Manchester City’s guilty verdict brings football’s great sell-off crashing to earth

The Guardian's David Conn argues that Manchester City's guilty verdict represents the reckoning of English football's decades-long era of corporate sell-offs and privatization. An independent Premier League commission delivered a 40-page ruling finding City guilty of creating sham contracts to artificially boost income by £900m, concluding an eight-year investigation that the club plans to appeal.

Conn contrasts football's commercial transformation since the 1980s with British privatization policies, tracing City's path from a 1994 takeover to Sheikh Mansour's 2008 buyout. While Abu Dhabi's investment transformed the club into a dominant force, winning eight Premier League titles, Conn asserts that this relentless corporate pursuit culminated in widespread financial cheating.