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Nottingham Post
Nottingham Post
Sport
Peter Smith

UEFA two-day summit could have major impact on Nottingham Forest

Evangelos Marinakis will be watching with interest as UEFA holds a two-day summit this week to discuss "potentially seismic rulings" about multi-club ownership.

Marinakis, who owns Nottingham Forest and Olympiacos, is part of a growing trend for individuals or businesses to oversee clubs in clubs in different countries - and that is leading to increasing questions about transparency and the integrity of competition, particularly in European cups.

Now, as Chelsea's takeover over Strasbourg brings the situation to a head, UEFA Club Financial Control Body has a decision to make about whether to tighten, relax or keep the status quo. As it stands, if clubs who have the same owner qualify for the same competition, the lower-ranked side is disqualified.

Olympiacos are regulars in the Champions League and Europa League. They reached the group stage of the latter last season and knock-out rounds in the four previous campaigns to be ranked in the top 40 UEFA club rankings. That could have serious implications for Forest if they qualified for Europe.

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The i claims that rules could be changed in time for the 2024/25 season, with a hint from UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin that the stance could be softened.

Ceferin said recently: "We have to rethink this regulation There is more and more interest in this type of property. We shouldn't just say no to club multi-ownership.

"The decision has to be quick. We're not just thinking about United [with two offers to buy two funds]. We had five or six owners who wanted to buy another club. We have to see what we do, discuss and take the matter to the Executive Committee. The options are to stay as is or allow them to play the same competitions. I'm not sure."

Elsewhere in the Premier League, Brentford's owner Matthew Benham has a 75 per cent stake in FC Midtjylland, in Denmark, and Brighton and Hove Albion's Tony Bloom is behind Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, in Belgium. King Power own Leicester City and OH Leuven, Sport Republic have majority stakes in Southampton and Goztepe and West Ham's owners invest in Sparta Prague.

Manchester City's owners also run New York City, Melbourne City, Yokohama Marinos, Montevideo City Torque, Girona, Sichuan Jiuniu and Mumbai City. V Sports, the holding company in Aston Villa, has 46 per cent of shares in Portuguese club Vitoria.

There could be imminent conflicts: Brighton have qualified for the Europa League while Union SG are in the Europa League play-offs. Villa and Vitoria are in the Europa Conference League.

BirminghamLive, however, reported: "Villa fans should not be concerned."

They quote Vitoria president António Miguel Cardoso saying: "The first concern when we started the negotiations was this. Portuguese legal offices, Federation and League, English legal offices... There is no problem, there is absolutely no issue.

“UEFA's article 5 is also clear. Nothing creates that problem, we are protected. And we have an agreement with V Sports that if UEFA, in 10 or 15 years time, decides to change some rule, they are willing to be flexible and comply. There are even many cases with majority ownership where things have been circumvented."

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