Agüer... oh*

* Did it really happen?

Without integrity, without honesty, it’s not a sport at all

When, or if, the club recovers from the reputational damage that the independent panel’s judgment brought upon it, the achievements of the past 15 years will remain tainted

If a shine survives in the collective memory, so does a stain. The judgment has likely already been made

27 Sep 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport

Rory Smith

It is, as they say, the moments that matter. Outside the Etihad Stadium there is a statue immortalising Manchester City’s ultimate moment: a topless Sergio Agüero, cast in galvanised steel, whirling away after scoring the goal that sealed the first of the club’s eight Premier League titles. Inside, there is a bar named for it, too – 93:20, the timestamp of the goal etched on the club’s soul.AlamyLost in time: The statue of Sergio Agüero outside Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, in tribute to the extra-time goal that gave his team their first Premier League title. A bar at the stadium is named 93:20, after the time at which he scored.

That moment has a resonance outside what was known, in a simpler and more uplifting time, as Eastlands. Every fan of every club knows the Agüero goal. Every fan of every club can hear Martin Tyler’s voice, disbelieving and ecstatic, bellowing his name as the striker peels off his shirt in wild delight and the stands melt and Joe Hart sprints down the pitch.

It is possibly English football’s most iconic goal, rivalled only by Michael Thomas at Anfield in 1989 and Brian Moore declaring: “It’s up for grabs now.”

And it is certainly the definitive Premier League moment, the goal that encapsulates both how the league perceives itself and how it is perceived around the world, the instant which ushered English football into its imperial phase.

There is a line, variously attributed to the historian Tom Holland and the author David Goldblatt, that declares football to be the most popular pastime the world has ever known. It is not, in that characterisation, quite right.

In the past 20 years or so, watching elite football has become the most popular pastime the world has ever known. It is our last shared cultural form, the one thing that has – more or less, anyway – survived the great algorithmic fracturing that has been inflicted on basically everything else. And, for all the significance of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, of Barcelona and Real Madrid, the most popular aspect of the most popular thing the planet has ever seen is the Premier League.

Or, more accurately, it is the Premier League as we have known it since Agüero: the Premier League of Mohamed Salah and Harry Kane, of Mikel Arteta and Jürgen Klopp, of Leicester City and their 5,000-1 title win. But above all, it is the Premier League of Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland, the Premier League of the Centurions and the Fourmidables, the Premier League of Pep Guardiola and

Manchester City. That is English football as it has been consumed, ravenously, across the planet, English football recast as the world’s local league. All of it exists with Manchester City, front and centre, as the game’s great 21st century hegemon, a sleek and smooth vision of the perfect modern superpower. All of it exists downstream of Agüero: the goal and the moment that heralded it all.

Except that now, or as of 2.41pm on Friday afternoon, we know that moment was not real. It happened, of course. It was. But it came about only because – in the eyes of the independent panel that has, for the past two years, been adjudicating 115 charges that City had breached the Premier League’s financial regulations – one team was not playing by the rules.

That accusation may not feel quite as serious, quite as urgent, as those forms of cheating that seem more immediate. It is easier, put simply, to be angry about Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong or even Diego Maradona doping, using drugs to run faster or cycle further or recover quicker, than it is to chastise City for not adhering to some dry regulations that few people have read, even fewer understand, and some suspect maybe should not exist.

But while it may not be as visceral, the effect is the same. The term “financial doping”, as Arsène Wenger once put it, seems to have fallen from fashion, but captures it well: Manchester City were, the panel seems to have found – in all but one case – circumventing rules they themselves had signed up to in order to gain an unfair advantage on everyone else.

In doing so, they compromised the integrity of the league; and as pompous and as old-fashioned as it sounds, without integrity there is very little point in sport. That is why cycling suffered so much in the wake of those drug-soaked years in the 1990s. It is why, even now, nobody is quite sure how much to celebrate what appear to be suspiciously superhuman achievements on the athletics track. If someone is tilting the field, there is not much meaning in victory.

The reality is that – however the process plays out from here, with the sanctions and the appeals and the legal actions – the same will happen to everything that Manchester City have done over the past 15 years. Guardiola’s legacy will remain, of course, the impact he has had on English football, the lessons we have learnt. But the meaning of all he did, all he won: that will change.

