Football's Future is Global: Why Multi-Club Ownership is Here to Stay

When Crystal Palace clinched European qualification last season by winning the FA Cup, it was a landmark moment in the club’s modern history. The players and fans dreamed about Thursday nights under the lights in the Europa League against tough opposition from across the continent.

Then came UEFA’s ruling: Palace were out. Their place in the Europa League was blocked because Eagle Football Holdings, which owns a majority stake in palace, also owns Lyon. UEFA’s multi club ownership (MCO) rules meant that two teams with overlapping ownership could not compete in the same European competition.

On the surface, UEFA claimed this was about protecting the integrity of the game, preventing conflicts of interest if Lyon and Palace were to meet. In practice, it was a punishment of pure sporting merit. Palace had earned their place on the pitch by beating Manchester City, the most successful English Football Club in the last ten years, in the final of the FA Cup. They were denied entry into the competition not because of anything they did, but because of who signed their pay checks.

This isn’t an isolated story, as football globalises, multi club ownership is no longer a fringe experiment but a structural reality. City Football Group stretches from Manchester to Melbourne (13 football clubs in total), Red Bull operates from Leipzig to Salzburg to Brazil (5 football clubs in total). The Pozzo family, Blue Co, Eagle Football Holdings; the list goes on.

Despite this, UEFA continues to treat this model as a threat rather than an opportunity. In my opinion, this is a massive mistake. Multi club ownership isn’t a danger to football’s future, IT IS football’s future. Instead of blocking it, UEFA should be finding ways to regulate and enable it, because if it is done right, it can accelerate the sporting growth of the game at every level.

(This graphic is from when CFG owned 10 football clubs. They have since then acquired Palermo FC in Italy, Bahia in Brazil and Club Bolivar in Bolivia).

The Sporting Advantage of Multi-Club Ownership:

Most debates around multi club ownership focus on balance sheets and global branding. However, the real value is sporting. MCO networks can accelerate player development, raise tactical levels and improve the effectiveness of clubs far beyond the flagship team.

Player Development Pipelines:

Traditional loans are messy: players sent out with little control over the footballing environment they enter. In MCO systems, the pathway is managed. A teenager can graduate through progressively tougher levels of competition within the same footballing “family”.

A recent example is Blue Co’s dual ownership of Chelsea and Strasbourg. Chelsea have been able to place emerging players like Andrey Santos on loan to Strasbourg, giving them exposure to top level European football in a competitive environment.

For Chelsea, it provides a controlled pathway to assess whether young talents are ready for the Premier League. For Strasbourg, it means access to exciting prospects they would never previously have been able to attract, strengthening their squad and helping them achieve results on the pitch. The outcome speaks for itself: Strasbourg secured European Qualification for the first time since 2005-06.

Tactical and Philosophical Continuity:

Because clubs share ideas, data, and coaching principles, transitions are smoother. A player moving from one network club to another doesn’t have to completely reinvent his game. The core principles are already aligned. Savinho moving to Manchester City from Girona is a perfect example of this. When he arrived at the club, he was already familiar with Pep Guardiola’s playing style and coaching philosophy, allowing him to seamlessly fit into the starting XI.

Global Scouting Reach:

MCOs act as scouting networks on a scale no single club can match. Talent identified in Uruguay, China, or India can be tested in the right league and nurtured gradually.

I can imagine a scenario where City Football Group sign a promising teenager in South America, integrate him into Montevideo City Torque, then transition him through Girona before he is ready for Manchester City.

Coaching Staff Development:

It’s not just the players who benefit. Young coaches, analysts, and sporting directors gain opportunities across different leagues and cultures within the same network. That creates a generation of highly adaptable football professionals.

Jesse Marsch’s rise from New York Red Bulls to RB Salzburg and eventually RB Leipzig illustrates how coaching careers can accelerate inside a multi club system.

The Conflict-of-Interest Objection:

The loudest argument against multi club ownership is simple: conflict of interest. UEFA insists that if two clubs with overlapping ownership enter the same competition, sporting integrity is at risk. The fear is that results could be manipulated, whether through team selection, transfer dealings, or even match fixing.

This is why Crystal Palace were barred from the Europa League, and why Red Bull had to restructure governance at Leipzig and Salzburg before UEFA would allow both clubs into European competition (2018-19). On the surface, the logic sounds watertight; no shared owners = no risk.

But the reality is that UEFA’s approach is a sledgehammer solution to a problem that is both rare and manageable. Out of dozens of European Competitions played since the risk of MCO, how many times have two clubs under the same umbrella actually faced each other? Almost never. And yet, the rules punish every single club involved, 100% of the time, regardless of whether that conflict ever materialises.

Other sports handle this far better. In the NBA, owners can hold minority stakes in multiple teams, but strict governance and oversight prevent collusion. In Formula 1, engine manufacturers supply multiple teams with the same technology, but the FIA regulates information sharing and ensures competitive integrity. Football is no different. The risks can be managed with smart regulation, not blanked bans.

UEFA themselves have proved this. When Leipzig and Salzburg faced scrutiny, changes to management structure and decision-making independence satisfied UEFA that sporting integrity was preserved. The precedent already exists. The problem is that UEFA applies it inconsistently, and often in the harshest possible way.

The choice isn’t between “MCO with corruption” and “no MCO at all”. The choice is between clumsy prohibition and intelligent regulation. And currently, UEFA is on the wrong side of that choice.

Why UEFA Should Embrace Multi Club Ownership:

Instead of banning clubs from Europe, UEFA should regulate MCO in a way that lets the game benefit from it. Multi-club networks raise standards in smaller leagues, create more competitive European tournaments, and accelerate the development of both players and coaches.

Girona pushing Real Madrid and Barcelona with City Football Group support, or Strasbourg qualifying for Europe under BlueCo, are proof that these clubs don’t distort competitions; they enrich them. The model widens opportunity, deepens quality, and reflects the global reality of modern football.

UEFA’s choice is simple: keep punishing clubs for their ownership structure, or harness MCO as a tool to grow the game.

Conclusion:

Crystal Palace’s exclusion from the Europa League is more than a bureaucratic ruling; it’s a symbol of how UEFA is stuck in the past. A club that earned its place on the pitch was denied it off it, not because of unfair play, but because of an outdated fear of ownership structures.

Multi-club ownership is not going away. It is already reshaping leagues, developing players, and giving mid-tier clubs the tools to challenge giants. With the right regulations, the risks are manageable. With the wrong ones, football keeps punishing ambition.

The future of the game will not be built by isolated clubs, but by networks. The only question left is whether UEFA wants to guide that future or keep standing in its way.