Body language expert flags 'unusual' blinking pattern in Man City CEO's guilty verdict response

Manchester City CEO Ferran Soriano went almost three minutes without blinking in a video message to club staff following Tuesday’s bombshell ruling that the club were guilty on 114 of their 115 Premier League charges — and a body language expert says the delivery was striking for reasons beyond the words alone.

The independent commission found that City had “overstated [its income] by over £830m” across a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018 and had arranged “sham commercial deals” with several sponsors. Soriano responded with a fiercely defensive video statement, labelling the verdict a “conspiracy theory” and reiterating the club’s intention to pursue every available legal avenue.

Body language expert Judi James told Mirror Football that Soriano’s composure throughout the clip was “unusually textbook impeccable”, with his hand gestures and facial expressions closely matching his spoken words. What caught her attention most, however, was his near-total absence of blinking.

“The average blink rate is around 15 to 20 per minute, which is quite a consistent rate, and it might actually be reasonable to expect Soriano’s blink rate to speed up a little under the pressure of making what are clearly some emotional points,” James said.

“Intriguingly, there appears to be no sign of any blinking until the only visible cut in the video at 1.54. Even after that it only appears to be at 2.55 that the first blink is seen and then maybe another after that.”

James was careful to note that Soriano’s eyes were far from expressionless during the clip. “His left eye wrinkles in a smile at one point; the eye expression gets colder at another, then we see his brows rise in an expression of surprise before there is a hardening that suggests inner anger,” she said. “So we have the eyes showing expression but no apparent blinking for nearly three minutes, which is unusual.”

She added that the absence of blinking can sometimes be attributed to intense focus, and noted there was also no visible micro-darting of the pupils typically associated with reading from an autocue.

City’s guilty verdict — on all but one of the charges brought against them — represents the most significant disciplinary ruling in Premier League history. The club have made clear they intend to challenge the outcome through every legal channel available to them.