners trade money for cowardice." I will amend one word. Owners do not only trade money for cowardice. They trade money for a prettier set of accounts.

Why Mancini is technically right and morally wrong

Read Mancini's statement carefully and two layers emerge.

The first is legal. Mancini says: "It's not a problem that concerns me." Technically, he is correct. The Premier League's charges target Manchester City, not Roberto Mancini. He is not a defendant. He did not sign the financial statements. He was not responsible for the filings to the Premier League. That responsibility belongs to the club's leadership, the people who signed the reports across nine years.

The second layer is moral. And here Mancini's words become hard to hear.

Because Mancini is one of only two people on the planet who knows the full detail of that second contract. He knows what he did during those four days a year. He knows whether he genuinely advised Al-Jazira. He knows what that 2.03 million euros actually was.

When a man holds enough information to clarify a matter but chooses to say "it isn't my problem," that is not a declaration of innocence. It is a declaration of self-preservation.

And I understand why Mancini had to say it. At that moment he was Italy's head coach. He was preparing for a crucial international fixture on Monday. He could not let a legal file in England distract the dressing room. Elite football does not permit honesty.

But one phrase in his answer made me stop: "Manchester City are not guilty."

Not "I don't know." Not "I have no opinion." A verdict. Mancini issued a verdict on a case in which he is himself a witness, before the independent panel issued its own.

That is what I call delegated innocence. You defend the people who paid you, and you call it the truth.

What is really on trial

I have spent years reading the financial reports of European clubs, not because I enjoy letterheads, but because I want to know who actually pays for this sport.

In England, financial fair play does not work like it does in Europe. The Premier League has its Profitability and Sustainability Rules. In short: a club may lose a maximum of 105 million pounds over three years, with certain exceptions.

The easiest way to reduce losses is to increase revenue. And the easiest way to increase revenue is to sign another sponsorship deal. If you have a sister company willing to pay above market rate, you have a legal money-printing machine on paper.

The Premier League recognised this long ago. In 2026 it introduced rules on Associated Party Transactions, forcing such deals to be assessed at fair value.

And in 2026, Manchester City sued the Premier League itself over those rules. A club suing its own league because the league wants to know where the club's money comes from.

Let me say this plainly.

If you have to sue someone to avoid answering a simple question, then the question is the right one.

I am not judging by emotion. I am judging by structure. A related party paying a manager through a third channel, with none of that money appearing in the official wage bill. If this is accepted, then every club owned by a multinational conglomerate can do the same. Newcastle are owned by a Saudi investment fund. Paris Saint-Germain are owned by Qatar. Once City win this file, the rules change for everyone.

That is why I say the 115 charges are the most important case in modern football history. Not because of Manchester City. Because of the system behind them.

Why Mancini should have stayed silent, and why he did not

I will tell you a personal story.

In 2026 I started work at the Newark Advertiser, a small local paper. I wrote about school football, about part-time coaches, about fathers waking their sons at five in the morning. There were no consultancy contracts there. Just people doing real work, being paid real money, signing contracts they could actually read.

At football's highest level, everything is designed so that ordinary people cannot read it.

That is why when Mancini says "it isn't my problem," I do not see an innocent manager. I see a system working exactly as designed. A man signing a contract he himself describes as unrelated to him. A club paying money through a channel no one can audit. A league pursuing evidence for years without reaching a clear verdict.

And in the middle of that mess sit the fans, paying 60 pounds for a ticket to watch a match whose financial outcome may not reflect the true strength of either team.

I have spoken about VAR many times on the podcast. My position has not changed: in football, the fans are the last to know the truth. If there were VAR for balance sheets, the big screen at the Etihad would have been replaying those four working days for years.

The trap of selective naivety

Manchester City supporters have an argument worth hearing: every big club uses financial leverage; punishing one team while others do the same is unfair.

I agree with half of it.

The unfairness is real. But it is not proof of innocence. It is proof that the rules are being applied unevenly, and if that is true, the only correct outcome is to apply the rules to everyone, not to abandon them for everyone.

There is a dangerous logic inside the "everyone does it" argument. If everyone does it, then the child at school should cheat too, because the kid at the next desk cheats. We do not teach our children that. We should not accept it in the greatest sport on earth.

What I want to see is not Manchester City torn down. I want to see a rule so clear that no club can sidestep it with paperwork. A system where side contracts are impossible, where every cash flow passes through a single pipe, where club accounts are open to the regulator, and where sanctions arrive within a single season.

That was the promise I made when I declared war on defensive football. I now declare war on accountancy football. And I am ready to lose if I am wrong.

Manchester City's response: the manifesto of an empire

That afternoon, Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak issued a strong statement on the club's official website.

He said: "While some people have been quick to reach their own conclusions, and there is so much noise swirling around us, nothing has changed. We have faced challenges together before and have prevailed. There remain many who want to undermine the momentum of our Club. We will not give them that opportunity."

Reading that, I noticed something interesting about the language.

He did not say Manchester City committed no breach. He said nothing has changed. He did not say the charges are false. He said many people want to undermine the club. That is the language of an empire in defensive posture, not the language of a party proving its innocence.

And he did not mention the number 115. He did not mention the double contract. He did not mention the four working days.

When a club talks about "noise" rather than evidence, it is changing the subject. That is classic communications technique: when you cannot deny the data, deny the motives of whoever produced it.

I have spent more than fifty years reporting on football. I have heard hundreds of statements like this.

And I will tell you what I have learned: when an organisation uses the word "innocent" repeatedly in a short statement, it is usually talking to itself more than to the public.

