Manchester United and Manchester City may both need to take swift action to avoid being banned from playing in the Champions League next season. The two clubs will be at risk of running into trouble unless changes are made at boardroom level between now and the start of the 2024/25 campaign.
City could land themselves in a pickle if sister club Girona manage to qualify for next season’s Champions League, with the Spanish side currently top of La Liga. They are owned by the City Football Group, which could see the defending European champions fall foul of UEFA regulations unless certain ties are cut.
For example, John MacBeath and Simon Cliff are currently on the boards of both clubs and would need to relinquish one of their positions or risk City being barred from the Champions League. United, meanwhile, could find themselves in a similar situation if Nice owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe completes his purchase of a minority stake in the Red Devils as expected.
Other clubs have been in the same boat over the last few years but managed to avoid being banned from European competition by making the necessary changes. Brighton chairman Tony Bloom reduced his ownership share in Union Saint-Gilloise to a minority stake after the Seagulls qualified for the Europa League, allowing both clubs to compete in the same tournament.
Aston Villa made a similar change after booking their place in the Europa Conference League alongside sister club Vitoria de Guimaraes. V Sports, the company who own Villa, were forced to reduce their stake in Vitoria to allow both teams to play in UEFA’s third-tier competition this season.
It suggests that City would need to scale back their involvement with Girona, while United will also be impacted upon Ratcliffe’s arrival in the boardroom at Old Trafford. Current UEFA rules state that if both sides qualify for the Champions League, access to the competition will go to the team which finishes higher in their respective league.
However, there is a chance that the regulations could be softened in the near future, with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin hinting at a change in the rules on multi-club ownership earlier this year.
“We are not thinking about Manchester United only,” he told Gary Neville on The Overlap. “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.
“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?”
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