Drama in store on final day of Premier League
AFP
Sunday, 26 Jul 2020 09:09 AM MYT
LONDON, July 26 — The Premier League's longest season is set for a dramatic finish on Sunday as Chelsea, Manchester United and Leicester compete for Champions League places, while Aston Villa, Watford and Bournemouth fight to avoid relegation.
At a time of year when Premier League clubs are usually jetting off for lucrative pre-season tours, the 2019-20 top-flight campaign will finally come to an end after the three-month coronavirus delay.
Liverpool have been presented with the Premier League trophy, second placed Manchester City are guaranteed a Champions League spot and Norwich have been relegated, but there are several key issues still to be resolved.
In a thrilling conclusion, top four places, Europa League berths, relegation spots and the Golden Boot have to settled in the last round of matches.
The spotlight will be firmly on the King Power Stadium, where fifth placed Leicester host third placed Manchester United.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's team will return to the Champions League after a one-year absence if they avoid defeat, but a Leicester win would take them back into Europe's elite club competition for the first time since 2016-17.
United looked jaded in the past week, but Solskjaer urged his team to finish the job after they climbed into the top four for the first time since September.
"We're looking forward to the game, we've given ourselves a good chance of being in the Champions League next year," he said.
"We want to go there and dominate. We're not going to change our approach."
United have a fall-back plan as they would also qualify for the Champions League if they win this season's Europa League, which resumes in August.
Go for the win
Despite holding a top four spot for most of the season, Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers insisted it would not be a failure if his spluttering side miss out.
"It wasn't really something we spoke about at the beginning of the season because naturally, where the club had been these last few seasons, we wanted to try step-by-step to arrive there," Rodgers said.
Fourth placed Chelsea need a point at home to Wolves to seal a top four finish, but should Frank Lampard's men lose, then a draw between Leicester and United would see those two qualify for the Champions League at the expense of the west Londoners.
It could be a nervous afternoon for Lampard, but he is staying positive: "We're aware of the situation, but we try and win. I don't think there's any other way to approach the game."
Whoever misses out on the Champions League between United, Chelsea and Leicester will have to settle for fifth place and Europa League qualification next season.
Sixth placed Wolves would be certain of the other Europa League berth if they beat Chelsea.
However, a slip from Nuno Espirito Santo's men would give Tottenham the chance to move above them if they win at Crystal Palace, who have lost their last seven games.
At the bottom, fourth bottom Villa go to West Ham knowing they should be safe if they match third bottom Watford's result at Arsenal.
However, Villa are only just ahead of Watford on goal difference, with Dean Smith's men on -26 and the Hornets -27.
Even if both teams win, Watford, without a permanent manager after Nigel Pearson's sacking, could still survive if their margin of victory is two better than Villa's.
"The most important thing is to be above that dotted line on Sunday and we know we have to win to guarantee that," Smith said.
If Villa and Watford lose, then second bottom Bournemouth, currently three points adrift, could stay up on goal difference if they win at Everton.
"The next game is the biggest game of all our careers," Bournemouth boss Eddie Howe said.
In the race to finish as the league's top scorer, Leicester's Jamie Vardy leads the way with 23 goals, two ahead of Southampton's Danny Ings. — AFP
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT HEARD
NEW YORK TIMES.
Manchester City’s Champions League Ban Is Overturned
The club, one of the world’s richest teams, had faced a two-year exile from Europe’s top soccer competition. Its victory is a blow to the credibility of UEFA’s cost control rules.
Manchester City has won four Premier League titles since 2012.Credit...Toby Melville/Reuters
By Tariq Panja
July 13, 2020
LONDON — Almost as soon as it was accused of breaking European soccer’s cost control rules, Manchester City dug in and began the fight to clear its name.
It criticized the hackers who leaked private club documents and the media organizations that reported on them. It railed against the accusations (“entirely false”) and the process (“unfair”) and, most of all, the punishment: a two-year ban from the Champions League.
City officials vowed to do “everything that can be done” to fight the ban. Bankrolled by one of the world’s richest men, they seemed prepared to spend any sum to prevail.
What few knew was that City’s salvation was there in plain sight the whole time: a handful of words in a section of the rules of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body. Those rules set a five-year time limit on the infractions eligible for punishment and, in effect, barred investigators from ruling on some of the most serious accusations against City.
They also allowed a three-member panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to rule Monday to overturn the Champions League ban, imposed last year for what UEFA had called “serious breaches” of cost control regulations. In announcing its decision, the panel cited UEFA’s rules, which it said meant many of the most serious findings against City — whether true or not — were inadmissible.
The decision was not only a triumph of a technicality. CAS also found, and UEFA agreed, that there was “insufficient conclusive evidence” to uphold all of the conclusions that had resulted in the Champions League ban.
A fine of 30 million euros (about $34 million) was reduced to 10 million ($11.3 million), an acknowledgment that City had in fact breached some regulations by failing to cooperate with the investigation. But on the most important issues, City’s victory was complete.
“The club welcomes the implications of today’s ruling as a validation of the club’s position and the body of evidence that it was able to present,” Manchester City said in a brief statement.
