City follows Milan’s path to final

GENEVA, May 6: The club UEFA wanted banned from the Champions League before the season has gone all the way to the final. Manchester City advanced this week to the biggest game in European club soccer and has a shot at repeating what another undesirable – AC Milan – pulled off 14 years ago.
Another portent for City when it faces Chelsea on May 29 in Istanbul could be that Milan won the 2007 final also against an English opponent, Liverpool. Milan and City arrived at their finals 10 months after UEFA found it could not exclude the teams because of technicalities in its own rules.
City got a two-year ban from European competitions overturned last July partly because the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled some evidence UEFA relied on to prove alleged financial wrongdoing was time-barred.
For Milan, a club official was implicated in the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal that rocked Italian soccer in the 2006 offseason. The club lost and then regained a Champions League place when a points deduction by Italian authorities was reduced on appeal. Then, UEFA found itself helpless to act within its existing rules when the Italian soccer federation formally entered Milan, adjusted to third in Serie A, in the Champions League qualifying rounds.
Platini later acknowledged he had been opposed to UEFA letting Milan in that season. UEFA did eventually succeed in banning clubs from the Champions League and Europa League for links to match-fixing or breaking the Financial Fair Play rules. They monitor income and spending of clubs which qualify for its competitions.
Expected targets of FFP were City and Paris Saint-Germain, fast-rising clubs backed by sovereign wealth from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, respectively. When internal documents and emails were hacked from City officials and published in November 2018 by German magazine Der Spiegel, UEFA investigated the reported claims of evading rules and misleading FFP investigators.
City denied wrongdoing and obstructed the investigation. UEFA-appointed judges imposed a two-year ban to take effect this season and fined the club 30 million euros ($36 million). A landmark CAS ruling annuled the ban because UEFA’s evidence either did not prove the case or expired according to FFP rules. City was fined 10 million euros ($12 million) for its lack of cooperation. Guardiola has City within one game of being European champion for the first time.
Champions League finals are elusive for Milan. It has not been beyond the quarterfinals since the season it escaped UEFA’s legal tackles. (AP)