Amid Manchester United bids, UEFA head hints at owners rule review

GENEVA: UEFA should rethink its rules that prevent clubs in related ownership from playing in the same competition such as the Champions League, its president Aleksander Ceferin said Wednesday.

Ceferin, speaking in an interview with former Manchester United player Gary Neville, said UEFA was “not thinking about United only” in considering a review.

United’s owners, the Glazer family, have invited offers to buy the storied club and a Qatari-funded bid and British industrialist Jim Ratcliffe have declared interest.

A Qatari sovereign wealth fund already owns Champions League regular Paris Saint-Germain and Ratcliffe’s chemicals firm INEOS owns Nice, which regularly plays in UEFA’s lower-tier competitions.

Both potential buyers could have problems with UEFA’s rule that bars clubs playing in the same competitions in any season if owners have “decisive influence” over them.

Ceferin, who has held one international press conference since September, told Neville in a filmed interview released Wednesday that UEFA should move soon to rethink its rules.

“It has to be quick because, you know, everything has to happen quickly in football,” the UEFA president said.

A UEFA panel of club finance experts accepted in 2017 that the Red Bull ownership group had created enough separation between Leipzig and Salzburg to allow both to enter the next Champions League together.

That ruling was met with some skepticism, however, and finding new flexibility in the rules that could ultimately benefit the Qatari bid for United would be another example of PSG seeming to get favorable decisions at UEFA.

PSG have emerged from two UEFA financial monitoring investigations with less severe consequences than many expected, and club president