UEFA allegations against Man City ‘simply not true’, says chief exec Soriano

Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has denied claims that the Premier League champions broke the rules over Financial Fair Play regulations.

City were on Friday given a two-season ban from European football and fined 30million euros (£24.9million) for breaching financial regulations, but have vowed to fight the verdict of a UEFA investigation into accounts submitted by the club between 2012 and 2016.

“These allegations are simply not true,” Sorriano said in a video interview on the club’s website.

“The owner has not put money in this club that has not been properly declared.

“We are a sustainable football club, we are profitable, we don’t have debt, our accounts have been scrutinised many times, by auditors, by regulators, by investors and this is perfectly clear.”

City, who have referred the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, have also been accused of not cooperating with the process.

But Soriano said: “We did cooperate with this process.

“We delivered a long list of documents and support that we believe is irrefutable evidence that the claims are not true and it was hard because we did this in the context of information being leaked to the media in the context of feeling that every step of the way, every engagement we had, we felt that we were considered guilty before anything was even discussed.

“But at the end, this is an internal process that has been initiated and then prosecuted and then judged by this FFP chamber at UEFA.”