Union

In a Perfect World, the Premier League Drops the Hammer on Manchester City and the Cavan Sullivan Deal Falls Apart

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Oct 13th, 2026 · 12:16 PM EDT

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Reader email regarding Cavan Sullivan:

“Just curious, if these allegations against Man City are proven to be true and are penalized, will or how may this affect him going over to City? Is he contractually obligated to do so?”

This is a good question.

I’ve been seeing it everywhere.

To set the scene, Sullivan has a contractual clause that will see him transfer to Manchester City when he turns 18. That’s 15 months from now. He’s not technically under contract with City, but instead has a pre-arranged transfer agreement within his Union contract.

This added caveat was reported by The Guardian back in 2024:

Because of the collaborative transfer agreement with Manchester City, Sullivan’s deal is unusual. It signals that the Premier League club trusts that the Union can develop an elite player. City will reportedly pay upwards of $5m to trigger a pre-arranged clause in Sullivan’s contract to bring him to the Premier League when he turns 18.

Meantime, City was recently found guilty of financial charges covering a nine-year stretch from 2009 to 2018. It’s alleged that City arranged fake sponsor and commercial agreements to inflate club revenues, which allowed them to bypass Premier League rules on how much money you can spend on players and transfers and whatnot. City denied wrongdoing and there hasn’t been any kind of final verdict or punishment handed down.

But, naturally, Union fans are wondering if Cavan still has to go to City. Is he allowed to go to City? Should he even go to City? Depends on the fallout. Maybe City gets hit with big sanctions and fines, or maybe nothing happens at all.

For what it’s worth, Tom Bogert at The Athletic wrote on October 1st that:

“Despite the uncertainty surrounding Manchester City’s future, nothing has changed for the outlook of U.S. men’s national team rising star Cavan Sullivan, who is set to join the club in January of 2028 after he turns 18, sources briefed on the situation tell The Athletic.“

Now, we ask ourselves a simple question, one that is oftentimes disregarded and marginalized – “what is best for the Philadelphia Union?”

What’s best is that Cavan Sullivan stays here forever and helps the team fill up the cabinet with trophies. Ideally, he doesn’t go anywhere at all and helps the Union win MLS Cup and continental tournaments alongside Kai Wagner and Mark McKenzie and Milan Iloski and his brother, Quinn. The Union become the biggest team in North America and go on to trounce Club America, Cruz Azul, and Inter Messi F.C. with regularity.

That’s not going to happen because the Union are a selling team. They develop, transfer, restock, and repeat while watching former academy kids go on to play for the United States National Team. It’s always nice to see that happen, a good story every time, but if you’re like me, you care more about the Union than the national team, or whatever European squad these guys end up playing for.

Personally, I don’t give one one-millionth of a fuck about Cavan Sullivan playing for Manchester City, which by the way, used to be a bang average, blue collar team before coming into vast wealth via foreign takeover around 2008. And with that spending came success, followed by legions of bandwagon poseur fans who loved Kun Aguero and Mario Balotelli but had never heard of guys like Richard Dunne or Stephen Ireland.

Manchester City sucks. Plastic team with plastic fans.

But I digress. The second-best Union scenario might go something like this:

• City gets hit with enough sanctions that either they pull out of the Cavan deal or Philly wants to get out of it
• dozens of slimeball lawyers are hired and they figure out how to negate the deal
• Cavan is then transferred somewhere else for MORE MONEY, because, let’s honest, he’s worth way more than $5-7 million at this point. I would love to see some cutthroat business from the Union here, i.e. City is corrupt and can’t be trusted so they find a way out of the deal and flip Cavan to Barcelona for $12 million instead. Bang bang!

Anyway, 15 months is a long time in the soccer world. Plenty can happen between now and then. Maybe City gets relegated. Maybe nothing happens to them. Maybe Cavan scores 20 goals in his first 12 games next year and everyone decides he’s ready to go over there early. Maybe they bring him to Europe and loan him out to a City sister team, like Girona. There are a lot of different pathways that could reveal themselves over the next year-plus, but I think they all lead out of Philadelphia.

So let’s enjoy this while we can.