MANCHESTER, England (AP) — The biggest challenge to Manchester City’s Premier League dominance was due to start on Monday at a hearing into a slew alleged financial breaches.
On the line is City's reputation and punishment could be as extreme as expulsion from the league.
City, which has won the last four league titles, denies the charges, which include providing misleading information about its finances. It will be down to a team of lawyers to clear the club's name and finally quash accusations that have cast a cloud over its unprecedented period of success.
Manager Pep Guardiola confirmed on Friday that the long-awaited hearing into more than 100 charges of alleged financial wrongdoing was due to start.
“I’m happy it’s starting on Monday. I know there will be more rumors,” he said. “Everybody is innocent until guilt is proven.”
City was accused by the Premier League in February last year of providing misleading information about its finances over a nine-year period between 2009-18 after it was bought by Abu Dhabi’s ruling family in 2008. City was trying to establish itself as one of the leading clubs in Europe, signed some of the world’s best players like Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero and Kevin de Bruyne and won three league titles — in 2012, 2014 and 2018.
The league's financial fair play rules are designed to ensure clubs essentially spend what they earn and commercial deals are assessed for being at legitimate market value.
The charges came after a four-year investigation and following the publication of leaked emails and documents, likely hacked, that were published starting in 2018 by German magazine Der Spiegel. The documents allegedly showed attempts to cover up the source of City’s income in a bid to comply with Financial Fair Play rules operated by European soccer’s governing body UEFA and the Premier League.
City was also accused of breaches relating to its alleged failure to co-operate with the investigation.
The hearing into the charges will be held by an independent commission made up of three judges appointed by a lawyer who chairs the league’s judicial panel. The hearing will be held behind closed doors, and a verdict is not expected until next year.
Potential punishment for a “serious breach” of the league's rule book is wide-ranging. Dependent on whether City is found guilty of any of the charges, possible sanctions include a fine, points deduction or in “extreme cases, expulsion from the competition” according to the league's rules.
City said it was surprised by the charges when they were made last year.
“The Club welcomes the review of this matter by an independent Commission, to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position,” it said in a statement. “As such we look forward to this matter being put to rest once and for all.”
Guardiola has repeatedly been critical of the treatment of City.
“My first thought is we are already being condemned,” he said after the charges were made. “We are lucky we live in a marvellous country where everyone is innocent until proved guilty. We didn’t have this opportunity. We are already sentenced.”
Known as Financial Fair Play, the regulations are aimed at preventing clubs from spending more than they earn. FFP was established in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, which deepened worries in European soccer that clubs could go out of business if the cost of player transfers and wages kept rising.
City was fined 60 million euros (then $82 million) spread over three years by UEFA in 2014 and forced to limit its Champions League squad to 21 instead of 25 senior players after violating FFP rules. Ultimately City only had to forfeit 20 million euros of prize money after complying with the governing body's measures.
In 2018 German magazine Der Spiegel published the “Football Leaks” series of articles supposedly based on City's internal documents and communications. They suggested City had broken FFP rules in financial relationships with “related-party” sponsors from Abu Dhabi.
In February 2020 City was banned from UEFA competition for two seasons for “serious breaches”, including overstating sponsor revenue and failing to cooperate with investigators.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned the ban in July 2020, ruling that some UEFA charges were not proven and other evidence was excluded as time-barred. The court “strongly condemned” Man City for obstructing UEFA’s investigation, though a €10 million ($10.7 million) fine was one-third of the original punishment.
Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed.
James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Manchester City fans celebrate after Manchester City's Rodrigo scores his side's third goal during the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester City and West Ham United at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, England, Sunday, May 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson, File)
Donald Trump is taking his message Wednesday to a somewhat unlikely place: suburban New York.
The Republican presidential nominee and former president is heading to Uniondale, on Long Island, an area that could be key to his party maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts Joe Biden carried in 2020.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 47th Annual Leadership Conference in Washington and has trips planned later in the week to Michigan and Wisconsin.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
The House rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal on Wednesday that would have linked temporary funding for the federal government with a mandate that states require proof of citizenship when people register to vote. The vote failed by a vote of 220-202.
Next steps on government funding are uncertain. Lawmakers are not close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that will fund federal agencies during the next fiscal year, so they’ll need to approve a stopgap measure to prevent a partial shutdown when that budget year begins Oct. 1.
Requiring new voters to provide proof of citizenship has become a leading election-year priority for Republicans raising the specter of noncitizens voting in the U.S., even though it’s already illegal to do so and research has shown that such voting is rare.
Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.
There’s no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a U.S. government statement.
The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.
Read more here.