It is immaterial, to an extent, whether City are formally stripped of titles or not. Rightly or wrongly, it may even be immaterial if the panel’s findings do not survive an appeals process that, judging by City’s statement on Friday, might involve calling into question the validity of the panel as much as the facts of the case.

It is, after all, the moments that matter. In the hours since the verdict was made public, that has been City’s response: that no legal ruling can deprive them of how the Agüero goal made them feel, or erase their memories of lifting the Premier League title seven times since, or tarnish the wonder engendered by watching David Silva or Vincent Kompany or Rodri play.

That is more than solace. That is true. But by the same token, Friday was a moment, too, one that might – in time – come to be seen as the end of the Premier League’s golden age, the point at which light broke in and we could see, once and for all, quite how much damage had been wrought to this sport, this game, this league by its unquestioning and unrelenting worship of money.

If a shine survives in the collective memory, so does a stain. The judgment of the public, of the fans, has likely already been made; barring some revelation that all of the evidence was fabricated, everything City have done will now be regarded as asterisked, illegitimate, unreal. To many, to most, the trophies on their honour roll will feel the same as the yellow jerseys framed on Lance Armstrong’s wall: less evidence of his triumph, more the spoils of his deceit.

There should be a collective sadness in that, a sense that those Premier League years – 2009 to 2018, inclusive, at the very least – have been taken from us, and that sadness should not exclude City fans; even Noel Gallagher, the occasional Oasis guitarist and fulltime City vox populi, acknowledged that emotion on Friday evening.

Their natural instinct, of course, is to defend their club, the team they love, to want to turn this into a source of defiance. It is in the nature of fandom to want to believe. But they are victims too, here, the ones who have had their memories tarnished.

Manchester City, as an institution, will get the blame, the opprobrium, but these were decisions made by people, an approach conceived and adopted and implemented by individuals. It should be possible to separate the two: to remember those moments, and to wonder why they no longer feel quite as special as they did.

Lost in time: The statue of Sergio Agüero outside Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, 

in tribute to the extra-time goal that gave his team their first Premier League title. 

A bar at the stadium is named 93:20, after the time at which he scored.

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Blackpool stay up, Gerrard’s title: the road not travelled

27 Sep 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport

Xavier Greenwood

The historian Robert Dallek is right to say that in the world of counterfactuals, nothing is certain. But football has always been an almanac of things that could have happened.

In this spirit, The Observer analysed nine seasons of Premier League football, from 2009-10 to 2017-18 inclusive, covering the period of the majority of charges made against Manchester City. By removing City’s results and assuming the same basic set-up of the league in terms of the number of relegation and European places, our analysis has found that clubs have potentially lost out on hundreds of millions of pounds. This explains why a guilty verdict could open a can of worms, with other teams demanding compensation: a whole world can change for want of a nail.

Manchester City won three Premier League titles between 200910 and 2017-18. If their results over this period were annulled, Manchester United would have had two more Premier League titles in 2011-12 and 2017-18, while Liverpool would have won under Brendan Rodgers in the 2013-14 season. In effect, there would have been no Agüero moment, no 100-point season, and Steven Gerrard’s slip would have had no lasting impact. There is not a specific prize fund for the team crowned champions, but the Premier League itself says that there are “likely to be commercial benefits” from winning.

The counterfactuals become even more stark when it comes to the Champions League. Five different teams missed out on qualifying for the play-off or group stages of the competition due to City’s results over the period of the alleged breaches: Tottenham, Everton, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Tottenham might feel particularly aggrieved, having missed out on four occasions in 2010-11, 2011-12, 201213 and 2014-2015. There are also several occasions when teams that would have qualified automatically had to go through play-offs, including Arsenal three times.

Qualifying for Europe brings enormous financial benefits. Every team that makes it to the Champions League group phase currently receives a base payment of more than £16 million, with further bonuses for wins, draws and progress through the knockouts. These payments play a key role in boosting club revenues to help buy new players and reduce the need to sell. Similar incentives exist for qualifying for the Europa League and the Conference League, which earn participating clubs smaller base and bonus payments.

