Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has claimed that European football's governing body "pretends" that at least one club playing in Uefa club competitions does not share the same owners with another.
Ceferin made the claim amid Qatari banker Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani's plan to complete a full takeover of Manchester United. Sheikh Jassim submitted an official offer to purchase the club from the Glazer family in February and representatives of his visited Old Trafford last month to hold talks with United officials.
The takeover of United will reach the third round of bidding this Friday and the Glazer family will assess all of the final bids that are submitted. Sheikh Jassim is the favourite to secure control of the club ahead of British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, even though it remains to be seen if the Glazers will commit to a full sale.
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Ceferin's approval could prove crucial to a successful Qatari bid to buy the Reds. Sheikh Jassim has been adamant throughout the bidding process that his bid is a standalone offer, is private and has no connections to the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), amid claims elsewhere that they could be linked.
"For now we are just discussing it," said Ceferin, speaking about multi-club ownership on US football podcast Men In Blazers. "There are clubs – or at least one – where we still pretend it's not the same owner [as another] but it's the same owner, and I will not tell you which. You can guess.
"One or two of those potential bidders for another club said to me, 'Look we have, like, 250 companies. We can do it [the takeover] from another company but we don't want to do that. Because it's us. We can circumvent the rules'. They don't want to do it. So we have to discuss things."
Uefa declined to comment on Cerferin's admission, The Telegraph reports. The Uefa chief attended PSG's Champions League clash with Bayern Munich at the Parc des Princes in February alongside with the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Ever since Sheikh Jassim registered his interest in buying United, various concerns have been raised about Qatari entities owning multiple clubs in the Champions League, which is not permitted by UEFA. Ratcliffe, too, already owns French outfit OGC Nice and Swiss club FC Lausanne-Sport.
Back in 2017, energy drink giant Red Bull came to an agreement with Uefa to reduce its involvement in Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg, as a compromise to permit its German club, RB Leipzig, to complete in the Champions League as well. Both clubs have been permanent fixtures in the competition in each of the last five years.
Ceferin added that the question of multi-ownership went deeper than just its possible impact on Uefa club competitions.
"This is my dilemma to be honest," the Uefa chief continued. "I am not sure what will happen but for example, you can be an owner of two, three, four, five clubs. That is not a problem for Uefa. The problem is you cannot play in the same competition.
"You can think that if two clubs owned by [one person] competing in the same competition can agree who wins and who loses – although it's not easy to do that [fix matches]. But if I cannot play in the same competition as the other club of mine then I can lose in my national league because it doesn't matter if I am a champion [or not]. It's quite a complicated topic but I don't have a solution yet."
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