UEFA Considers Rule Change with Potential Impact on Manchester United Takeover

The potential change in UEFA rules that would permit multiple clubs with the same owner to compete in the Champions League at the same time could have consequences for the takeover of Manchester United.

This change would contradict football’s purported opposition to multi-club ownership. The two primary offers for the takeover of Manchester United are from investors who have connections to French clubs in Ligue 1. INEOS, led by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, owns Nice, while the other bid comes from Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, who denies any association with Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain.

During an interview with Gary Neville’s popular YouTube channel, The Overlap, UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin mentioned the possibility of revisiting current rules. Ceferin is considering two options: maintaining the existing ban on clubs with the same owner competing in the same tournament or allowing such clubs to participate and disregarding previous efforts to combat 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?”