Uefa is facing pressure to push back its deadline for separating ownership structures after a turbulent summer in which a handful of clubs, including Crystal Palace, were denied access to European competitions due to multi-club ownership rule-breaches.
It is understood that a number of smaller sides within multi-club operations will lobby Uefa to put back the 1 March date by which they must demonstrate compliance with the regulations. Clubs are barred from appearing in the same competition if one individual is deemed to have decisive influence over them both; Palace were controversially found to have broken MCO rules because their then-largest shareholder, John Textor, also held a controlling stake in Lyon. Both teams qualified for the Europa League and Palace were ultimately demoted to the Conference League, beginning their campaign on Thursday with a 1-0 victory against Fredrikstad in the playoff first leg.
Any change agreed by Uefa would mean backtracking on last season’s move to bring forward the deadline from 1 June. Palace believe that change was critical to their fate: they qualified for Europe by winning the FA Cup in May and claimed, with that prospect looking distant at the start of March, they had not been placed to meet the cut-off. That argument was rejected by Uefa’s club financial control body, whose decision was upheld on appeal by the court of arbitration for sport.
The League of Ireland side Drogheda and Dunajska Sreda, from Slovakia, also fell foul of the rules and were kicked out of Europe altogether after qualifying for the Conference League, alongside clubs to which they were connected. Multiple sources at governance and ownership levels agree changes are needed to ensure no repeats of this year’s confusion. It is an ongoing discussion in the corridors of power, although the nature of any resolution remains unclear.
Uefa is understood to be reluctant to amend their regulations so soon after imposing the 1 March deadline, but their executive committee will discuss the situation when it meets in Tirana next month. The European Club Association, who run all European competitions as part of a joint venture with Uefa, has sympathy with those affected and may be willing to intervene on their behalf if it receives a formal proposal in the next few weeks.
“Uefa changed the rules as they concluded that 1 June was too close to the start of the qualifying rounds, but demanding clubs make governance changes during the middle of the season on the off chance of having a good run seems a disproportionate response,” a source in one multi-club group said. “There would be no sporting integrity issues raised if they were given more time. And the smaller clubs, without huge scale and resources, will always be the ones most affected.”
Ironically, another argument against the 1 March deadline stems from the case of Nottingham Forest, who have benefited from Palace’s problems by being promoted to the Europa League in their place, having made strong legal representations to Uefa and Cas. Before the Palace issue emerged, the Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, had put his shares in the club into a blind trust in case they qualified for the Champions League along with his other club, Olympiakos. That ultimately proved unnecessary as Forest finished seventh in the Premier League last season to initially earn a Conference League place. Forest were effectively placed in a blind trust for all of six weeks. “To go through that process without it being required feels strange,” admitted a source at Uefa.
The blind trust workaround is queried by some figures in the game, who doubt its effectiveness as a distancing strategy. One club owner notes that Marinakis hardly looked disengaged from Forest when confronting their manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, on the pitch after a draw with Leicester City in May. There is a sense blind trusts will become increasingly common while remaining little more than a fig leaf.
Few expected owners to change their strategies in mid-course as a result of recent controversies. There is little anecdotal evidence of this summer’s issues deterring clubs from pursuing multi-club operations, or putting off investors in general. In the Premier League alone, Burnley’s owners, Velocity Sport Limited, bought a minority stake in Espanyol in July, while Fenway Sports Group are in talks with several Spanish clubs about joining their Liverpool-led stable.
Nonetheless, the multi-club landscape looks certain to evolve over the coming years and different models are emerging. “Investors are likely to become more cautious and structured in how they manage multi-club relationships,” says Xander Czaikowski, CEO of Estrella Football Group. “It pushes the industry towards more professionalised frameworks and clearer rules of engagement.”
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Estrella, who recently bought a stake in the Portuguese club Cascais and are in the final stages of several other deals, aim to invest in minority shares at between 10 and 20 smaller clubs. They would be treated non-hierarchically and share a digital club management platform; the thinking is that value can be created across multiple similarly sized operations rather than by prioritising the sporting results of one team. “We typically take minority stakes, precisely because of the regulatory environment,” Czaikowski says. “The shift is from a top-down, controlling MCO approach to one that is horizontal and collaborative.”
Whether or not such approaches catch on, existing models will undoubtedly continue to face intense scrutiny. Earlier this week Ultra Boys 90, a Racing Strasbourg fan group, announced they will continue to fight against the ownership of Chelsea’s holding company, BlueCo, despite a relatively successful 2024-25 season that brought Conference League qualification. “The issues we’ve been raising have not magically disappeared,” their statement said. “Racing is no longer a club that makes decisions in its own interest.”
Czaikowski is among those who believe Uefa’s rules focus disproportionately on ownership structures, while a deeper problem in the form of unsustainable financial models remains inadequately addressed. In the short term there is, at least, a consensus that recent mishaps must not be recur. Drogheda, whose owners also run Walsall and the Danish club Silkeborg, felt miscommunication over the regulations was a significant factor in their fate.
“There’s a balance to be struck between encouraging investment and good governance, and we’re comfortable with where we are in general,” another source at Uefa added. “A bigger issue is whether all clubs and potential new investors actually know the rules. There’s more we can do to educate and help them I’m sure.”
