UEFA could start allowing clubs with the same owner to play in the Champions League simultaneously, a move that would gesture a middle finger at football’s apparent fight against multi-club ownership.
There could have significant ramifications for the takeover of Manchester United, with the two main offers on the table coming from investors who have relationships with French clubs competing in Ligue 1.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS group also owns Nice, while the other bid has been submitted by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, who is denying any links to Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain.
In an interview with Gary Neville’s successful The Overlap YouTube channel, Aleksander Ceferin, the present of UEFA, said a rethink of the existing rules could be on the agenda.
Ceferin wants to explore two different options — to keep the ban in place and prohibit clubs with the same owner playing in the same competition, or to allow them take part and ignore the work done against multi-club ownership.
When asked about the potential conflicts of two clubs in the same competition, under the same ownership, Ceferin said (via The Times): “We are not thinking about Manchester United only. We’ve had five or six owners of clubs who want to buy another club. We have to see what to do.
“The options are that it stays like that or that we allow them to play in the same competition. I’m not sure yet.
“We have to speak about these regulations and see what to do about it. There is more and more interest in this multi-club ownership. We shouldn’t just say no for the investments for multi-club ownership, but we have to see what kind of rules we set in that case, because the rules have to be strict.”
Ceferin added: “From one point of view it’s true if you are the owner of two clubs and they play in the same competition you can say to one club to lose because you want the other to win. But for you, as a football player, do you think it’s so easy to do that, to tell a coach, lose the match because the other wants to win?”
Let us know in the comments section if you are for or against multi-club ownership in football.
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