The most worrying thing is not Mancini. It is time.

The 115 charges were announced in February 2026. By the time Mancini made his remarks, proceedings had still not reached a conclusion. Hearings dragged on, both sides made arguments, and the final verdict remained in the future.

Meanwhile, every season that passed, more money flowed in. Every transfer window brought more contracts signed. Every match added another win to the record column.

That is the problem with any slow judicial system. You may be about to be convicted, but you can still win trophies while you wait.

And that waiting period is the most important period in the football business, because it is when the club's commercial value rises, sponsorship deals are renewed, and a new generation of fans grows up knowing nothing about the investigations.

That is what worries me most. Not Mancini. Not 2.03 million euros.

But that a generation of fans may grow up believing every title is the pure product of talent.

The counter-intuitive angle: perhaps both sides are telling the truth, and that is the problem

Now to the part where I could be wrong.

Hypothesis one: Mancini genuinely knew nothing about the broader financial structure. He was a manager. He was handed a document, told it was a lawful consultancy arrangement with a club in Abu Dhabi, and he signed. Football managers are not trained to read balance sheets. If that is true, Mancini is a witness, not an accomplice.

Hypothesis two: Manchester City genuinely believe they are innocent. During that era they cooperated with UEFA through a period of investigation, took the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and won. In 2026 they secured a favourable ruling against UEFA after a two-year European ban was overturned. If you have won once, you believe you will win again. That belief is not a crime.

Hypothesis three, and the one I consider most likely: both sides are being honest within the limits of what they know, and the limits themselves are what got sold.

Mancini does not know the overall structure. Manchester City do not regard their contracts as unlawful, because they were drafted by the best lawyers. And in a system of rules so complex that even the people who write them are unsure how to apply them, so-called innocence can be a technical state rather than a moral one.

That is the most uncomfortable part of this whole story. You do not need to lie to get past financial fair play. You only need better lawyers than the people writing the rules.

And I may be wrong. I fully accept that. If an independent panel ultimately confirms Manchester City's innocence, I will say on my podcast: this old man who shoots from the hip got it wrong, and I will tell that story in the next episode.

I am 68. I do not need to chase trends; I created them and left them behind. But I have never needed to be right all the time. I only need to be honest all the time.

What I will be watching in the coming months

I am not watching statements. I am watching three things.

First, the hearing schedule. If proceedings speed up, pressure is shifting from the press room to the courtroom. If they are delayed again, time is working for the club.

Second, restructuring of sponsorship deals. If City Football Group is reorganising its related-party arrangements, that signals preparation for a stricter legal environment. I have tracked this kind of move many times. Clubs that truly believe they are innocent do not change structures. Clubs that know they carry risk do.

Third, the other clubs. If this file ends with a light sanction, I will expect the next wave of strange consultancy deals in the Premier League. The nature of a market is to copy what succeeds. If City walk away, there will be more four-day contracts.

And fourth, no less important: I will be watching Mancini. Not because of Italy, but because he will have to answer this question again. Football never lets an unfinished story go.

On the fact that silence is also an action

I think about the Japanese fans I met in 2026, after Japan versus Belgium, when I said on air that Nishino's failure to substitute at the 70th minute was suicide. They were angry. They said I was disrespectful to a legend. But that night, in a small bar in Osaka, a man of about fifty told me: "You were right, but you said it too early."

I answered: "I was right, and I said it at the right time."

I tell that story because I believe in one principle: in football, silence is not neutral. When you stay silent about an opaque financial structure, you are protecting it. When you stay silent about a manager who says 2.03 million euros for four days of work is "not my problem," you are endorsing a game that only people with good lawyers can read.

And if the ending of this whole story is fans continuing to buy tickets, buy shirts, watch adverts, while more four-day contracts are signed in some office somewhere, then Mancini was right.

It is not his problem. It is ours.

The crux: what football is actually losing

There is something I have not said throughout this piece, and I want to say it now.

What football is losing is not money. What football is losing is the ability to trust.

When a child in Vietnam, in Japan, anywhere, watches a match and wonders whether the winning team truly deserved to win, the sport has lost a match nobody recorded in the table. When a supporter has to check financial statements before believing in a title, football has lost the thing that separates it from every other branch of entertainment.

I accept that football is a business. I accept that money is part of the game. But there is a line between using money to build a team and using money to rewrite that team's rulebook.

Modern football is suffocating under people so afraid of losing that they have forgotten how to win. Manchester City have never feared losing on grass. They fear losing in the boardroom. And that is the saddest part of this entire story.

Takeaway: a verifiable prediction

I will stake my honour on three predictions.

Prediction one: the 115 charges will end with financial sanctions and transfer restrictions, not with Manchester City being expelled from the Premier League. The reason is simple: expelling the league's most commercially valuable club is a decision no governing body wants to sign.

Prediction two: Roberto Mancini will never provide a detailed explanation of those four working days a year. Not because he cannot. Because no one has enough power to compel him to.

Prediction three: within two years, the Premier League will issue further related-party transaction rules, and at least one other club will fall under scrutiny. The nature of an incomplete system is that it keeps producing more offenders.

And if I am wrong, I will sit down, switch on the microphone, and tell you about the time this old man shot from the hip.

Lesson from 2026: never justify failure when the audience needs a punch in the face. I threw a punch. I punched a contract, not a person. And I am still standing here, waiting to see whether it lands.

As for you, the reader who made it to this last line, answer me one question: if one day you discovered that a title you wept over was built on a four-day contract, what would you do with the memory?