Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola was reportedly targeted by a rogue hacker who attempted to sell his private emails for £100,000.
The IT worker, who said hacking the Spaniard was the “easiest thing” he had done, claimed to have attained access to players’ personal details and records of confidential transfer talks.
According to The Sun , he claimed to have accessed the City boss’s account from his mobile and downloaded personal emails, confidential transfer exchanges and his entire contacts book.
The report adds that he then took screenshots of the personal accounts attained while working at the Etihad base in 2017 before showing investigators information that he said had been sent to his encrypted ProtonMail email account.
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Some accounts are alleged to have information regarding ‘possible transfers to City' with chats that related to centre-backs Matthijs de Ligt and Sokratis Papastathopoulos.
Former Ajax centre-back De Ligt was one of Europe’s most sought after players last summer and was linked with several of Europe’s big hitters, including City.
He eventually signed for Italian champions Juventus in a £67.8m after lengthy negotiations, while Sokratis joined Arsenal from Borussia Dortmund in 2018.
The worker also claimed to have the contact details of City players, including former goalkeeper Joe Hart and ex-captain Vincent Kompany.
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The report adds that the man was attempting to exchange the information for £100,000 which he wanted to be paid in crypto-currency Bitcoin.
City are believed to have contacted Greater Manchester Police over the hacking where officers spent several days tracking the suspect down before arresting him this week.
And officers supposedly conducted a search of his home and were also examining his computers, mobile phones and email accounts.
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The allegations come not long after City were slapped with a two year European ban for breaching Financial Fair Play rules.
UEFA’s Adjudicatory Chamber found the Citizens had overstated their sponsorship revenue between 2012 and 2016 and also penalised them with a €30million (£25m) fine.
The Premier League champions have registered their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the ruling by Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB).
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