UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has told Crystal Palace fans it is the club’s fault they are not in the Europa League and told them not to blame the governing body.
Having won the FA Cup, Palace were then demoted from the Europa League to the Conference League due to UEFA’s multi-club ownership rules and various checkboxes not being completed before a March deadline.
Palace though took their case all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) only to be denied.
Ceferin now has told their fans that it is “not the fault of UEFA” that their club will not be featuring in the Europa League.
“Of course I have sympathy, it would be a historical thing for them,” he told Politico.
“But it’s not UEFA’s fault that it happened. They will still play in Europe, that’s also a good thing.
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“I was not included in the decision-making process; I just knew the result. But of course, I feel sorry.
“It’s not the fault of the fans and it’s not the fault of UEFA and it is not the fault of the players and the coaches.”
Palace were demoted due to John Textor holding shares in both Palace and Lyon who also qualified for the tournament. The US businessman has since sold his 44.9% stake and Palace’s argument to CAS was that he never had any decision-making power anyway.
Both UEFA and CAS rejected that idea with the club failing to put Textor’s shares into a blind trust as many other groups do to circumvent the rules.
Ceferin was asked about multi-club ownership but seemed open to it, suggesting it was the only way to keep investors interested.
“This is one of the issues that we will have to deal with now, quite a lot,” the successor to Michel Platini said. “Now to forbid it completely means that you will push the investors out of football.
“To allow two clubs to be owned by the same owner and play the same competition is a no-go for us because of the credibility of the competition. The moment we lose credibility of competition, we lose everything. And now football is a specific sport.
“In football, if Olimpija Ljubljana would play PSG tomorrow, for sure, before the match, I would say, ‘maybe we have a chance, because in football you never know.’ And if it would be the same owner, and Olimpija Ljubljana beats the winner of the Champions League, nobody would believe in the credibility of competition anymore.
“And that’s the problem, and that’s why we are dealing case by case. I know that our people who are dealing with that found a solution that the blind trust has to take over [from the owner], so they don’t have decisive influence, and so on. This is for now the solution, but we are discussing that a lot.”
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