For Tony Pulis, the 2011 FA Cup final was always one of the proudest days of his career, even though Stoke City left Wembley without the trophy. Fifteen years later, Manchester City's financial verdict has changed the way the former Stoke manager looks back on that afternoon.
Pulis says he now feels his team were "cheated" after reports that Manchester City have been found guilty of almost all the financial charges brought against them by the Premier League. Stoke lost the 2011 final 1-0 to a City side assembled at enormous expense, with Yaya Touré scoring the only goal. It was City's first major trophy for 35 years and the first of the Abu Dhabi ownership era, making the game a symbolic starting point for the period of success now being scrutinised in a very different light.
Writing about the verdict on Sunday, Pulis revealed the question Stoke supporters have been asking him since the news emerged: "When do we get our FA Cup?" He does not seriously expect the Football Association to hand Stoke the trophy, but his reaction illustrates a much wider problem created by the City case. If the findings survive the expected appeal, clubs that finished behind City during the period covered by the charges will inevitably ask what, if anything, can be done about opportunities they believe they lost.
Why does Pulis believe Stoke were cheated?
Stoke arrived at Wembley on May 14, 2011 attempting to win the FA Cup for the first time in the club's history. Pulis had built one of the Premier League's most distinctive teams on a fraction of City's budget, and reaching the final represented a rare opportunity for Stoke to win one of English football's major trophies.
Manchester City were at a very different stage of their development. Sheikh Mansour's takeover in 2008 had transformed the club's spending power, allowing Roberto Mancini to build a squad containing players such as Touré, David Silva, Carlos Tevez, Vincent Kompany and Mario Balotelli. City had not yet become the serial Premier League champions of the following decade, but the scale of the project was already clear.
The financial difference between the teams is central to Pulis's argument today. He pointed specifically to Touré, who had joined City from Barcelona for around £24 million in 2010 and was reportedly earning roughly £180,000 per week. Pulis said the midfielder cost more than Stoke's entire starting XI and was earning around ten times as much as any of his players.
Touré then scored the goal that decided the final, drilling the ball past Thomas Sørensen in the 74th minute. At the time, Pulis accepted the defeat as the result of his team coming up against a collection of elite players assembled by a club with resources Stoke could not match. The reported verdict against City has changed his interpretation of that imbalance.
Pulis said he had previously been able to live with the disappointment because Stoke had simply fallen short against an outstanding team. Now, he argues, they lost to a club that has subsequently been found guilty by an independent commission of breaking financial rules during the relevant period, although City continue to deny wrongdoing and are expected to appeal.
“We won't ever get that day back”
Pulis's strongest point is less about possession of the physical FA Cup than the experience Stoke lost. The club had never previously reached an FA Cup final, and supporters travelled to Wembley believing they might witness one of the greatest days in Stoke City's history.
Victory would have meant the trophy, winners' medals and a celebration through Stoke-on-Trent that could never be recreated retrospectively. Even if football authorities somehow decided years later that the historical result should be altered, Pulis argues that the players and supporters could not recover the moment they missed in 2011.
"We won't ever get that day back," Pulis wrote, saying the opportunity to celebrate with the cup and the medals had disappeared permanently. He described the verdict as leaving a "very sour taste" because City's players were able to experience that celebration instead.
There is also a broader significance to the 2011 final. City had not won a major trophy since the League Cup in 1976, and their victory over Stoke effectively announced the arrival of the new club on the English football landscape. Sergio Agüero's title-winning goal against Queens Park Rangers followed a year later, before City developed into the dominant English club of the following decade.
For Stoke, meanwhile, Wembley remains a very different memory. The club have still never won the FA Cup, making the 2011 defeat impossible to dismiss as simply one unsuccessful final among many.
Could Stoke actually be awarded the 2011 FA Cup?
There is currently no indication that Stoke City will be awarded the trophy, and Pulis himself accepts that such an outcome is unlikely. He said he does not expect Manchester City to return the FA Cup or their winners' medals and believes a points deduction and a substantial financial penalty are more realistic possible sanctions.
That distinction matters because the reported verdict against City does not automatically rewrite the results of matches played during the period covered by the case. The independent commission has yet to announce a final punishment, Manchester City are expected to appeal and the club continue to insist that the process is not finished.
Retrospectively reallocating trophies would also create significant complications. If authorities began changing historical outcomes, questions would immediately extend beyond Stoke and the 2011 FA Cup to Premier League title races, European qualification and other competitions involving Manchester City during the relevant years. Determining who should receive a trophy is also different from deciding that a club should lose one, particularly when competitions were completed more than a decade ago.
The FA Cup creates an additional wrinkle because the financial case itself was brought by the Premier League rather than the Football Association. Any attempt to alter the status of the 2011 final would therefore involve questions extending beyond the Premier League's disciplinary process.
Stoke may not be the only club asking questions
Pulis's comments could be an early indication of the reaction that follows if the findings against City survive appeal. Manchester United and Liverpool finished runners-up to City in Premier League title races during the period surrounding the allegations, while numerous other clubs competed with them for Champions League places, domestic trophies and prize money.
Not every sporting disappointment can simply be converted into a legal claim. Establishing financial loss would require clubs to demonstrate how City's breaches directly affected them, and the final scope of any potential claims will depend heavily on which findings survive the appeals process and what punishment is eventually imposed.
Pulis nevertheless believes clubs affected by City's success will be considering their legal position. His own argument is deliberately more emotional than legal: Stoke had one opportunity to win the FA Cup, faced a vastly more expensive Manchester City team and lost to a goal scored by one of City's biggest signings.
That perspective is why the fallout from the verdict could become much larger than the question of how many points Manchester City might lose in 2026/27. A sporting punishment deals with City's position now, while the clubs they defeated during the years under investigation are left asking whether anything can address what happened then.
For Pulis, the answer appears to be that nothing really can. Stoke could theoretically receive recognition or compensation at some point, but neither would recreate May 14, 2011 with a different final whistle. Fifteen years after watching Touré score at Wembley, the former Stoke manager is looking back at the biggest cup final of his career and seeing a defeat that now feels very different.
Published by Patrick Jane
27.09.2026