Why Manchester United Could Be Banned From Next Season's Champions League
Sir Jim Ratcliffe's impending takeover of Manchester United inches closer, but as things stand UEFA regulations would prohibit Erik ten Hag's team from competing in Europe under his ownership. Adam Clery and Mark White discuss whether this is a serious possibility for the club, or just something that will magically sort itself out?
Transcript
00:00 Hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here, joined by Mark White from 442. How's
00:09 the doing? I'm good, how are you Adam? I'm absolutely fantastic, but I'll tell you what's
00:13 not absolutely fantastic, and that's Manchester United's latest prospects of getting into
00:18 the Champions League, because according to a story that started to break through last
00:22 night, somebody has finally checked the away for rules owing to multi-club ownership in
00:28 their competitions, and they might have a little bit of a problem. Because as you know
00:33 Mark, there is this Sir Jim Radcliffe potential minority takeover of Manchester United, and
00:38 that would make them in effect, in a management sense, part of the Ineos Group. And as of
00:42 course you also know Mark, the Ineos Group also own OGC Nice, the French club who are
00:48 currently flying in Ligue 1, thanks for just bailing me out there, I've completely forgotten
00:52 the name, and if they were both part of the same ownership group, they would both not
00:56 be allowed in the Champions League. Now that is potentially absolutely catastrophic. Now
01:02 if you think this is one of those stories where it's like, well that sounds like a good
01:04 headline, but there's not really anything in it, surely there's some kind of work around...
01:08 No, there's not, that would literally be the case. I have here the official UEFA documentation
01:15 relating to the integrity of the game/multi-club ownership. Would you like to hear the official
01:20 rules Mark? Do you know Adam, I would. To ensure the integrity of the UEFA club competition,
01:25 i.e. the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, Conferencia, you know all the ones, no club
01:30 participating in a UEFA club competition may either directly or indirectly hold or deal
01:36 in the securities or shares of any other club participating in a UEFA club competition.
01:42 So that means it doesn't matter if it's a minority share, because they're being operated
01:47 by largely the same party, they would not both be allowed in the competition. Now you
01:51 might also be sitting there thinking, well come on, there's a prestige element to this,
01:56 obviously if you're going to have either Man United or Nice in the Champions League, then
01:59 they'll just pick Man United, right? But it doesn't work like that, because there's clauses
02:05 here in Article 5 which determine which club would be allowed to enter, and would you like
02:09 to hear those as well Mark? I would, yeah. So, order and precedent is given to the club
02:14 which qualifies on sporting merit for the most prestigious competition, so if one got
02:20 into the Champions League and one got into the Europa League, then obviously the Champions
02:23 League team would then go through, but more importantly than that, the club which was
02:26 ranked highest in the domestic championship giving it access to that competition, which
02:32 means because OGC Nice are currently second in Ligue 1, and purely on merit I would say,
02:38 they're absolutely flying, that doesn't look like it's a fluke by any stretch of the imagination,
02:41 were they to finish second, Manchester United would need to finish first in the Premier
02:45 League or win it as it's known, in order to get into the Champions League, which they
02:50 are currently not looking overly likely to do. So the question, the first question Mark,
02:56 the most important question here is, is this even an issue for Manchester United, or are
03:00 they too far gone to be worrying about Champions League football this season? Well it's not
03:04 an issue at the moment, given that a lot of Manchester United fans would probably just
03:08 settle for actually getting in the Europa League at the moment, but you never know with
03:14 the second half of the season, Liverpool were in a similar state this time last season,
03:19 they managed to only just finish a few points off the Champions League, so it might become
03:25 an issue in a couple of months time. So my thinking behind this is, surely if you are
03:29 Sir Jim Ratcliffe, allegedly quite an intelligent man, you must be aware of this rule when you're
03:34 trying to basically bring in a multi-club ownership model for yourself, so is there
03:39 possibly something in the back pocket here? We have heard some talk about maybe there's
03:43 going to be some rule changes, are they going to relax some of these rules? Of course there
03:46 was the vote this week about multi-club ownership over players and bringing in people in January.
