John Textor, owner of 43% of Crystal Palace’s stake, is considering selling the Eagles so that they can participate in the Europa League, which they are currently unable to do because they are in breach of the rules against multi-ownership.
John Textor, owner of 43% of Crystal Palace, is considering selling his stake so that the English club can participate in the next edition of the Europa League.
The London club, which earned its place in the European competition by winning the FA Cup, does not comply with UEFA’s rules against multiple ownership, as Textor is also a shareholder of Olympique Lyon, which has also qualified for the Europa League.
According to the newspaper ‘The Times’, Textor would be willing to get rid of its share of Palace for 170 million pounds (199 million euros) and an American consortium led by Josh Harris and David Blitzer, current owners of 36% of the club, together with Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets, could be interested in its purchase.
Palace would thus comply with UEFA regulations and be able to play in this competition. Textor, in a meeting with the body in Nyon, already offered to put his shares in a trust, but UEFA told him that the deadline to do so had already expired, so a sale of his shares seems the simplest outcome to this problem.
Nottingham Forest would be the club that would benefit from an exclusion of Palace and therefore has already written to UEFA in recent days to express its concern about the current situation.
Its owner, Evangelos Marinakis, is also the owner of Olympiakos and, when there was a possibility of both clubs playing in the Champions League, he put his shares in a trust to avoid breaching UEFA’s anti-sole proprietorship rules.
The Nottingham outfit wrote to UEFA to press them to make a decision, which the European body has set for later this month.
If excluded, Palace could go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. For the Londoners, this is the first opportunity in their history to play in Europe, apart from two matches they played in the 1998 Intertoto.