John Textor has insisted that he didn’t have a decisive influence at Crystal Palace as the FA Cup winners await Uefa’s decision on whether they can compete in next season’s Europa League.
Palace are facing the threat of being demoted to the Conference League by European football’s governing body because the American businessman also owns a majority stake in Ligue 1 side Lyon, who have also qualified for the Europa League. The French club have successfully appealed against relegation to Ligue 2, with Uefa having delayed its ruling on Palace last week pending the outcome of Lyon’s appeal.
Uefa sources have indicated that its Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), which investigates alleged breaches of its multi-club ownership rules, is due to decide on Palace’s fate this week. Clubs are barred from competing in the same Uefa competition if an individual or ownership group is considered to have a decisive influence over more than one of those teams.
Textor recently agreed to sell his Palace shares to the New York Jets owner, Woody Johnson, a deal that is expected to be ratified by the Premier League in the coming days. Textor also owns the Brazilian side Botafogo, who defeated Paris Saint-Germain during the group stages of the Club World Cup last month, but he revealed that he did not even consider placing his shares in Palace into a blind trust before Uefa’s 1 March deadline because it was clear he was not in day-to-day control at Selhurst Park.
“Why should I put my interest in a trust back before March when the rule says you only have to do it if you have decisive influence? I don’t,” he told TalkSport on Thursday.
“If I had a decisive influence, then those Brazilian players that just beat PSG in the Club World Cup, half of them would be coming to Crystal Palace next year. But you don’t see one single player from our network of clubs that’s made its way on to the Palace roster, which is the source of my frustration with the lack of collaboration that we’ve been able to have with Crystal Palace. I am dumb enough and successful enough to not predict in advance what a governing body is going to say.”
Textor said he had documented proof that he could not make “management decisions” at Palace and that Uefa “have seen that document”. Asked what his influence was at Palace, he added: “I helped etc etc: I helped. I helped a lot. I showed up during Covid. I paid off the Covid debt. I helped finish the academy. The capital, I’m sitting there on the board with four other guys. [Chairman Steve] Parish is making decisions. He’s bringing us players. He involves us, but he doesn’t really listen to us. He does, but a suggestion from time to time is not the same as decisive influence.”
Textor also rejected reports that he had told the CFCB that he had been instrumental in the decision to hire Oliver Glasner as Palace’s manager last year.
“I tried to hire him in Lyon. And if [former Palace sporting director] Dougie Freedman notices and he goes to visit him in Salzburg just the way I did and he ends up at Crystal Palace, is there a connection there? I don’t know. Steve’s not going to be told who to hire as a coach,” he said.
“It’s incredibly untrue. We sat in front of the Uefa panel and were extremely consistent on the lack of decisive influence. I don’t even know if I suggested him to Dougie but Dougie recruited him.”
Textor confirmed that he attempted to take full control of Palace two weeks before the FA Cup final against Manchester City. But he claimed Parish had been given a “stay of execution” after he failed to agree a deal to buy the 36% stake owned by fellow Americans Josh Harris and David Blitzer, with the threat of being banned from the Europa League having forced him to sell his shares to Johnson.
“This obviously strengthened him in that position,” he said of Parish. “I think his ambition every year is to avoid relegation. Our ambition is to climb the table.”
Asked whether his hopes of taking over Palace had been scuppered by Uefa’s rules on multi-club ownership, Textor added: “I never want to be the man. Ask the guy that drives the red Ferrari that. But I’m not that guy.”
