According to UEFA rules, no group or individual may have “decisive influence” on more than one club in the same competition. Ratcliffe owns 27.7% of United and is in charge of the team’s football strategy. Ineos has controlled Nice since 2019.
Clubs have till Monday to comply with UEFA’s regulations. According to Ineos, it must by then make clear the changes it will be making and how their execution will proceed. United would be relegated to the Europa Conference League if they lost the case since their Premier League result (eighth) was lower than Nice’s Ligue 1 finish (fifth). Uefa will deliver the rulings in the summer.
After defeating Manchester City in the FA Cup final on Saturday, United advanced to the Europa League. “We are aware of the position of both clubs and are in direct dialogue with Uefa,” an Ineos statement stated. We are certain that we have a plan in place for the upcoming European season.
Girona and Manchester City, who both earned Champions League spots, must present a comparable argument to Uefa. This is due to the fact that City Football Group owns 44.3% of the Spanish team and 81% of the champions.
As is well known, Ineos feels that it has had constructive talks with Uefa in recent months and that the example of other multi-club organisations participating in the same European championship suggests a way forward.
RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg, both owned by Red Bull GmbH, participated in the 2017–18 Champions League. Uefa investigators discovered that the company had a significant influence over both clubs, but the club financial control body concluded that after certain employees connected to Red Bull and the teams’ loan agreements were terminated, there was insufficient evidence to support the idea that influence existed between the two clubs.
Three pairs of partner clubs—Toulouse and Milan, Aston Villa and Vitória Guimarães, and Brighton and Union Saint-Gilloise—were granted permission to participate in the same European competitions in July. In order to comply with the regulations, Uefa then mentioned “significant changes by the clubs and their related investors.”
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