Crystal Palace, UEFA and multi-club ownership: How a Europa League dream died

New York Times

2 days ago

The news Crystal Palace had been dreading was delivered mid-afternoon on Friday.
European football's governing body, UEFA, contacted the London club confirming they had been barred from entering next season's Europa League. They had, as the subsequent public statement stated, 'breached, as at 1 March 2025, the multi-club ownership criteria foreseen in Article 5.01 of the UEFA Club Competition Regulations'.
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Palace will instead compete in Europe's third-tier competition, the UEFA Conference League — a far less lucrative and prestigious tournament. But first there is a qualifying tie to navigate. It feels like scant reward for lifting the FA Cup, the first major trophy in the club's history.
Those jubilant scenes at Wembley feel distant now; the delight replaced by a sense of burning injustice or even outrage. That emotion will fuel an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), most likely next week, though there is realism within the club as to whether that last desperate attempt to claim their Europa League place will prove successful.
'We're devastated,' Palace chairman Steve Parish told Sky Sports News on Friday, calling the decision a 'terrible injustice' and saying Palace had been denied by 'the most ridiculous technicality you can imagine'.
'This is the dream,' he said. '(But) someone said to me it's like winning the lottery and going to the counter, but you don't win the prize. So I'm devastated for the players, the fans and the staff. It's a bad day for football.'
🗣️ "We're devastated, it's a terrible injustice for the club"
Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish on UEFA's decision to demote the club from the Europa League to the Conference League 🔴🔵 pic.twitter.com/E2kOjyQxKV
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) July 11, 2025
Palace finished 12th in the Premier League but originally fulfilled the criteria to qualify for the Europa League by winning the FA Cup on May 17. Seven days later, Paris Saint-Germain, Ligue 1 winners, defeated Stade de Reims to win the Coupe de France.
That meant the last Europa League qualification place for French clubs was awarded not to the cup winners, who had already qualified for the Champions League, but instead to the side that finished sixth in the top flight: Lyon.
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Suddenly Palace had a problem.
Lyon's majority owner, Eagle Football, led by John Textor, also has a 43 per cent stake in the south London club. UEFA said this breached Article 5 of its rules, referring to multi-club ownership (MCO) and restricting teams from the same multi-club groups playing in the same competition. Instead of Palace, the French side would be granted entry to the Europa League because they finished higher in their domestic league.
'John and Eagle Football didn't have decisive influence (over Palace),' said Parish on Friday. 'I don't know anyone's phone number there (at Eagle Football). It's an incredible travesty of justice.'
Textor's relationship with Palace has been far from straightforward over his four-year involvement. The American engaged the investment banking group Raine last summer to begin the process of a sale of Eagle's stake and has spent the past year in discussions with multiple interested parties. He even granted two interested groups differing forms of exclusivity in January.
But, while courting potential suitors for his shares, he was simultaneously still seeking a pathway to secure a controlling stake in Palace as a flagship club to front Eagle.
That never happened. Instead, this is the story of how Palace were denied their chance in the Europa League.
John Textor arrived at Palace in 2021. He had originally hoped to purchase a controlling stake in the Premier League side, only to be persuaded to buy 40 per cent instead. He became the fourth general partner alongside Parish and fellow American businessmen Josh Harris and David Blitzer, investing around £87.5million (now $118m) into the club.
The size of his stake has fluctuated marginally in the time since, but by last season it was around 43 per cent.
He established Eagle Football, a multi-club vehicle, in November 2022 with the Belgian club RWD Molenbeek and Botafogo from Brazil also in the stable. Eagle purchased its controlling stake in Lyon, seven-time winners of the French title, that December.
Parish and Textor have seldom been aligned in their views over the running of Palace or, indeed, MCO models, but the issue largely bubbled away under the surface until Palace did the unthinkable and actually won a trophy.
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When it comes to MCO, UEFA's rules since March 1 include clauses such as 'no individual or legal entity may have control or influence over more than one club participating in a UEFA club competition… (and no one club is) able to exercise by any means a decisive influence in the decision-making of the club.'
UEFA circulated details of this to clubs across Europe at the start of the year. Parish claimed the notification of the change had initially been sent to the club's general enquiries email, and had not initially even been seen. 'We're not in UEFA's orbit,' he said. 'There isn't a group that represents clubs like us at UEFA. In 15 years (in charge of Palace), I've never had an email from UEFA, not one.
