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Strasbourg boss hits back at BlueCo protests as UEFA relax multi-club rules
Tom Weber
- 13 Oct 2025 19:17 BST
- 5 min read
News
UEFA are planning to relax multi-club ownership regulations after Crystal Palace's expulsion from the Europa League amid ongoing discussions over the future of this business model.
Multi-club ownership (MCO) has become a common practice worldwide in recent years. Red Bull kick-started a veritable MCO craze by assembling a successful footballing empire, and City Football Group eventually followed suit.
While such massive networks with more than three or four clubs are still relatively rare, partnerships between two or three clubs exist at various levels of the footballing pyramid and with varying degrees of cooperation.
Over the summer, the topic of multi-club ownership was hotly debated after Crystal Palace were expelled from the Europa League due to then-shareholder John Textor's links with Lyon and the failure to highlight a potential conflict of interest before the March deadline.
UEFA argued that Textor had a 'decisive influence' at both clubs - even though the American sold his Palace shares - and demoted the Selhurst Park club to the Conference League as Lyon's league position trumped their FA Cup success.
UEFA to add second deadline but disputes remain
According to The Guardian, UEFA are planning to implement a second deadline to avoid another Palace situation in the future. Clubs will still be required to spotlight any potential issues with UEFA's regulations in March, but they will be given until June to resolve these problems.
Failure to meet the initial deadline would still be viewed as a breach of UEFA's regulations, but clubs will have surely learned from this summer that it is better to be safe than sorry. Drogheda United and Dunajska Streda were knocked out of Europe altogether after qualifying for the Conference League.
By softening their regulations, UEFA appear to recognise that multi-club ownership is here to stay. They previously insisted that they would crack down harder on rule breaches, but this is a significant concession.
Indeed, despite opposition from fan groups, there is little to suggest that multi-club ownership will do anything but proliferate. In France, where many would argue that the experience with multi-club models has been overwhelmingly negative, a fierce battle still rages on.
Chelsea owners BlueCo continue to find themselves at the heart of a heated dispute between sister club Strasbourg and vocal sections of the Ligue 1 outfit's fanbase.
The Alsatians' ultras have been protesting against BlueCo and president Marc Keller ever since the takeover in 2023, and things recently reached a boiling point when it was announced that new captain Emanuel Emegha would join Chelsea next summer.
Supporters have been calling for Keller to resign, while the club have moved to ban incendiary banners. Because of this, the matter has transcended the realm of football, and fans argue that it has become a problem of free speech.
“The issue is being used as a B-team by Chelsea, and also one of free speech," a Racing fan, Alexandre, told The Telegraph. He also lamented the 'Americanisation' of European football.
“Okay, we get to see some good players, but the big picture is very bad for the whole organisation. Will we have 10 networks owning all the clubs in Europe? It’s not the history and tradition of European football. It looks a lot like what they do in the United States.”
Keller, meanwhile, has hit back at his detractors, claiming that multi-club ownership has become the rule rather than the exception over the past decade. “We had to find a good balance between heritage and growth,” the president explained.
“Multi-club ownership is the new model in European football for the last 10 years. We are trying with BlueCo to work as a team and have a smart view. It would have been impossible for me and my friends - the investors - to take the risks we have with BlueCo."
Multi-club ownership is going nowhere, but so is the latent antagonism inherent in the system. The smaller 'feeder clubs' will always, to a certain degree, have to forfeit their agency and identity, and this inevitably leads to conflict.
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