A new sense of tension hung over the leadup to a Trump rally in Uniondale, New York, following the second apparent assassination attempt on the former president in as many months. Earlier Wednesday, a false report that explosives had been found in a car near the arena during a security sweep circulated online, amplified in some cases by Trump surrogate Elon Musk.
But the recent incidents didn’t scare off Eileen and Bill Deighan, a couple from nearby Yonkers.
“I know some people are scared to come, but I’m not,” said Eileen Deighan, 63, a nurse, who said that she trusted the men and women working security at the venue, even if she harbors some suspicions about higher-ups.
She said she was inspired by Trump’s decision to keep on campaigning given the threats.
“The fact that he didn’t give up, he’s willing to fight for our country, how could you not support that?’ she asked. “That will that he has – doesn’t give up. It’s very contagious.”
She was also there in honor of the couple’s daughter, a nurse, who died last year at the age of 25 and had been a huge Trump supporter.
Eileen Deighan said she knows her daughter is with her.
“Trump,” she said, “has angels, too.”
Bill Deighan, 64, an accountant, was sporting a shirt with Trump’s mugshot and the words “NEVER SURRENDER!” He said he was “absolutely not” scared to come to his second Trump rally, and said if Trump could be here, so could he.
While he’s been a supporter since the former president first came down the escalator in 2015, he said his support has only grown more intense since a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally in July and following Trump’s legal woes.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked about the Federal Reserve's decision to cut its benchmark interest rate by an unusually large half-point.
“I guess it shows the economy is very bad to cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics. The economy would be very bad or they’re playing politics. One or the other, but it was a big cut,” Trump said on Wednesday in New York City while stopping at a Bitcoin bar.
While at a separate event, Trump's running mate JD Vance said the half-point rate cut was “nothing compared to what American families have been dealing with.”
Trump also called the Teamsters’ decision not to endorse either him or Vice President Kamal Harris “a great honor.”
“It’s a great honor. They’re not going to endorse the Democrats. That’s a big thing. And this is the first time in, I guess, 50-60, years that that’s happened. Democrats automatically have the Teamsters,” Trump said.
He cited the Teamsters' internal polling of members showed he had an advantage over Harris and said he worked with Teamsters members while working in New York City real estate.
A federal judge in Michigan has rejected Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to remove his name from the state ballot.
Kennedy turned to federal court after striking out with the Michigan Supreme Court. His lawyer argued, among other things, that Kennedy’s First Amendment rights were being violated by having his name listed as the Natural Law Party’s candidate when he has publicly said he’s dropping out and supporting former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy’s “interest in unilaterally withdrawing and having his name removed from the ballot is outweighed by the state’s interest in maintaining the integrity of the ballot,” U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood said.
“If allowed to withdraw, the Natural Law Party will have no candidate on the ticket, no opportunity to replace (Kennedy), and risk losing access to the ballot in the next general election,” the judge said.
Michigan election officials said 90% of ballots have already been printed. Creating new ballots in Wayne, the state’s largest county, just to erase Kennedy’s name would cost $500,000, state attorneys said.
Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance opened up his remarks in Raleigh, North Carolina, by railing against Vice President Kamala Harris’ lack of media appearances.
Vance called her a “dangerous San Francisco liberal” who was pretending to be moderate. He also suggested the lack of interviews meant she would be unable to sit among other world leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in meetings.
“I happen to believe if you want to be the American people’s president, you ought not to be afraid of friendly American media,” Vance said.
Tuesday, Harris sat for an extended, nearly hour-long interview with reporters from the National Association of Black Journalists.
The latter half of his speech focused on economic issues, such as the cost of housing, energy prices and grocery costs. He connected the cost of housing to Democratic policies and illegal immigration — which garnered boos from the crowd. Deportations and building a wall on the U.S-Mexico border to stifle illegal immigration are among Trump’s priorities in office, he said.
He added that he had a message for drug cartels and people in the country illegally.
“Pack your bags, because you’re going home,” Vance said.
Vance mentioned Springfield, Ohio, during his speech, saying he spoke with residents who wouldn’t drive in certain parts of the city because illegal immigrants have made it “unsafe to be on the roads.”
He had a similar message for Harris, saying voters in November need to “send Kamala Harris packing.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Georgia on Friday to speak about abortion rights following a report that a 20-year-old woman died after medical care was delayed amid complications from a medication abortion, according to a report by ProPublica.
The Harris campaign has worked to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that in some states, women are suffering worse medical care. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
A solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban as a rising number support access to abortions for any reason, according to a June poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined Wednesday to endorse Kamala Harris or Donald Trump for president, saying neither candidate had sufficient support from the 1.3 million-member union.
“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.”
Harris met Monday with a panel of Teamsters, having long courted organized labor and made support for the middle class her central policy goal. Trump also met with a panel of Teamsters and even invited O’Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention, where the union leader railed against corporate greed.
