Football’s mavericks replaced by KCs and sports lawyers – and fans are the real losers

As Man City v Premier League case has shown, football news has become focused increasingly on legal rather than footballing matters

Maybe this is something that should not be admitted but reading the exhaustive 175-page arbitration panel judgement in the Manchester City v Premier League case is not just depressing but – to be honest – confusing. Unlike with a football match there is no clear result even if there is one big loser. Football itself.
Both sides have claimed victory but it is extremely complicated and detailed with every legal nuance explored as every line is argued over. “All that I can say is we are living in the most exciting time for sports law,” the leading barrister Nick de Marco posted on social media after the judgment was published and, frankly, that only added to the sense of depression.
De Marco qualified it by stating he is not someone to “celebrate the greater commercialisation and therefore legislation of sport and its regulation” but added “it is a real fact of life”. And, unfortunately, it is a fact of life. And with it our love and enjoyment of football is diminished which must be the saddest conclusion of all.
As a football writer one is now expected to be an expert – hopefully – on the sport but also be able to read a balance sheet as readily as a team sheet, know more about PSR and APTs than QPR and WBA and, at the same time, have a handle on the shifting geo-politics of the world.
Write a piece lauding City’s football and the response is – ah, but their achievements come with an “asterisk”. Discuss Newcastle United’s progress under Eddie Howe and there is a reminder of the Saudis appalling human rights record. 
Not that any of that is wrong. And it is not just about City or Newcastle in a multinational, financially and politically complex landscape of ownership involving Premier League clubs.
Someone once said that sport and politics do not mix. That is a cop-out. Sport is part of society as is politics. Everything is intertwined and no-one can pretend otherwise. It is why it was always legitimate, for example, to ask Howe whether he was comfortable joining Saudi-owned Newcastle as the club’s manager. Not that he ever fully answered the question.
But it is becoming increasingly complicated and, at the same time, tribal and aggressive. De Marco practises at Blackstone Chambers, the pre-eminent ‘set’ for sports law. Take the independent commission into Everton’s profit and sustainability rules [PSR] breach. Barristers from Blackstone represented all three interested parties – the Premier League, Everton and five clubs seeking compensation.
A fellow KC to De Marco at Blackstone is Lord Pannick, who is the barrister leading City’s legal team not just in this case but in their fight against the approximately 130 charges for alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules which forms the backdrop of this arbitration.
And if we did not know this there was, of course, a banner unfurled by City fans at the Etihad Stadium last year that riffed off a song by The Smiths and declared – presumably because the Premier League has its HQ in the capital – that there was “Pannick on the streets of London”.
Lord Pannick and other counsel have now become part of the sport. Where we grew up idolising Sir Bobby Charlton or Bobby Moore, Kenny Dalglish or Kevin Keegan, Glenn Hoddle or Paul Gascoigne, Eric Cantona or Ian Wright now we are having lawyers presented by some fans as if they are the modern-day heroes of the game.
The fact is the futures of football clubs are no longer just decided on the pitch or in the boardroom. They are now in the courts more and more frequently: with high-profile lawsuits ranging from alleged financial breaches, to compensation claims to betting and drugs bans. Maybe it is no surprise that an increasingly influential director at Arsenal is Tim Lewis. His profession? He is a corporate lawyer.
Sport and politics (and law) do mix. But surely not to this extent. Surely not to the extent where fans and commentators are trying to score points off each other for nothing that actually happens in a match. And where we have to wonder about points deductions, transfer bans, sanctions, arbitration, tribunals, appeals and so on and so on when we consider sporting achievements.
Last season we had the PSR hokey-cokey of points being deducted and then reinstated and it felt like the integrity of the Premier League was creaking. Now its rules are being pulled apart and having to be rewritten while Leicester City escape a points-punishment by diving through a loophole.
Neither does it help that it is so damned complex. We have 175 pages on the associated-party transactions [ATP] ruling – how many pages will we have on the City charges? Thousands? There were 41 pages on Everton’s PSR breach but who read them? 
The system is flawed but it is now stated as fact by many that Everton were punished because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the interest payments on their new stadium rather than – actually – continually ignoring warnings to stop spending.
Now, with the City case, we have commentators on social media demanding the Premier League should apologise to the club – while arguably the loss outweighed the win as the principle of interrogating APTs was upheld.
To a degree the complexity is inevitable. In the tribunal ruling a City official claims, unchallenged, that the Premier League averages more than 600 million viewers per match. The next highest is La Liga with 7.5 million. That is an extraordinary dominance and, therefore, attractive for those wanting the soft power it can bring as well as the money.
There absolutely needs to be regulation and accountability. Maybe, as De Marco also suggests, the City case strengthens the hands of those demanding greater independence — i.e. a football regulator — when it comes to governance.
We want our sport protected and the lack of transparency is a significant problem which the Premier League refuses to address. But we also, surely, want it to remain as a sport. Too often now the significant stories are not about what happens in the game. Too often the most important players are not on the pitch.