Manchester United face the possibility of being banned from Europe next season because of Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
British billionaire Ratcliffe is on the verge of sealing a £1.3billion deal with the Glazers which will see his company, INEOS, acquire a 25 per cent stake in United, marking what they hope to be the first step in a staged takeover. But Ratcliffe's petrochemical conglomerate already own French outfit Nice, raising an issue for the Red Devils' hopes of playing Champions League football.
Under UEFA's current "multi-club ownership" rules, the only way in which both United and Nice could both play in Europe next term is if one qualifies automatically for the expanded Champions League group stage and the other directly enters the Conference League. A UEFA source told the Sun that the situation is "clear," as teams controlled by the same party must be prevented from facing each other in the same competition, as stated by Article 5.02 of UEFA's regulations.
Should the pair each finish in their respective divisions' Champions League places, the team that finishes higher of the two will be awarded qualification, while the other would banned from Europe. If, however, they were to finish in the same position, then United would get the nod because of England's ranking at the top of UEFA's "access list."
Earlier this year, though, both the Red Devils and Nice - who currently sit second in Ligue 1, while United are sixth in the Premier League - received hope, as UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin suggested during a chat with ex-Old Trafford captain Gary Neville that their multi-club ownership rules will soon be relaxed.
"We are not thinking about Manchester United only," Ceferin revealed on the Overlap in March. "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.
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"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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