Even the bottom of the Premier League has been affected by permutations set in motion by Manchester City. Blackpool’s only season in the Premier League, 2010-11, ended with relegation on the final day. Without City’s results, they would have finished 16th and survived. Despite parachute payments, their revenue fell from £51.7m to £28.8m in the year after they were relegated. By 2016, they were in League Two.

In truth, every one of the 36 non-City teams that played in the Premier League between 2009-10 and 2017-18 can claim to have been negatively affected by the alleged breaches. Premier League clubs earn merit payments depending on where they finish in a given season. These are distributed on a sliding scale: the team that comes first earns 20 times the basic payment, the team that comes second earns 19 times the payment, and so on down to the foot of the table. Last season, a single share was worth £2.6m. On these payments alone, Premier League clubs could claim to have collectively missed out on hundreds of millions of pounds over the main period covered by the charges. Granted, there are some clubs that actually benefited from the inclusion of City’s results in certain seasons, but other clubs finished as many as three places lower than they otherwise would have.

City’s alleged breaches of the Premier League rules have had a cascading effect on the course of English football, for which clubs will surely try to seek financial redress in the near future. Last year, Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham lodged legal notices that effectively allowed them to reserve the right to claim compensation from City in the event they were found guilty. But for fans and players, the emotional what-ifs will hurt the most. The days that turned sour when they could have been sweet. The lifelong memories that never quite formed in the hippocampus. No amount of redress can heal what has been lost.

On the right, you can see how each season would look if Manchester City were not in the Premier League table for the years affected by the charges. With the comparison of the real-life table, you can work out where each team would have finished and what the financial impact would be.

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Premier League will never be the same again

27 Sep 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport

George Simms

In the days after a seismic event, the hardest thing to comprehend is almost always that nothing will ever be the same. It might only be on a mid-October Sunday afternoon, as long shadows fall over sky-blue players lunging and skipping around Anfield, that we really appreciate how irreversibly the Premier League has changed, quite how damaged it now is, how far it must go to redeem itself.

And perhaps the key point is that the Premier League brought this on itself, unfurled the red carpet to a world it could not comprehend, blinded by greed, by a desire for perpetual growth. This is the logical endpoint of a moral degradation it encouraged, first through Roman Abramovich and later through the UAE and Saudi Arabia, through never meeting a billionaire whose money it wouldn’t take, through playing supplicant to oligarchs and nation states, through hoping the leopards wouldn’t eat their face.

Of course, this verdict was only made possible by Rui Pinto and Football Leaks, by the information being ripped from behind City’s defences by force, even if an extensive investigation followed. This is not a victory for the Premier League’s regulations or diligence or power, but a monument to how little it knows and can control, how much more widespread these breaches could be.

Chelsea were only punished because the new owners had no choice but to self-report – had Abramovich not been forced to sell, what are the chances we would know anything about his regime’s misdeeds? And if City’s executives were comfortable breaching the rules between 2009 and 2018, do we really trust that anything changed in the subsequent eight years? How many other clubs have since bent the rules because they realised their peers were not operating within the same constraints?

Under Premier League rules, City have two weeks to appeal from the announcement of the verdict, and the subsequent process should be completed in less than 12 weeks. Given it has been two years since the initial hearing, given the club’s “let’s drown them in paperwork” approach, this seems highly unlikely. But at least we know it will end there, that appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport – as they did successfully when Uefa ruled they had committed “serious breaches” of their financial fair play regulations between 2012 and 2016 – is not an option.

The longer this goes on, the more matches and memories will be tarnished by it. What if the decision comes in the midst of a grand title battle, comes the day after a late City winner relegates a relative minnow? What if it spills into another season, another asterisk year? The Premier League must re-establish trust in its product and outcomes, reset and reform, but it cannot do this until the constant claims and counter-claims end, until every club feels avenged and sated, has taken their pound of flesh. Any attempt to move on without wide-scale reform of their financial regulations and processes, to pretend this is a problem of the past rather than the present, only invites it to happen again.

