UEFA’s multi club ownership rules are nothing new to football fans of all colours up and down the country these days, and even our European brethren are well aware of them given the stories that have done the rounds concerning Aston Villa, Manchester City, Chelsea, Nottingham Forest – and particularly Crystal Palace and their punishment last season – and their sister clubs across the Channel.
Whilst most fans have been eagerly enjoying the battles at the top and bottom of divisions for the last few weeks, clubs have been beavering away in the background to ensure that they are not caught short should the rules apply to them based on their final league placings. After Palace’s largely unexpected Cup victory last term – with half of the English top flight clubs now in a multi club arrangement of some sort – even sides who do not expect it to apply to them have been busy doing their homework just on the off chance that the March 1st deadline may somehow come back to bite them in the future.
Fans are understandably slowly becoming preoccupied with the best World Cup betting offers as the summer approaches, but clubs cannot even focus on the end of the season yet because of laughable red tape.
With Brighton and Hove Albion’s late charge towards the European qualification places, even they have been revisiting their paperwork from three seasons ago, with others frantically covering all options with UEFA to ensure compliance with the requirements given Heart of Midlothian’s likely involvement.
Football’s bureaucratic governing body insist that sporting integrity is of ‘fundamental importance’ and that remains ‘undisputable’, whereas fans would simply laugh at that assertion and point to both UEFA, and that of the domestic associations, favouritism, contradictions and the ease of which deals can be made for certain sides that are seemingly off the table for others. Palace received a demotion for an unexpected qualification despite the shareholder in question reducing his stake despite not being part of the active executive team, whilst other clubs can use ‘blind trusts’ and we will not talk about Chelsea and Strasbourg who apparently share water and electricity supplies as easily as managers and players…
Palace were one of three sides caught out as UEFA changed their own rules last term bringing the deadline for compliance from after qualification to March, and despite appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, all three teams lost, so come the end of February it was paperwork panic stations – and this season the newest story to be added could be the Friedkin Group owned duo of Everton and AS Roma, as much like the best World Cup betting sites, the potential odds on what could happen here will be wide and varied.
Each team has a different subsidiary owner, but Analaura Moreira-Dunkel and Marcus Watts are now on the Everton board, having been formally involved with Roma, so with both teams potentially set for Europa League qualification is that problematic under UEFA’s ‘broad’ control scope? Is Dan Friedkin, Everton’s chairman and Roma’s president?
With both teams in the same competition directly, unlike Palace and Lyon, where the French side could have been relegated from the Champions League, which is the dominant club if final league positions match? For those fans investigating how to bet on the World Cup, the dominant clubs in that competition will be obvious to all.
Forest have again gone the blind trust route should they qualify this year by winning the competition, but this is a blind trust where Evangelos Marinakis apparently had no control at Forest on qualification last season but appeared on the pitch to berate manager Nuno Espirito Santo and was not charged with unlawfully entering the field of play. They made their change again at the end of February, but as of April 1st, Marinakis was still listed, so with the change being official on April 17 will UEFA insist that it has missed the deadline this year despite presumably not being in a blind trust in the meantime?
Chelsea and Strasbourg have paperwork shuffled key executives in February after trading a manager and eleven players this season, but they could be considered delinked and only be permitted to trade players again from January 2028.
City (Girona) and Manchester United (Nice) were allowed a blind trust last season to compete in the same competitions from the get go…UEFA said it was a one time deal, but will it be?
Is sporting integrity in the eyes of UEFA so robust, of fundamental importance and that undisputable, that simply changing a name or two on the same date of every season to comply with a deadline means no appearance of control, impropriety or even a suggestion of a major flaw and weakness in the very rules they hold to, can exist?
Blimey, who knew? I’m convinced, definitely no issues here – time for a Red product with Wings.
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