Uefa plans to relax multi-club ownership declaration rules after Crystal Palace furore

Uefa is planning to give clubs more time to resolve potential multi-club ownership (MCO) issues next season following the controversy that led to Crystal Palace being expelled from the Europa League last summer.

In a proposed change to its regulations discussed with elite clubs at last week’s meeting of the newly named European Football Clubs in Rome, Uefa is set to relax the 1 March deadline, which Palace failed to meet last season in an oversight that led to the FA Cup winners losing their Europa League place to Nottingham Forest.

Under the new rules any club in contention for European qualification the following season would still be required to highlight any potential MCO issues to Uefa by 1 March, but would then be given additional time at the end of the season to resolve any problems if multiple clubs in the same ownership group have qualified for the same competition.

With the draws for the qualifying rounds of the Europa League and Conference League taking place in June, the final deadline for resolving any MCO clashes would be put back to the start of that month. A failure to flag any issues by March would still be deemed a breach of the rules.

The standard mechanism for avoiding a MCO breach is to set up a blind trust to manage one club, as Manchester City and Manchester United have done in the past with Girona and Nice, but Palace and Lyon failed to make such provisions last season.

Uefa’s initiative is a response to a tumultuous summer dominated by MCO disputes particularly the Palace saga, which saw Forest give evidence against their Premier League rivals at the disciplinary hearing and in their subsequent appeal to the court of arbitration for sport in Lausanne. Elsewhere, League of Ireland side Drogheda and Dunajska Streda, from Slovakia, were expelled from European competition altogether after qualifying for the Conference League, alongside clubs from the same ownership group.

Palace were demoted to the Conference League after Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) ruled that they had failed to meet the March deadline for putting the club in a blind trust, which was deemed necessary as then-shareholder John Textor’s French club Lyon also qualified for the Europa League.

In a decision subsequently upheld by Cas, the CFCB ruled Textor’s joint shareholding at Palace and Lyon at the time of the deadline gave him a decisive influence at both clubs, despite the fact that he subsequently sold his 44.9% stake at Selhurst Park to Woody Johnson before this season’s competition started. Lyon were awarded the Europa League place, as Uefa’s qualifying criteria state that league position trumps a domestic cup win, a decision that could end up costing Palace over £20m.

Palace claimed to have been unaware of the 1 March deadline, at which stage they had yet to progress past the FA Cup fifth round, but the CFCB refused to allow any flexibility. Uefa hopes that moving to a dual deadline will prevent a recurrence of such problems in the future.

Uefa declined to comment.

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