Former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore has slammed the decision to hand Manchester City a Champions League reprieve and declared the verdict as “the day UEFA died.”
City will be allowed to compete in next season’s Champions League after their two-year UEFA ban was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The club were cleared of “disguising equity funds” and their original €30million fine was reduced to €10million.
Writing in his Daily Mirror column, Collymore, who joined Liverpool for a then British record £8.5million in 1995 and netted 35 goals in 81 games for the Reds, said: “Monday was the day UEFA died, because the ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn Manchester City’s Champions League ban means they can’t even uphold their own rules these days.
“All the ruling has done is send a message to every club in UEFA’s 53 countries that, if they have a wealthy owner, they can pump in as much money as they like and the only punishment will be a 10million euros fine every now and then.
“Owners of clubs such as City, Liverpool, Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich could find such an amount down the backs of their sofas.
“This isn’t just about City. Loads of clubs have been taking the mickey for a long time.
“But yesterday was a good day for Pep Guardiola’s club and a bad day for football.”
The CAS said that City's "alleged breaches reported by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the CFCB were either not established or time-barred".
But the Manchester side were found to have "contravened Article 56 of the Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations" which relates to co-operation with UEFA inquiries.
CAS said a "significant fine" was still appropriate due to City's "disregard" of principle and "obstruction" of investigations.
