Manchester City could be stripped of multiple titles after being found guilty of all charges minus one related to breaching the Premier League’s financial rules between 2009 and 2018.
During this period, City won three Premier League titles and several domestic cups, establishing themselves as the dominant force in English football.
Mourinho will start next season with Liverpool trio at Real Madrid
We’ve dusted down the history books to look at six other teams that were stripped of their titles long after the final whistle had sounded.
Senegal (2026)
Senegal were sensationally stripped of the AFCON title earlier this year, after CAF upheld Morocco’s appeal over their opponents’ behaviour in the final.
In an unprecedented decision, CAF awarded Morocco the trophy and a 3-0 victory after Senegal left the pitch in protest of a late penalty to Morocco.
The case is still rolling after Senegal appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Marseille (1992-93)
Marseille won both Ligue 1 and the Champions League in 1992-93, but were stripped of the latter after being found guilty of match-fixing.
Controversial club president Bernard Tapie arranged a bribe of 250,000 francs to Valenciennes players Christophe Robert, Jorge Burrachaga and Jacques Glassman to take it easy against Marseille in a crucial game late in the season.
Valenciennes lost the match as expected, securing Marseille’s title – but Glassman reported the bribe to the referee after rejecting Tapie’s offer.
Marseille was relegated to Ligue 2 by the French authorities, but second-placed PSG refused to accept the title. Supposedly because their owners, Canal+, were worried about losing TV revenue in the Marseille region.
The disgraced French club was allowed to keep their Champions League trophy, despite further accusations of match-fixing and doping.
Juventus (2004–05 and 2005–06)
You all know about Calciopoli and how the case deprived Juventus of two Serie A titles in the mid-2000s. General manager Luciano Moggi was found guilty of manipulating referees in Juve’s favor over a long period of time. He was banned for life from football, and the club was relegated to Serie B.
Juve have never accepted the ruling, keep the two titles in their unofficial record and have appealed the decision to award Inter the Scudetto in 2005-06.
Genoa (2004–05)
The Allemandi case is the overlooked B-side of Italian football corruption in the mid-2000s, but it cost Genoa the Serie B title.
On the last day of 2004-05, Genoa looked to be promoted to Serie A for the first time in a decade. They had a home game against already relegated and heavily indebted Venice. Simple, right?
Genoa’s management left nothing to chance, however, and paid Venice’s general manager Giuseppe Pagliara 250,000 euros to lose the match. The money was, delightfully, found in his car.
The Italian Football Federation responded by stripping Genoa of the title and placing them at the bottom of the final Serie B table, resulting in immediate relegation to Serie C1.
It also turned out that promotion rival Turin had paid Venice to try harder in the Genoa match. A wonderful chaos.
Elgin City (1992-93)
Elgin City swept aside all opposition in the Highland League in 1992-93 and beat the weak Forres Mechanics 6-0 in their last game to win the title.
The catch was that Elgin moved the last game from Saturday to Friday night, which made it possible to field several players who would have been suspended on the original date.
This included playing manager John Teasdale, which pulverized the claim that it had been an unintentional mistake.
Elgin was stripped of the title, but the second-team Cove Rangers would not win by walkover. So the Highland League went without a winner for the first time in over a century.
As recently as 2018, Elgin appealed to the SFA to get his players’ medals from 1993 back. They did not succeed.
Shanghai Shenhua (2003)
Back in the 2010s, Shanghai Shenhua was the Al-Nassr of its time.
Players like Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, and Carlos Tevez all played for the Chinese club while throwing big money at aging foreign stars. In the 2000s, they spent their money paying referees instead.
In 2011, it emerged that Shenhua’s general manager, Lou Shifang, had been behind the organisation of bribes to the referee in a crucial Shanghai derby match eight years earlier.
The Chinese authorities did not strip them of their title, but it was then revealed that Shenhua had also used bribes to fix a fight against Shaanxi Guoli.
Ten years after the event, Shenhua was stripped of its 2003 title, and the season was written off without a champion.
