By Pascal Ibe

Introduction

Manchester City arranged “sham contracts” with several commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m, the Premier League says.

The League confirmed that City have been found guilty of all charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.

An independent commission found that, during that time period, the club arranged the “sham contracts” as well as “relying on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs”.

The club continue to deny any wrongdoing and has until 2 October to submit an appeal.

News broke last week that City had been found guilty of breaking the majority of the 115 financial rules they were accused of breaching, but on Tuesday the Premier League published a redacted version of the commission’s report.

Claim

Reacting to this, an X user, @GaryErazo11, claimed (archived here)that the UEFA chief stripped Manchester City of their Champions League (UCL)title after being found guilty of sham contracts.

The X user posted a video clip of an official speaking and wrote, “OFFICIAL: UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin has announced that Manchester City’s 2022/2023 UEFA Champions League title has been stripped and the trophy will be officially awarded to Inter Milan.

The post has already generated over 300,000 views with thousands of likes and reposts.

Verification

First, a closer look at the post indicates that the video was reposted from the original post which was made in 2021.

Going through the 2/21 post, which was made by a Sky Sports correspondent, Rob Harris, we found out that the UEFA chief was talking about appealing to English clubs that it is not too late to back out of the new European Super League.

That year,v Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham all signed up for the breakaway Super League, joining AC Milan, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Inter Milan and Real Madrid in becoming founder members.

The midweek competition, however, was met with a furious backlash from those in and outside of football and so it was later abandoned.

No credible sports news organisation has reported that UEFA is planning to strip City of their UCL title at the moment, as the English club has until 2 October to appeal the breach of financial rules which they have been found guilty of.

Meanwhile, no sanctions have been given to Manchester City as of 30 October.

Verdict

A 2021 video of UEFA speaking on a different matter was used to make a false claim that City has been stripped of the UCL title. The claim is therefore, FALSE