'They sent a notification that this rule change was coming to [e-mail], and nobody saw it, so they kept sending it and sending it again. This was in January.'
Regardless, the sense within the club was that Textor did not have decisive influence — Eagle may have had a 43 per cent stake, but each of the four general partners (Textor, Parish, Harris and Blitzer) has 25 per cent voting rights — so there was not really a problem.
Textor himself, according to those close to him, was not so sure UEFA would see things that way.
In the midweek before PSG were due to face Reims in the French Cup final, he travelled to Bilbao seeking a private audience with senior UEFA executives ahead of the Europa League final between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, but emerged from those conversations far from reassured.
After PSG won the French Cup, all four of Palace's general partners, who may share weekly calls but infrequently come together in one place, flew to Nyon, Switzerland, to present their case to UEFA's club financial control body (CFCB).
Palace explained the quirks of their ownership structure to the CFCB, according to those familiar with the talks, who are anonymous — like others in this article — to protect relationships. They laboured the point that Textor and Eagle did not have decisive control because each general partner had equal voting rights, with Harris and Blitzer tending to side with Parish, leaving Textor as the odd one out.
They laid out the decision-making process at the Premier League club and said those running things at Selhurst Park were actually Parish, then sporting director Dougie Freedman and manager Oliver Glasner.
'We sat in front of the UEFA panel and were all consistent about the lack of decisive influence,' Textor told UK radio station Talkport on Thursday.
'I told UEFA that a suggestion is not decisive influence. Nobody tells Steve (Parish) what to do. He's as stubborn as anybody.'
They pointed to an absence of co-operation with the other clubs in Eagle, and to Textor's willingness to sell his shares as an indication of how frustrated he had become at his lack of real influence. Palace also told UEFA that Textor was, at best, an infrequent attender of matches, instead spending more time at RWD Molenbeek, Lyon and Botafogo. If he had decisive influence, then, they argued, he would have been more present at Selhurst Park and at the team's away fixtures.
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Palace also voted for a moratorium on player loans between clubs with the same owners at a Premier League meeting in November — with Textor angered by that decision, even if the proposal was ultimately rejected. That, they hoped, was further evidence in their favour.
At the end of that meeting in Nyon, there was a belief that they had presented a convincing case. Perhaps, too, UEFA would take into account the fact that Textor had last year engaged the bank Raine — an indication that he was open to selling up.
Textor shared Palace's confidence. When further information was requested by the CFCB in respect of the sales process to find a buyer for Eagle's Palace shares, it was greeted as a positive sign.
The other complication was Lyon.
The French club had been provisionally relegated to Ligue 2 in November by the DNCG and, when it was deemed they had failed to satisfactorily improve their financial situation in the period since, that demotion became active. Although they were approved by UEFA to compete in the Europa League, the conditions of their licence decreed that, if they were relegated to the second tier, they would not compete in UEFA competition.
Yet Lyon were not going to fall out of the top flight without a fight. Textor subsequently stepped back from his role at the Ligue 1 side, and, after they received the formal decision and reasoning from the DNCG almost a week later, the club appealed the decision. UEFA's CFCB opted to postpone making their own decision pending the outcome of that appeal.
Lyon's hearing took place last Wednesday, when it was confirmed their appeal had been successful. The French club's Europa League participation was assured.
Palace put lawyers on standby to take their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, CAS. The focus was solely on Europa League — not the Conference League, the third-tier competition — as a result of their belief they would be admitted by UEFA through Lyon's financial issues or by the knowledge that Textor did not have decisive influence.
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They were wrong, and Palace will now look to any possible avenue to overturn the decision, with a club statement outlining their next steps.
It read: 'We will continue to press our case and work with UEFA to achieve the fair and just outcome so that we may take our rightful place in the Europa League, as well as taking legal advice to consider our options, including an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.'
The wait for a conclusion continues and Palace will desperately hope they can find a way to overcome what Parish describes as a 'gross injustice' to be reinstated to their rightful place.
'We have to be strong and find a way through it and we will,' said Parish. 'But that's not until we've exhausted every single avenue to ensure we get the right people to try to do the right thing.'