Brighton and Aston Villa cleared for Europe by Uefa despite multi-club ties
Brighton, Aston Villa and Toulouse have been cleared by Uefa to play in European competitions next season despite their owners having ties to other clubs who qualified.
However Uefa prohibited the partner clubs – Brighton and Union SaintGilloise; Villa and Vitória Guimarães; Toulouse and Milan – from exchanging players via sales or loans before the end of the summer transfer window next year.
That would prevent the kind of loan move that the Japan forward Kaoru Mitoma made between Brighton and Union for the 2021-22 season. Uefa also ruled: “The clubs will not enter into any kind of cooperation, joint technical or commercial agreements. The clubs will not use any joint scouting or player database.”
Uefa drafted rules on multi-club ownership 25 years ago to protect the integrity of its competitions when the teams could be drawn to play each other during the season. Uefa-appointed investigators evaluated three cases in recent weeks.*
The governing body noted the “significant changes by the clubs and their related investors” to comply with the rules that “substantially restrict the investors’ influence and decision-making power over more than one club”.
Brighton can make their European debut in the Europa League after persuading Uefa’s club finance panel that their owner, Tony Bloom, does not also have decisive influence at Union, who are in the Europa League qualifying playoffs.
Aston Villa’s owners reduced their stake last week in the Portuguese club
Vitória and both teams will enter qualifying rounds for the Europa Conference League.
The French Cup winners, Toulouse, go into the Europa League despite ties to the American investment firm RedBird Capital Partners, which owns the Champions League team Milan. If Milan come third in their Champions League group they would drop into the Europa League knockout stages.
In multi-club ownership cases, Uefa rules give priority to the team that placed higher in their domestic league. The lower-ranked team risked being removed.
The multi-club rules were most famously tested in 2017 by RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg, whom Uefa let enter the Champions League together despite both being part of the Red Bull group. In that case, no transfer limits were imposed and the clubs have continued to trade often between each other.
Friday’s ruling ended the prospect of Tottenham, eighth in the Premier League, being upgraded to European competition.