City deserve an apology, says Guardiola

LONDON. — Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola says his team deserve an apology after they successfully overturned their ban from European club competitions.

On Monday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared City of committing “serious breaches” of Financial Fair Play regulations between 2012 and 2016. On Tuesday Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho called it a “disgraceful decision”.

“What we have done is right. Jose and all the managers should know that we were damaged,” said Guardiola.

“We should be apologised (to).

“(I am) incredibly happy for the decision, which shows what all the people said about the club was not true and to defend on the pitch what we won on the pitch..

“Like I said many times, if we did something wrong we would accept the decision of UEFA and CAS because we did something wrong.’’ CAS cleared City of “disguising equity funds as sponsorship contributions” and cut the club’s fine from 30m euros (£26.9m) to 10m euros (£9m). We have made a step forward in 10 years. We invested a lot of money, like a lot of clubs. We did it the right way. We have not been banned because we followed the FFP rules. If we hadn’t we would have been banned,” Guardiola added. We showed it was not true. That’s why people have to be happy or should at least accept it. I would love to say, ‘look in our eyes and say something face to face and go out onto the pitch and play as rivals and after if you beat us, we will shake hands and congratulate you’.” — BBC Sport.