03:51 Do you think maybe Manchester United are already aware of this, and either they've sort of
03:55 resigned themselves to not qualifying for Europe, or they've got a sneaky plan? You
04:00 would think that they'd have some kind of idea, but given how Manchester United have
04:04 operated in the last 5-10 years, I don't blame fans for being a little bit concerned. It
04:12 does seem like perhaps there is a trick up the sleeve of Ratcliffe. But none of us can
04:18 speculate on what the sneaky plan might be? None of us know, and it does seem a little
04:22 bit like this whole ownership, this whole takeover that he's got coming, it sort of
04:30 feels a little bit off the cuff, it feels like an opportunity that came along by his
04:37 lifelong club, and none of us know really how this is going to go. I mean, none of us
04:43 know if they're going to be successful, but none of us know what's going to happen to
04:46 Nice either, really. Do you think there's any chance that Nice might suddenly have a
04:51 spectacular and suspicious drop in form with this takeover to happen? Well, I mean... Oh
04:57 no, they've lost 9 consecutive games! Well, I mean, they might even be put up for sale.
05:03 If this is the club that Ratcliffe wants to put all his eggs in the basket of, then you
05:10 never know, you might actually decide it's been Nice. It's been Nice! But that's it for
05:16 now. Yeah, I think probably one of the main things with this is obviously multi-club ownership
05:20 is really in the news right now in the Premier League, so they've just had that vote about
05:23 whether or not clubs, not naming any clubs, nobody in particular can loan players from
05:28 their Saudi colleagues over the thing. But obviously there was the thing on the overlap
05:32 with Gary Neville, he spoke to one of the people at UEFA, they are talking about sort
05:35 of like relaxing this. Obviously both the Red Bull clubs are allowed to participate
05:39 in the same competition every season because UEFA have received assurances or guarantees
05:44 that while they are owned by the same organisation, they are operationally independent. Like there
05:50 is nobody who works between the two, they have no impact on one another. Yeah, right.
05:55 So just... Is Man United a big enough club, I think is the question I want to ask, that
06:00 this would finally force them to be like, "Ah, do you know what? I would rather have
06:04 Man United." Who for all the last couple of years have not been great, they are still
06:07 attracted to a massive TV audience, they are still in the eyes of most people across Europe,
06:12 a massive, massive football club. Are they so big that this might just really push through
06:18 a legislation change where it's like, "Well we can either just relax this now, when nobody...
06:22 It's not like there's loads of clubs in this situation and every year they are banning
06:25 teams from turning up." Is it just going to be a case of like, "Well, it's affecting Man
06:30 United now, we should probably just grow up and not stop this happening." You would think
06:35 so. You would think that given the way that things have gone with UEFA, given how big
06:41 clubs want the power these days, given that they have this threat that we will walk away
06:48 from UEFA competitions if you don't run them quite to our liking, you would expect it to
06:55 go that way. There might be an issue in a couple of years where Almecer have been rumoured
07:02 to be invited into the Champions League. Oh my god. Yeah, and if Newcastle are still qualifying
07:09 for the Champions League at that point... Oh my god, I hadn't even thought about that.
