UEFA should block multi-club ownership as Man Utd face Champions League ban
There is an unfamiliar look to the top of La Liga at the moment with Girona standing on the shoulders of the giants of the Spanish game. For a club with a ground which holds under 12,000 and who are more accustomed to life in the Spanish lower leagues it is a remarkable ranking – but maybe it should not be so surprising given their blue bloodline.
Girona are part of Manchester City’s global stable of clubs, a link which has allowed them to tap into City’s knowledge bank and more specifically their worldwide scouting network and helped them punch well above their weight.
The club’s chairman – Pep Guardiola’s brother Pere – must be delighted at seeing little Girona top of the table. It is a refreshing change in one sense given the usual dominance of Real Madrid and Barcelona but it only serves to highlight the latest unhealthy fad in football.
If last season’s treble winners are the market leaders in the field of – multi-club ownership – since they started magpieing a decade ago City Football Group now has 13 clubs under its wing – plenty of others have followed suit.
Almost 200 clubs worldwide are now part of a multi-club ownership structure – more than four times as many as in 2012. Red Bull own five teams in Europe and the Americas, the same number as Eagle Football Holdings who include Crystal Palace in their portfolio.
The majority of clubs in the Premier League are part of multi-club ownership set-ups with Chelsea’s purchase of Ligue 1 side Strasbourg in the summer taking the total to 11. Manchester United will become No 12 when Sir Jim Ratcliffe – whose INEOS group also owns Ligue 1 high-fliers Nice and Swiss side Lausanne – finally comes on board as a minority shareholder.
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Everton will become No 13 when the American-based 777 Partners complete their takeover. For the clubs themselves, the economies of scale and the spreading of risk are obvious attractions. But what about the integrity of the game itself?
Spreading players around a mini-empire and fattening them up turkey-like for sale at the appropriate time…that doesn’t sound much like the beautiful game. Neither does roping off feeder clubs so their primary purpose no longer becomes their own success but serving the needs of the parent club.
Multi-club ownership may all be within the regulations – even the trick of using Belgian clubs to obtain work permits more easily for overseas players – but it has an unsavoury smell surrounding it.
The Premier League’s failure to close the loophole which allows related-party loans this week, after a closing of the ranks by some of the clubs who stand to benefit from them, was an example of the sleaze the system brings with it.
Of the eight clubs who voted to block a proposed ban in the January transfer window, only Wolves do not have – or will not shortly have – a multi-club ownership model. The headline beneficiaries are Newcastle United who will now be free to bolster their beleaguered ranks through loans from the four Saudi Pro League clubs also owned by PIF without any Financial Fair Play repercussions.
The Premier League are likely to try again with a revised proposal at some point but there is no guarantee of success. The weight of self-interest against it is growing all the time. The noisiest alarm bell surrounding the growth of related-party clubs is the threat of them playing each other and the corruption that invites.
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At present UEFA’s current regulations prevent co-owned clubs competing in the same European competitions. If both Girona and City win La Liga and the Premier League, the rules state that only one of them could enter the Champions League.
The same applies with the Europa League if, say, Manchester United get their act together when Ratcliffe pitches up and his Nice side continue their fine start to the season.
However a blind eye was turned to allow RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg to meet in the Europa League four seasons ago despite being owned by the same parent company and, worryingly, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has talked openly about relaxing this rule.
If UEFA do drop the barriers they would be asking for trouble. With the financial stakes so high, the temptation for connivance would be too great. Instead the football authorities should go the other way and ban multi-club ownership altogether. If not, a system which should never have been allowed to become so commonplace is only going to become more prevalent.
It will be hard to put the genie back in the bottle and the clubs affected will kick and scream but it is not impossible.
A decade ago players like Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano effectively belonged to offshore companies but FIFA had the courage to outlaw third-party player ownership and the game is better off for it. With apologies to Girona, the same would apply if multi-club ownership went the same way.
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