The lifting of the Champions League ban, which had hung over Manchester City for more than a year and raised questions about the club’s finances and its credibility, will have significant consequences for both the team and UEFA.
Manchester City officials had vehemently, and repeatedly, denied any accusations of wrongdoing, and the prospect of being barred from the Champions League risked upending one of the most ambitious projects in global sports.
For UEFA, the latest high-profile reversal of its effort to uphold its so-called financial fair-play regulations — and the second time its own rules have been at the root of its defeat — has created new doubts about the future of its efforts to police overspending by its biggest clubs, and its ability and willingness to police its members’ actions.
The CAS panel said in a statement posted on the court’s website that the most serious breaches found by UEFA were either “not established” or no longer relevant (in the court’s words, “time-barred”).
Manchester City remains in contention to win the Champions League this year; it won the first leg of its round-of-16 tie against Real Madrid in March before the coronavirus pandemic forced a temporary halt to the event. UEFA is scheduled to resume the competition this summer.
Since being acquired in 2008 by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the billionaire brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Manchester City has risen from relative obscurity to become one of soccer’s most valuable and successful brands. It fields one of the best teams in the world and is led by Pep Guardiola, the Spanish coach who oversaw its collecting every available trophy in English soccer last season.
Monday’s ruling means the team will continue to perform on one of sports’ biggest stages, and one of its most lucrative. City had stood to lose about $200 million in Champions League payments from a two-year ban, but it would also have been costly in terms of damage to City’s carefully cultivated reputation and its ability to attract top players and coaches. Now it will remain among the favorites to win the competition year after year.
NEW YORK TIMES.
Manchester City’s Champions League Ban Is Overturned
The club, one of the world’s richest teams, had faced a two-year exile from Europe’s top soccer competition. Its victory is a blow to the credibility of UEFA’s cost control rules.
Manchester City has won four Premier League titles since 2012.Credit...Toby Melville/ReutersBy Tariq Panja
July 13, 2020
LONDON — Almost as soon as it was accused of breaking European soccer’s cost control rules, Manchester City dug in and began the fight to clear its name.
It criticized the hackers who leaked private club documents and the media organizations that reported on them. It railed against the accusations (“entirely false”) and the process (“unfair”) and, most of all, the punishment: a two-year ban from the Champions League.
City officials vowed to do “everything that can be done” to fight the ban. Bankrolled by one of the world’s richest men, they seemed prepared to spend any sum to prevail.
What few knew was that City’s salvation was there in plain sight the whole time: a handful of words in a section of the rules of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body. Those rules set a five-year time limit on the infractions eligible for punishment and, in effect, barred investigators from ruling on some of the most serious accusations against City.
They also allowed a three-member panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to rule Monday to overturn the Champions League ban, imposed last year for what UEFA had called “serious breaches” of cost control regulations. In announcing its decision, the panel cited UEFA’s rules, which it said meant many of the most serious findings against City — whether true or not — were inadmissible.
The decision was not only a triumph of a technicality. CAS also found, and UEFA agreed, that there was “insufficient conclusive evidence” to uphold all of the conclusions that had resulted in the Champions League ban.
A fine of 30 million euros (about $34 million) was reduced to 10 million ($11.3 million), an acknowledgment that City had in fact breached some regulations by failing to cooperate with the investigation. But on the most important issues, City’s victory was complete.
“The club welcomes the implications of today’s ruling as a validation of the club’s position and the body of evidence that it was able to present,” Manchester City said in a brief statement.
The lifting of the Champions League ban, which had hung over Manchester City for more than a year and raised questions about the club’s finances and its credibility, will have significant consequences for both the team and UEFA.
Manchester City officials had vehemently, and repeatedly, denied any accusations of wrongdoing, and the prospect of being barred from the Champions League risked upending one of the most ambitious projects in global sports.
For UEFA, the latest high-profile reversal of its effort to uphold its so-called financial fair-play regulations — and the second time its own rules have been at the root of its defeat — has created new doubts about the future of its efforts to police overspending by its biggest clubs, and its ability and willingness to police its members’ actions.
The CAS panel said in a statement posted on the court’s website that the most serious breaches found by UEFA were either “not established” or no longer relevant (in the court’s words, “time-barred”).
Manchester City remains in contention to win the Champions League this year; it won the first leg of its round-of-16 tie against Real Madrid in March before the coronavirus pandemic forced a temporary halt to the event. UEFA is scheduled to resume the competition this summer.
Since being acquired in 2008 by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the billionaire brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Manchester City has risen from relative obscurity to become one of soccer’s most valuable and successful brands. It fields one of the best teams in the world and is led by Pep Guardiola, the Spanish coach who oversaw its collecting every available trophy in English soccer last season.
Monday’s ruling means the team will continue to perform on one of sports’ biggest stages, and one of its most lucrative. City had stood to lose about $200 million in Champions League payments from a two-year ban, but it would also have been costly in terms of damage to City’s carefully cultivated reputation and its ability to attract top players and coaches. Now it will remain among the favorites to win the competition year after year.