The Teamsters on Wednesday said internal polling of its members showed Trump with an advantage over Harris.
The Teamsters’ choice to not endorse comes weeks ahead of the Nov. 5 election, far later than other large unions such as the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers that have chosen to back Harris.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has criticized Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of people who are in the United States illegally.
The Republican former president has pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history if he’s reelected in November. He's provided no detail on how he’d handle it.
Harris questioned Trump’s intentions Wednesday during a speech in Washington to Hispanic members of Congress. She asked whether her rival would need to rely on “massive raids” and “massive detention camps” to achieve his deportation goal.
Trump was expected to appear in Uniondale on New York’s Long Island later Wednesday.
The National Treasury Employees Union endorsed Kamala Harris for president Wednesday.
“When it comes to treating federal employees with respect, valuing their service and investing in their work, Kamala Harris is the clear choice,” said National President Doreen Greenwald. “She shares our values and our commitment to making sure that the federal government works for all Americans. She has been a strong advocate for the issues that matter most to federal employees: fair pay, paid family leave, adequate agency funding and staffing, and robust collective bargaining rights.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to fire tens of thousands of federal workers if elected. In 2020, Trump issued an executive order called “Schedule F” that would have stripped them of job protections.
Donald Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda are scheduled to attend the same event this Sunday in Pennsylvania, a battleground state in this year’s presidential election, as Trump seeks to tap into the Polish-American vote.
A meeting between the two at a Polish-American shrine hasn't yet been confirmed, but seemed possible given their friendly ties in the past — and the fact that Duda’s office said it expected a meeting if Trump were to attend.
Pennsylvania has one of the largest Polish-American populations in the county, and both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris want their support. During the recent presidential debate in Philadelphia, Harris appealed to Polish Americans by casting Trump as a threat to the security of Poland and Europe more widely because of his opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Trump won the state in 2016 but Democratic President Joe Biden won in 2020.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder says someone who may have been training a bomb detecting dog prompted false reports of explosives being found near former President Donald Trump’s rally on New York's Long Island.
“There is a person who is being questioned who may have been training a bomb detection dog near the site," Ryder said. "The individual with the bomb dog falsely reported explosives being found and that individual is currently being detained by the police.”
Nassau County officials say social media reports that explosives were found in a car near former President Donald Trump’s New York rally on Long Island just days after the second apparent assassination attempt on him are false.
Christopher Boyle, spokesperson for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, and Lt. Scott Skrynecki, spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department, both said Wednesday morning that the reports are unfounded.
“No. Ridiculous. Zero validity,” Boyle said.
“False,” Skrynecki said in a text.
The officials said they would be releasing an official statement later.
Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, posted overnight that “Trump must win” to save the country.
“Unless Trump is elected, America will fall to tyranny,” he wrote to his nearly 200 million followers. He was replying to a post that argued the former president is the only candidate fighting an impending American dictatorship.
The post falls into a recent pattern for Musk, who endorsed Trump in July. He frequently jumps into the political fray with inflammatory commentary during tense moments. He also has repeatedly shared misinformation about elections to his massive audience on X.
Musk’s critics and several election officials have condemned his actions as irresponsible, but the 53-year-old billionaire and many conservatives vehemently disagree. They sharply criticize Democrats for suggesting that speech should be moderated or criminalized and blame the assassination attempts against Trump on the left’s rhetoric.
Representatives for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris ′ transition teams met for the first time at the White House, the Biden administration announced Wednesday, as the outgoing administration plans to smooth the handoff to whomever wins in November.
Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients hosted a meeting Tuesday of the White House Transition Coordinating Committee — the government’s senior-most transition planning group — and for the first time this year included Harris and Trump aides. The meeting and invitation to both parties’ representatives are required under the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the designated candidate representatives serve in an advisory capacity.
A 22-year-old woman who became an abortion rights advocate after she was raped by her stepfather as a child tells her story in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she’s never slept a full night in her life — her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice president Tuesday.
“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”
The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week.
Voters in northern New Jersey are set to settle a special U.S. House election to fill the seat that opened when Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died earlier this year.
Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver and Republican Carmen Bucco are competing for the seat in the heavily Democratic and majority-Black 10th Congressional District. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy set the special election under state law after Payne died in April. He had served on the House for more than two decades.
Wednesday’s election determines who serves out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends Jan. 3, 2025. The regular election process held in parallel will determine who fills the seat after that. McIver and Bucco are also on the ballot for the full term in the seat, along with third-party candidates.
People line up to hear Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speak at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Leadership Conference, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Mich., Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris waving before boarding Air Force Two, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, near Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