Then there’s the stripping and retroactive re-awarding of titles. Who actually wants this, believes it will solve anything, that any celebrations wouldn’t be empty, performative, ultimately demeaning to everyone involved? Nine years after the 2004 Olympics, American shot-putter Adam Nelson was handed a gold medal by a US Olympic Committee official outside a Burger King in Atlanta airport, after the original winner’s doping charge. In 2016 he told the Guardian: “Winning a gold medal should be one of the most uplifting and gratifying moments of your life, but for many years I was left with loss and hurt. It made me angry and bitter.” You can’t rewrite a history this well documented and remembered, this deeply felt. Any attempt to do so will only feel as unnatural as it is.

From City’s perspective, as long as Sheikh Mansour (above) and Khaldoon Al Mubarak endure, so will doubt – refusing to sell is not just selfish but self-harm, further evidence this was never anything more than a vehicle for their own gain. Every favourable refereeing decision towards City will tell one story, every decision against will tell another. In the short term, it might not even be functional: every City match will be drowned in ceaseless outrage by the suspicion that the real game doesn’t involve the 22 players.

There is a reasonable train of thought here that ends with the realisation that we can never trust a sporting product this cash-soaked and corrupted, that we should all just rock up at our local non-league club on Saturday and start afresh, remember what English football should actually sell itself on. But beyond City, beyond the Premier League, this grim affair exposes a broken system, a broken sport drowning in the mess of its own avarice. The Premier League will never be the same. It can’t be.

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City fans were expecting a fall – fatalism stalks us all

27 Sep 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport

Mark Hodkinson

Every day I look up to Colin Bell. While most living room walls are adorned with seascapes and still lifes, a quick scan of ours reveals much of the marvellous midfielder. He is on a poster that came free with Typhoo tea. His gap-toothed smile is framed on a Hartley’s “Football Stars” jam jar lid. He is a small plastic bust on a bookcase, a free gift when my dad bought four gallons of 4-Star from our local petrol station in Moston Lane, Manchester.AlamySimpler times: What would the late, great Colin Bell, pictured in action for City in 1969, have made of all this?

Bell, who died in 2021, is symbolic of “old City” in our living collective memory, along with team-mates Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee, Alan Oakes and others who ran around in shirts of the sweetest blue across a soggy Maine Road pitch. The Kippax cheered and jeered. Helen Turner rang her brass bell in the North Stand. Floodlights wore an overcoat of mist. City lost 2-1. Mike Doyle was sent off.

Back then, City knew their place. Their perennial self-inflicted calamities and decades of dominance by Manchester United had fixed them as plucky and likeable also-rans. They had a fatal fondness for mavericks, Rodney Marsh to Georgi Kinkladze, Barney Daniels to Andy Morrison. Fans knew the score, it was usually a 4-3 win, followed by three defeats and a draw.

This was the City way. Until, in 2008, the Abu Dhabi United Group lifted the club up to the stars. Overnight, the underdog became the overlord and a new City was forged, its new owners and players housed in a recently built, hightech, ultra-modern stadium on a site previously a coal mine heavily bombed in the Second World War.

During the past 18 years, City fans have instinctively anticipated the pendulum swinging from success to failure, honour to ignominy. This fatalism stalks all partisan football supporters, the fear of tomorrow and what it may bring. So, within minutes of news breaking that an independent panel had found City guilty of breaking the vast majority of 115 financial charges, three fellow City-supporting friends contacted me. “Typical City,” said one. “I knew it was all too good to be true,” said another. And, cue the pessimism and night-black humour:

“Do you think Haaland will fancy getting booted up and down dale at Field Mill [home of Mansfield Town] when we’re sent tumbling down the leagues?”

I knew Colin Bell would be mentioned. He has become a touchstone of a past sugared by time, burnished by nostalgia. “What would Colin make of it all?” asked my mate with True Blue tattooed on his forearm. I’ve interviewed numerous footballers, including Bell. They are an unsentimental bunch. They play for a team but, most of all, they play for themselves. “I suppose it’s us fans who will feel it most,” rued True Blue.

