England’s top sides are being put off expanding their multi-club plans in Europe amid the threat of more chaos surrounding Champions League and Europa League qualification.
The owners of Chelsea and Nottingham Forest may have to pause their involvement in Strasbourg and Olympiacos respectively to prevent their English clubs being expelled from the Champions League or Europa League.
Manchester United’s owners Ineos may have to suspend their interest in Nice for a second successive season if United go on to win this season’s Europa League.
Under Uefa’s rules, clubs governed by the same ownership structure cannot play in the same European competition, which has already caused issues for United, Manchester City and Aston Villa in the past.
Sources have insisted that all English clubs who operate with a European multi-club model have measures in the background that can be enacted to make sure none of their clubs lose their European places.
That most likely involves owners effectively pausing their involvement in one of the clubs via a trust, as Ineos did with Nice last summer, and suspending all transfers between their clubs for that period to get the green light from Uefa.
‘Owners having second thoughts about extending their multi-club models’
In preparation to comply with Uefa competition regulations, Forest have removed two directors - co-owner Sokratis Kominakis and Ioannis Vrentzos - from the club’s board over the past month. Kominakis and Vrentzos will remain on the board at Olympiacos.
The wider situation is said to be giving owners second thoughts of extending their multi-club models in Europe with a source telling Telegraph Sport: “It is definitely having an impact. There is not so much incentive for owners to invest in European clubs, as part of a multi-club structure, if they cannot be competitive.
“Owners who already have European clubs are having second thoughts about buying more, while some of those that had planned to buy a European club have started to look elsewhere or just pause the idea entirely.”
This season, Forest and Olympicos, who are owned by Evangelos Marinakis, are on course to both qualify for the Champions League, while Chelsea and Strasbourg, who are owned by the BlueCo consortium of Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly, are fighting for European places in England and France.
Nice are currently third in Ligue 1, which would be enough to qualify for the Champions League. Despite their terrible league season, United are still hoping to qualify for the Champions League by winning this season’s Europa League.
Should two clubs under the same ownership qualify for the same European competition, then Uefa’s rules state that the club highest in their domestic championship are given precedence. That means the other club would be relegated to lesser European competition.
Olympiakos are seven points clear at the top of the Greece Super League, while Forest are third in the Premier League. Nice would take precedence if they held on to third spot and United, who are 14th in the Premier League table, won the Europa League.
Strasbourg have won four of their last five league games to climb to seventh in the Ligue 1 table, while Chelsea’s victory over Leicester City meant they are in fourth spot.
But Strasbourg are only six points behind third-placed Nice and four behind Monaco in fourth and Lille in fifth. In France, third place qualifies for the Champions League league phase, fourth earns a Champions League qualifying spot and fifth place qualifies for the Europa League.
The Premier League is on course to earn a fifth Champions League spot through the league, with sixth place likely to qualify for next season’s Europa League.
Strasbourg would take precedence with Uefa for a Champions League place if they finished third in Ligue 1 and Chelsea fourth, or if the French club finished fourth and the west London side fifth.
If Chelsea qualified for the Europa League in sixth position in the Premier League and Strasbourg qualified in fifth place in Ligue 1, then the French club would take precedence. The same would apply if Chelsea qualified for the Europa League by winning this season’s Conference League, but finished lower in the Premier League than Strasbourg did in Ligue 1.
United faced a similar scenario last summer after the club qualified for the Europa League by winning the FA Cup, but Nice, who are also owned by Ineos, qualified for the same competition after finishing higher in their domestic league.
To avoid United being relegated to the Conference League, Ineos transferred their shares in Nice into a blind trust, which prevented Ineos having control or being part of the decision-making process for Nice until July 1, 2025. That also meant the clubs have not been able to transfer players to one another or use a shared scouting database until the end date of the trust.
The owners of Chelsea and Forest will have to follow Ineos if their clubs qualify for the same European competitions as Strasbourg and Olympiacos, while Ineos may have to extend their trust agreement for another year if United somehow qualify for the Champions League through the Europa League.
Chelsea have already agreed a deal for defender Mamadou Sarr to move from Strasbourg this summer, while Diego Moreira made the move in the opposite direction last August. Midfielder Andre Santos and goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic have spent the season on loan at Strasbourg from Chelsea.
The owners of City and Villa have previously changed their interest in Girona and Portuguese club Vitoria de Guimaraes in order to compete in European competition.
Meanwhile, Forest have deleted their controversial social media post from April last year after losing their appeal against a £750,000 fine.
Forest were furious after a 2-0 defeat at Everton, criticising officials for three penalty decisions and suggesting that VAR Stuart Attwell was a supporter of Luton Town, who were relegation rivals at the time.
The Football Association fined Forest for “an attack on the integrity of a match official on an unparalleled scale” and hit the club with one of the largest ever sanctions.
Forest did appeal but have failed to reduce the fine, and also accepted an FA demand to remove the post on social media site X.
