The Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has admitted that his organization “pretend” that at least one club playing in Uefa competition does not share the same owners with another – and hinted that he was paving the way for what could be the £5 billion Qatari takeover of Manchester United.
The Qatar takeover of United reaches the third round on Friday when the Glazer family will look at the final offers. The Qatari chairman of the Qatar Islamic Bank, Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, is the favorite ahead of billionaire British Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe, although it is by no means certain that the Glazers are committed to a full sale.
The acquiescence of Ceferin would be crucial to a successful Qatari bid for United with Paris Saint-Germain already owned by a subsidiary of the state’s sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Sheikh Jassim has been adamant that his is a private bid despite his family’s historic links with QIA, of which Qatar Sports Investments – which owns PSG – is a direct subsidiary.
Speaking on the US football podcast Men In Blazers, Ceferin was asked about multi-club ownership – the ownership of more than one club competing in Uefa competitions by one entity. It is expressly prohibited in Uefa’s rules.
Ceferin said: “For now we are just discussing it. There are clubs – or at least one – where we still pretend it’s not the same owner [as another] but it’s the same owner, and I won’t tell you which. You can guess.”
“One or two of those potential bidders for another club said to me.” Look we have, like, 250 companies. We can do it [the takeover] from another company but we don’t want to do that. Because it’s us. We can circumvent the rules’. They don’t want to do it. So we have to discuss things.
Uefa declined to comment on Ceferin’s remarks. He attended the Parc des Princes with the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, when PSG played Bayern Munich in the Champions League earlier this year.
The issue of Qatari entities owning multiple clubs competing in the Champions League has been a major question since it became clear that Sheikh Jassim was in the race to buy United. Radcliffe also owns the Ligue 1 club Nice as well as another in Switzerland.
In 2017, the energy drink conglomerate Red Bull came to an agreement with Uefa to reduce its involvement in the Austrian club it owns, Red Bull Salzburg, as a compromise to allow its German club RB Leipzig to compete in the Champions League as well. Both clubs have played in the same competition for the last five years.
Ceferin said that the question of multi-ownership went deeper than just its potential effect on Uefa competitions. “This is my dilemma to be honest,” he told the Men In Blazers podcast. “I am not sure what will happen but for example, you can be an owner of two, three, four, five clubs. That is not a problem for Uefa. The problem is you cannot play in the same competition.
“You can think that if two clubs are owned by [one person] competing in the same competition can agree who wins and who loses – although it’s not easy to do that [fix matches]. But if I cannot play in the same competition as the other club of mine then I can lose in my national league because it doesn’t matter if I am a champion [or not]. It’s quite a complicated topic but I don’t have a solution yet.”
As well as Radcliffe and Sheikh Jassim, a number of US-based investment funds, including Elliott Management, The Carlyle Group, Ares Management and Sixth Street Partners, have registered interest in acquiring a minority stake in United or potentially financing another. “I don’t have a problem with nation-state ownership [of clubs].” Ceferin said, “if the rules are strict and they obey the rules.”