Completely & totally wrong. They were completely exonerated on all charges with the exception of failing to cooperate
(as each time they submitted evidence it was leaked to the media). Don't believe the media narrative (and twitter).
That is correct. My understanding of the case, which I said at the time and reiterated my thinking on about page 4 of this thread is it's exactly that.
Having read the judgement, while it's clear time frames was one aspect of it mentioned it was not the only asepct mentioned. I mean obviously if it's outside of time frames that has to be mentioned, but it was more that the foundartions of FFP have no precadent in European legislation on commercial enterprises. At no point did the court make the comment that the case was essentially sound, but they got times out, and had they have done, UEFA could have merely re-launched the proceedings and committed to meeting time frames knowing a court had established the principle they were in the right. Given the vendetta they have pursued in this, it would be highly likely they would have looked to bring cases again had they been given that approval. That they didn't, tells you everything.
Aside from that point of order, it is also worth stating, that even if that HAD of happened, it's still not a big win for UEFA. Legal judgements and precadents tend to start on the macro and the micro becomes secondary. There are aspects of Bosman's ruling where the micro didn't quite fit in, but culturally it is the macro that shapes and changes behavioiur. It's also worth saying, it wasn't for 3-4 years before you really started to feel the impact of the ruling. It's never the next day.
However even if it had just been the technicality, the next club charged will just say- Manchester City agreed a sponsorship that was the biggest in the league at the time, and a court has established any action against them has been deemed unlawful. That is now established as precadent and the default position of any court. You would have to be seen to not just be going beyond what Manchester City did, but so far beyond it that it was qualitatively worse and so much so that a decision could be overturned. Like being worse would not be enough. Being qualitatively worse may not be enough, as a judge may say- there's not enough to justify overturning the previous judgement. We can all argue about degrees here and what qualitaitvely worse would mean, but it would be reasnable at the cautious end to assume it wouuld say doubling the leagues highest sponsorship (where City I believe matched it). That sort of thing might be considered a big breach, and might therefore be considered a big enough that they would overturn the principle.
This is all best case scenario for UEFA/FFP as well. The alternative is that the court just views this as an issue of principle, and its not for courts to intervene on how much investment shareholders want to make, or it's not for a body to detirmine the true value on sponsorship deals- they are detirmined by what someone in the market is willing to pay. In that case, no value of sponsor money coming in, or investment would ever be too high.
As a final aside on this particular point, it's also worth saying, City did cut a lot of corners in this as well. From the outside it looked like an org going out of it's way to try and get charged. I don't know if that was the case, or whether there was a naivety/arrogance on their part. But essentially any basic attempt to comply with the rules also makes you look less chargeable than City (of that time). And City at that time were proven to be innocent. So I'm not sure there is a world going back to scenario 1, where you could be qualitatively more dismissive of UEFA's silly rules than City were. Essentially if you make a bit of an effortto follow the rules, legally you are water tight.
I also think the Covid stuff is the other big factor, but both on their own could have easily ended FFP. I also think in honesty, UEFA are seeing a changing of the guard. They are probably a bit worried about some of the abstract threats of a European Super League, that seem to be getting bandied about by some of the traditional teams, who are now skint, and seem to be making a turn. People seem to forget that UEFA is an org of it's own ends and that a Super league would be a rival, specifically to it's CL tournament (which is amassive money spinner). They did everything for those traditional teams, and those teams betrayed them by negotiating with a rival behind their backs. Of course you would review.
If you are UEFA, it's perhaps reasonable that you can look to build around PSG, City and a few others, state to them they will not have the spending restrictions that will be in place in any potential super league and ultimately start building those up in the hope they wouldn't switch. It makes a lot of sense.