The takeover of Manchester United may be affected by a prospective change in UEFA regulations that would allow multiple clubs with the same owner to participate in the Champions League simultaneously.
The alleged aversion of football to multi-club ownership would be contradicted by this shift. Investors with ties to Ligue 1 clubs in France have made the two top takeover bids for Manchester United. Nice is owned by INEOS, which is run by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and the competing offer is from Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, who denies any connection to Paris Saint-Germain, which is owned by Qatar.
The potential of reviewing current laws was brought up by UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin in a conversation with Gary Neville’s well-liked YouTube channel, The Overlap. Ceferin is debating whether to preserve the current prohibition against clubs with the same owner competing in the same tournament or to lift the restriction and disregard earlier attempts to curtail multi-club ownership.
When questioned about potential rivalries between teams competing in the same league and owned by the same person, Ceferin responded, according to The Times: “We are not thinking about Manchester United solely. Five or six club owners have expressed interest in purchasing other clubs. We must determine what to do.
“We have two choices: either it stays that way, or we let them participate in the same competition. I’m not yet certain.
“We need to discuss these rules and decide what to do about them. This multiple-club ownership is gaining popularity. We shouldn’t merely turn down investments for multi-club ownership; instead, we should consider the kind of regulations we would impose, which would need to be quite tight.
“From one perspective, it’s true if you own two teams and they participate in the same competition, you can tell one club to lose because you want the other to win,” Ceferin continued. But as a football player, do you believe it would be so simple for you to urge the coach to lose the game since the opposing team wants to win?