07:12 Then that becomes an integrity issue. Oh my god. You've got the issue that Chelsea wanted
07:17 to buy, was it Sporting? Yeah. In Portugal, they've obviously still got Strasbourg in
07:23 France. This isn't a purely Manchester United issue. Oh, absolutely not. No. And there are
07:31 lots and lots of clubs in which this will affect either now, either in five years, in
07:37 ten years. Look at Manchester City. I mean, they're obviously going to qualify for the
07:42 Champions League this season. My money is on that happening, yes. But what about Girona
07:47 in Spain? Girona are riding high in La Liga, and if they qualify for the Champions League,
07:54 are they going to play in the Champions League? I mean, Man City could theoretically finish
07:59 third. Girona, by some fluke, could finish second. Are you really not going to have Man
08:04 City? Well, you see, this is why I partly think the Man United thing is so interesting,
08:08 because you'd expect, even if Girona do get into the top four in Spain, you'd expect Man
08:13 City to outperform them in the league. They're favourites to win the league again. You would
08:16 imagine if they don't do that, second will be as bad as it gets for them. And obviously,
08:20 there is a third clause in here I didn't bother reading out, where if you are level, the priority
08:24 is given to the nation with the higher ranking. And of course, England are going after that
08:27 fifth Champions League spot. They currently do rank higher than Spain. So Girona would
08:31 have to beat Man City instead of just like matching them. I imagine you would be like,
08:35 we don't care about Girona being in the Champions League actually at all. In fact, you've kept
08:39 like a Valencia or another good Spanish team out of the equation. So we're quite happy
08:44 with that. It's now that this is sort of the first time it's ever been like, wait, a massive,
08:48 massive club with a global audience and huge, enormous international fan base are going
08:53 to be kept out by Chex Notes. Nice. Well, that can't be going on, can it? So I think
08:59 this is why the Man United thing is so interesting, because it's like, they love money. UEFA really,
09:04 really love money. They're restructuring the Champions League next year purely because of
09:08 money. So this might be the money situation that sort of forces that. Anyway, look, gun
09:12 in your head, which is a terrible analogy, but do you think Man United get into the Champions
09:17 League next season? And by that question, I mean league position and UEFA rules? League
09:22 position, no. UEFA rules, yes. I feel like if Manchester United are to finish in the top
09:28 four or five, or five, or five, we just don't know at the moment. I feel like it would be
09:36 groundbreaking if UEFA did not allow them into the competition. I can't think of a single,
09:43 it would be unprecedented. I can't think of a single example of UEFA not allowing a club
09:49 into the competition. On such a technicality, yeah. There was all this talk when the Red
09:53 Bulls came along and that was fine. We've not heard anything about Brighton and Union
10:00 Saint-Gerois. Hardly anything. You know, that's not really been an issue. I don't know the
10:05 technicalities of that, but it would just be, it doesn't seem like in football, this
10:13 sort of thing happens enough. No. It doesn't seem like... The rules they've got in place
10:19 to stop certain things happening, which have just never happened anyway. So they would
10:22 probably be like, I'll sum this up here, right? I think it's one of those things where if
10:25 they did stop Man United going into the Champions League because of this technicality, it would
10:28 be something that's regarded as absolutely hilarious by fans of every other English club
10:33 in the country, but also deep down, incredibly stupid by everybody else. I think that would
10:39 be... If you qualify for something as hard to get into as the Champions League, this
10:44 shouldn't stop you going into it because of just some board percentage that you've got,
10:50 is my opinion. I mean, you say that as a neutral, it would be really funny, but I always think
10:55 this when we watch World Cups, I always think this, that you're watching Costa Rica against
11:00 Brazil and you're thinking, it would be really funny if Costa Rica actually won this. It
11:04 would be funny if they get through to the next round. But really, you would rather watch
11:08 the better teams. And as a neutral, I would rather watch Manchester United against Manchester
11:15 City in a Champions League semi-final than Nice versus Girona. And I think UEFA agree.
11:22 Not that Nice and Girona shouldn't compete because they're not as exciting teams, but
11:27 I do think if you finish in the top four, that should be enough to get you into the
11:31 Champions League without all this legal technicality that comes along.
11:35 And on that, sorry, on that absolutely massive admission of guilt from an Arsenal fan that
11:39 you'd rather watch Man United versus Man City in the Champions League, we're going to leave
11:43 it there, but please do let us know what you think of this. Do they not need to worry about
11:46 this? Are they too far away from the top four? Would it be ridiculous if they stopped them
11:49 getting in or would it be, as we've mentioned, kind of just really funny? All opinions welcome
11:55 in the comments below. Mark, if they wanted to get you on Twitter, which no doubt they
11:57 do, where would they do that?
11:59 It's Mark White, but it's an L instead of an I because I've got a boring name.
12:04 That's so undignified. Get me @AdamClearyCLERY, all spelled correctly with no spaces in it
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12:29 See ya.
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