The details of Manchester City ’s stunning appeal victory might never be released by the Court of Arbitation for Sport (CAS).
The “written reasons” for the quashing of the Blues’ two-year European ban were expected to be announced today.
But the Switzerland-based court has delayed publication of the details of the case until next week – and suggest that they may never see the light of day.
City stunned the football world by over-turning Uefa’s punishment, which was for alleged breaches of their financial fair play rules.
The Blues were cleared of some alleged breaches, while the independent court found that others had broken Uefa’s own statute of limitations, which say that any charges have to be instigated within five years of alleged wrongdoing.
They were found guilty of obstructing Uefa’s initial investigation, but the fine they received for that was slashed from 30million euros to 10million.
The feeling around the club is that the fine was reduced because their case – which was the whole episode was a “clear and organised” attempt to destroy their reputation - had resonated with CAS.
In fact, City applied to have the whole process called off earlier this year, due to their belief that leaks from within Uefa were undermining the impartiality of the case.
CAS refused that application, but did express their concern at the way insiders at Uefa were clearly briefing sections of the media.
The details of the case have been eagerly anticipated since Monday’s ruling was announced, and CAS initially said that the “arbitral award” as it is known would be published “at the end of the week”.
But they have now said that the publication has been put back to early next week – but even that might not happen if one or both parties object to their publication.
Neither City nor Uefa have indicated that they want to keep the proceedings confidential, but both could have reasons for opposing publication.
If either City or Uefa want the written reasons to be kept confidential, they could be over-ruled by the division president of CAS. But that seems unlikely.
CAS have already said that the arbitral award will be published on their website next week, unless there is an objection from one or both parties in the dispute.
The award could contain sensitive information about City which might cause them to ask for secrecy to prevail.
Uefa might not want the proceedings to become public as they have been heavily criticised for what appears to be a botched attempt to include alleged breaches of the rules which were forbidden by their own time limits.