Over the next few weeks and months, the legal narrative will shimmy and shift but, whatever the outcome, the club, the fans, will prevail. Those years without trophies and that spell in England’s third tier (1998-99) taught the villagers of Manchester City to be patient and faithful, and generated an authentic communal but pragmatic spirit, which has been passed on to the next generation of fans as a wonky heirloom.

Occasionally I used to catch the acrid odour of weed drifting across the terraces of shivery outposts such as Moss Rose (Macclesfield Town) or Gigg Lane (Bury) and sensed that these were people truly in the moment, happy souls whatever the weather, wherever they be.

Of course, they have feasted on the gilded success of the past 18 years and, naturally, they want more of what they have drunk to every last drop: eight Premier League titles, four FA Cup wins, seven League Cup wins and, at long last, a Uefa Champions League title in 2023. To really appreciate an Erling Haaland you had to experience a Danny Allsopp, and for a Rodri, a Kakhaber Tskhadadze.

Looking down from the wall, still chasing that pitted leather ball on the Typhoo tea poster, what, then, would Colin Bell make of such a, for now, potential but possibly dramatic shunt of circumstance to beset a club for whom he played nearly 400 times, averaging more than a goal every four games.

He’d probably do as he did when we met and, at my request, kicked a football around in his back garden, dodging his scampering dog. He’d talk in plain, straightforward but wise terms, as footballers usually do. He’d say that life has its ups and downs and it was important to enjoy the ups and get over the downs as quickly as possible, to move on. Most City fans already know this, which is not to underestimate the fight which will ensue until a decision is finally made. Manchester City is a club with a set of supporters that does not mind the occasional scrap.

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Reaction from around the world

Denial in Abu Dhabi

In the UAE, the reaction was muted. The Saturday papers made next to no mention of the news. “This is telling,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of Afro-Eurasian sport who advises sports companies in the Middle East.

“I think from an Abu Dhabi perspective, they’re trying to deal with it in a quiet, diplomatic fashion.”

The Abu Dhabi United Group bought Manchester City in 2008 for about £200 million and have invested billions more since. “They won’t want to lose face,” said Chadwick. “They won’t want to see any of their investments being significantly undermined.” Manchester City have become the face of the UAE worldwide for millions of football fans. The name of the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad – Arabic for “union” – has been displayed for 15 years above the stadium following a sponsorship deal. The tight association between the club and its foreign backers puts Abu Dhabi (left) in a “tricky” position, said Chadwick. “This has the potential to be a significant international incident.”

For 34-year-old Emirati Fahad, the City controversy tells a familiar tale. “A rising superstar with great funding pisses people off,” he said. He called the charges levelled against the club “bullshit”.

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Glee in Spain

By Dani Gil

Spain, a country accustomed to polarisation, is almost unanimous in this case: City’s financial irregularities are a scandal and some are calling for the punishment of the century. There is no more prominent advocate of this view than La Liga president Javier Tebas (right). They have been cheating for a decade and enjoying impunity, he has said repeatedly.

With the news now confirmed, many are questioning the moral legitimacy of some of City’s titles, particularly those won during Pep Guardiola’s tenure. Many believe that everything he achieved is now under suspicion, or at the very least tainted by the financial advantages City had at its disposal. For the most cynical, the interpretation is: “See? Pep knew something bad was going to happen and left just before it did.” With the exception of most Barcelona supporters, who remain eternally indebted to Guardiola for what he achieved at Camp Nou during his four years in charge, Spain is relishing the prospect of City’s fall from grace.

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Vindication in Germany

By Mia Guethe

There is a German saying for when you’re not sure if you can believe something: “I don’t trust the roast.” Experts disagree about its origin, but the most widespread idea is that people used to say this when they were sceptical about the meat they were served. The chef might have promised lamb but served a tough cut of pork instead. This is how the guilty verdict for City feels, and there may be no country watching it as closely as Germany, long tied up in debates on whether their rules barring investors from buying clubs are still worth it.

Bundesliga clubs have long grumbled about the financial disparities in European football. The headstart that Premier League clubs in particular are granted feels like a cosmic injustice to many. It also feels irreversible, as if English football’s limitless splurging opened a Pandora’s box. So to Germans, this verdict feels too good to be true. It smells like a delicious lamb roast – but City can appeal, so it might just be pork.