From Everton to Manchester City: When Football Is Decided by the Balance Sheet

There is a moment I have witnessed many times over nearly three decades of following professional football, and it always leaves me silent: the moment a financial verdict is announced. It does not happen on the pitch, there is no kick-off whistle, no roaring stands. It happens in a meeting room under amber light, where men in suits leaf through a report hundreds of pages long and calculate how many points their club will start the new season with deducted. On 17 November 2026, Everton received a 10-point deduction for breaching the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules; after appeal, that fell to 6 points, and the club was later docked 2 more in a separate case. On 18 March 2026, Nottingham Forest were deducted 4 points. And Manchester City, facing 115 charges announced on 6 February 2026 and stretching back more than a decade, are still awaiting a final ruling. Each of those punishments is tied to the fate of an entire club and tens of thousands of supporters. In Vietnam, most fans only encounter this story through a few short headlines. But for me, someone who has lived and worked in both Vietnam and China, this is one of the quietest yet deepest revolutions in modern football. It began at a specific point: in 2026, when UEFA introduced the concept of Financial Fair Play, forcing clubs in European competition to spend within the limits of their own revenue. Later, the Premier League built its own rulebook called PSR — Profit and Sustainability Rules — capping losses at roughly 105 million pounds over three years per club. It sounds simple, but behind it lies a system of accounting, amortisation and asset valuation so complex that no supporter can grasp it all. To understand why these penalties are so severe, we need to dissect how a transfer actually works. When a club pays 100 million euros for a player, that money is not booked in a single year. It is amortised evenly across the contract. A five-year deal worth 100 million euros records only 20 million euros of cost each year in the accounts. This is why clubs favour long contracts for expensive signings: they stretch the financial burden. But when a player fails to deliver and is sold two years later for less, the remaining loss lands in one season and can push a club past the permitted threshold after a single bad deal. My own experience watching matches shows this is why many mid-table clubs would rather keep an average player until his contract expires than sell at a loss. In the transfer market, promises are signed in ink, while trust is signed in blood. And that very market is producing a paradox: the value of young players is soaring while the number of top-flight matches they have played remains tiny. Many hundred-million-euro deals go to players who have not yet played 50 games in a top league. That is a naked gamble, because the club must both amortise a colossal fee and bear immediate pressure for results. When those two pressures combine, financial rules become a spiral that every club wants to escape but cannot. My experience following football across two cultures taught me that financial crisis is not a European specialty. In China, after the spending boom of the early 2010s, an entire generation of clubs staggered when money from property conglomerates dried up. Jiangsu, once champions of the Chinese professional league in 2026, dissolved just months later, leaving unpaid players and an expensive lesson about building a club on a foundation of debt. In Vietnam, the story is familiar too, as more than a few V.League clubs have repeatedly stood on the brink of collapse over unpaid wages. That reminds me of a simple rule: professional football, anywhere, ultimately has to live on real money, not on promises. But here is where I want to linger longer, because it is often misunderstood. Many people think Financial Fair Play was created to punish wealthy clubs. The reality is more complex. UEFA's original aim was to protect clubs from their own ambition, after a string of major European sides stood on the edge of bankruptcy by outspending their revenue. But in practice, the rulebook created a new paradox: clubs with enormous revenue from broadcasting and commercial deals always have more room to spend, while smaller clubs trying to rise are bound more tightly. In other words, fair play on paper can reinforce unfairness in reality if revenue is not shared equally. That is why I believe the debate over football finance cannot stop at punishments. The deeper issue lies in how money is distributed across the game. A league is only truly sustainable when its smallest club can also nurture its dream without living in fear every transfer window. And on empty-stadium days, I hear the club's breathing clearly — and it is still beating, even when, on the balance sheet, the cash flow is bleeding. What I will be watching in the time ahead is not the verdict awaiting Manchester City, but how leagues in Asia, Vietnam included, learn from this lesson. A club does not only have victories; it has its own heartbeat, and I am the one recording that rhythm. When that heartbeat is threatened by the rows of figures in the books, the real question is this: are we building football for the fans, or only for beautiful financial reports?