BfB

Having won the FA Cup in May to qualify for The Europa League Crystal Palace have been relegated to The Europa Conference, this relegation has upset supporters of the London club, it has upset the ownership of Crystal Palace too with chairman Steve Parish hopeful of overturning the decision. The relegation has been necessary because Palace are, or were, in part owned by John Textor who also owns Botafogo, RWDM Brussels, and important to this discussion, French side Lyon..

Lyon also qualified for the Europa League, and the Laws of the Competition mean that the same owner is not allowed two clubs in the same competition. This was pointed out to Crystal Palace in March 2025, they missed the email, the option presented to them was a legal structure which would have allowed Palace and Lyon to circumnavigate this rule as others have.

This means Crystal Palace supporters will play in a worse competition, and as a result that might impact transfers and planning. It is also unfair to Palace when compared to their peers to rule them out for that is a bit of paperwork not being filed.

But is it unfair?

Multiclub

The laws which Crystal Palace have run afoul of are around multi-club ownership. It is not possible for someone to own more than one English club because, obviously, running more than one club creates an obvious conflict of interest. This was seen in English Football when Newspaper Magnate Robert Maxwell owned both Oxford United and Derby County. Technically, one of the clubs was owned by his son Kevin, and decided to sell Dean Saunders from one club to the other.

These rules though are largely based in the laws of individual Football Associations and are not applied across borders, or rather were not, and because of the competitive advantage multi-club model grant the hostility to those rules ensured that they were not too entrenched. Crystal Palace are frustrated not by the law, but by not deploying the right dodge to the law.

The laws themselves, feeble in scope and an impact though, have the right thrust to them for just like when Saunders was sold between two parts of one empire for a third of the value he would sell for a couple of years later, multi-club ownership is a terrible, bad idea for almost everyone except on central club.

Take the example of Aaron Mooy. Signed by Manchester City in 2016 for nothing from Melbourne City, a club Manchester City’s parent group had bought for $12m, and sold him to Huddersfield for £10m and exchange rates aside it feels very difficult to draw a view of this deal which does not suggest that Melbourne City had to give up an asset for less than they could have sold it for, or that as a club Melbourne had no value at all. Quo bono?

Wrong

This is obviously not how football should work, but it is the system that has been kit bashed together, and the one which Crystal Palace fall foul of. What benefit have Palace had from John Textor owning some of their club? It is certainly not anything like the situation with Manchester/Melbourne City, but Textor is reported to have invested £86m in the Londoners and they just won the FA Cup. They beat Stockport County, Doncaster Rovers, and Millwall on the way and as far as I know no one has dumped £86m into those clubs.

One might say that Crystal Palace get that money because they are a more attractive investment, and one would be right to say that, but that situation has only come about because of the normalisation of a model of football which seems fundamentally against the principles of competition as we understand them, and has so much potential for abuse that allowing it is an affront.

Even if multi-club ownership is not manifested in direct competition, the idea that clubs in one league should have to play against a rival who taps into the resources of another league is absurd and wholly unfair. Football can construct a legalese around this, but it can never say that that legal construct is designed around maintaining equality in the game.

While we might feel bad for Crystal Palace fans denied some glorious games next season, as football supporters we probably need to weep less for the teams that are cursed with the owner that gives you £86m and think about what systems designed to entrench unfairness into the game are doing to the game. Multi-club ownership gives Textor the ability to invest in Crystal Palace which he would not, and I would say should not, have.

Good

It would be a good thing if Crystal Palace were able to play in The Europa League next season, but let us not fail to call this what it is. Crystal Palace are not a small plucky upstart, they are a massive team in Global Football, but smaller than other massive teams, and they have run into some problems using the laws which are designed to keep them massive.

They did not, on the whole, write those laws, they are just bad at them, but let us call the laws what they are.