Sir Jim Ratcliffe may face obstacle over multi-club ownership

Sir Jim Ratcliffe faces an obstacle over multi-club ownership.

Manchester United bidder Sir Jim Ratcliffe could be left with no other choice but to sell his stake in French club Nice to avoid the prospect of one of his teams being excluded from the Champions League, as per ESPN.

That will depend on whether Sir Jim Ratcliffe is successful in his attempts to buy Manchester United from the Glazer family. He faces competition from Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al-Thani, who fronts a Qatari consortium, with links to Paris Saint-Germain.

This only raises further question marks about multi-club ownership, but why is it something Sir Jim Ratcliffe faces as a problem and not Qatar?

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said earlier this month that European football’s governing body would contravene existing rules if both United and Nice qualified for the same UEFA competition under his ownership.

Mark Ogden reports on what would happen if both teams (United and Nice) finished in the Champions League qualification spots: “The club finishing higher would take the place in the competition, meaning that United would ,its out if they finished fourth and Nice finished in Ligue 1’s top three.”

That spells out circus.

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