Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca struck a calm note in his first public comments since the club were formally found guilty in their Premier League case.<\/p>\n
After more than two years of deliberation, an independent commission ruled that City had \u201cartificially inflating the club\u2019s revenues, and reducing its costs, by more than \u00a3900 million [$1.2 billion]\u201d across nine seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18. The possible sanctions remain severe, with expulsion from the Premier League or even a forced sale of the club among the outcomes that have been discussed.<\/p>\n
City have rejected the verdict, which they continue to describe as an \u201copinion\u201d, and insist they have \u201ca comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence\u201d that will come out during an appeal process due to be completed by Jan. 23, 2027 at the latest.<\/p>\n
Maresca, who worked under Pep Guardiola as first-team assistant and also spent time in the club\u2019s youth department, made clear that he prefers to wait for the appeal before going further. \u201cI just said, I would like to speak about this situation when we win the appeal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also said his confidence in the club remains absolute. \u201cI know the organization from years ago, I know how serious they are, I know they do the right things,\u201d Maresca explained. \u201cI would like to speak about this when we win the appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether he would have taken the job if the guilty verdict had already been known, he replied: \u201c100%\u201d and added: \u201cThe reason I joined this club is that I completely trust, 100%, the owner, the CEO, the sporting director, all the organization. So I don\u2019t have doubt about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even when the prospect of relegation was raised, he answered: \u201cI won the Championship with Leicester, so in case we\u2019re in League One, we\u2019ll see. But we are thinking about something we don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maresca admitted he has not read the commission\u2019s full report, saying: \u201cI promise you that my focus is just about football.\u201d He also rejected the idea that City\u2019s trophies from the period were compromised. \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he said, before pointing to the work behind the treble season in 2022-23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca defends City\u2019s position, says his focus is football and waits for the appeal outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238],"tags":[1836,59,182],"class_list":["post-21723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-featured","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}