Please I need a confirmation on the information I recently received regarding two clubs owned by the same person not allowed to both participate in the UEFA Champions League which means that one club must have to participate and the other club not allowed to. Furthermore, I've heard that Girona FC and Manchester City are both owned by the same person. If this is the case, I'd like to know your thoughts on which club you would support in reference of the above information.
There is a very fine line between what the law says and what is actually sensible in these scenarios.
Today, we have several football clubs that belong to more than one person or company, that is, they have mixed participation in some teams, sometimes more than one.
So, how can we prohibit them from participating in a championship? It is difficult.
I believe that the ideal would be to define a maximum percentage of each company's participation in the championships, but even in this there are many controversies and decisions being more favorable or not in very similar scenarios. I believe that there is no ideal formula for what is correct and each case must be analyzed independently.
From this thread I remembered case that occurred in the past where UEFA allowed Leipzig and Salzburg to compete in the UCL and there was debate over the same ownership, namely Red Bull, an energy drink company.
Exactly, this happened in the 2017/18 season and the decision was favorable because they understood that the Austrian club was only sponsored by RedBull, without there being any actual "ownership" of the team and therefore it did not violate the so-called "article 5" of the competition's integrity.