ESPN reports that while Pinto prompted the Manchester City investigation, he should not necessarily be regarded as a hero.

According to ESPN's analysis, Luis Pinto, founder of Football Leaks, initiated the Manchester City investigation, but that does not make him a hero.

What bears repeating is that Manchester City's scandal, which shook English football to its core, brought widespread attention to Luis Pinto—a self-taught hacker and college dropout with distinctive spiky hair. If he had not provided and shared over 70 million documents with German magazine Der Spiegel starting in 2016, and subsequently fueled the massive "Football Leaks" investigation over the following two years, Manchester City would not have faced scrutiny from UEFA, the Premier League, or other bodies that may intervene after the current legal proceedings conclude. Frankly, no one else had legal grounds to do so. History would have told a different story.

Manchester City was acquired by Abu Dhabi United Group in 2009, made massive investments, saw revenues skyrocket, and came to dominate football—all while ostensibly complying with every financial regulation presented to them. (The sole exception was 2014, when they breached UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules and eventually reached a settlement spanning three years.)

Regardless of how Manchester City's case ultimately resolves—whether through expulsion from the Premier League, Sheikh Mansour paying hundreds of millions in fines and damages, or the club overturning most or all charges on appeal—it should serve as a wake-up call for football's administrators. The message is clear: football needs better regulation and greater transparency.

However it concludes, one thing is unambiguous: the system was broken. Either Manchester City engaged in systematic "deception" (to borrow the inquiry's language) and the system failed to detect and prevent the violations, or the Premier League was so incompetent that it was duped by a traditional club's scheme and spent eight years on a futile investigation. Neither outcome is good. In fact, both are profoundly embarrassing for the world's most successful league.

What would better regulation and transparency look like? Look to the NFL, where information about salaries, sponsorships, and other revenue is shared not just with the league but with all teams and the players' association. This creates a positive feedback loop of self-policing that makes financial fraud less likely. (Not impossible, but harder. Long-suffering San Francisco 49ers fans understand this.)

In the Premier League, too much is kept under lock and key in the name of "competitive advantage." Not just Manchester City, but virtually every club discloses the bare legal minimum, operating like ordinary businesses rather than managing the vital public trust underpinning the world's most popular sport.

All of this ultimately brings the conversation back to Pinto.

Is it fair to call him, in some sense, a hero—to say he saved football? He would certainly think so. Indeed, in court testimony, he described himself as a whistleblower exposing corruption in football. On the original Football Leaks website, he wrote, "Our beloved sport is rotten. It is time to say enough is enough." But his approach was unmistakably haphazard: he simply dumped tens of millions of documents online.

Among those documents were some suggesting illegal intent that triggered investigations and prosecutions. (This included not only Manchester City but also illegal third-party ownership schemes involving the company Doyen Sports, as well as tax evasion allegations involving figures like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, José Mourinho, and Luka Modrić.)

Other documents contained interesting, newsworthy information, such as evidence that plans for a European Super League existed as early as 2016, or that Paris Saint-Germain used ethnic origin criteria when scouting players. Still other revelations amounted to little more than football trivia—for instance, Liverpool's contract with Balotelli included a 1 million pound bonus if he received fewer than three red cards in a season.

Or consider that Cristiano Ronaldo's staff members—including his nanny, chef, and driver—had to sign non-disclosure agreements promising not to reveal anything about his private life for 70 years after his death. Or that Ronaldo once conducted a four-hour photo shoot, signed five jerseys, and made two social media posts for a Saudi Arabian telecom company in exchange for 1.1 million euros. Or that Real Madrid deliberately underreported Bale's transfer fee to convince people that Ronaldo, despite his slightly lower fee, remained the sport's most expensive player.

The vast majority of leaked documents had no news value whatsoever. I remember spending hours (time never recovered) reading the left-back contract of Ait-Nouri, a young player who transferred to Angers, which Pinto had uploaded to the original Football Leaks website before partnering with Der Spiegel. It contained nothing beyond a teenager's privacy invasion.

Two other matters cast a shadow over Pinto's work. The first is his 2015 extortion attempt against Doyen Sports. A Lisbon court convicted him in 2023 and handed down a suspended four-year sentence. He contacted the company's CEO, Nélio Lucas, demanding 500,000 euros in exchange for not publishing hacked documents. Pinto has consistently maintained his innocence, claiming he merely wanted to "verify" the documents, but the court disagreed.

The second is that it remains unclear how he obtained these documents, whether he was directed, or whether he acted alone. His account has also shifted over the years—initially claiming the documents were provided to him, later admitting he hacked into some victims. At this point, the picture grows murkier still. Doyen Sports was clearly hacked, and Manchester City likely was too. Yet the sheer volume and diversity of documents suggest that either Pinto was a genius hacker or he did not act alone.

It is worth noting that Pinto has paid a price for his actions. He spent years hiding in Hungary before being extradited to Portugal in 2019. He has made numerous enemies worldwide and now has a criminal record. He claims to have received multiple death threats—claims credible enough that the Portuguese government placed him in a witness protection program in 2020. However, his lawyer stated that these protections are set to end next Saturday, October 10. Pinto posted on social media last Friday announcing he would launch a crowdfunding campaign to cover security costs.

If there is any silver lining to this entire saga, it is that as long as the independent committee's verdict holds up on appeal, there is an opportunity not only to hold tax evaders and wrongdoers accountable but, more importantly, for football to improve its self-regulation and for tax authorities to do their jobs better. Luis Pinto's actions contain both light and shadow, and we may never know which impulse truly drove him. But without him, there would have been no light at the end of the tunnel. That deserves acknowledgment.

AI翻訳。

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