Under Article 5 of Uefa’s rulebook, which relates to the integrity of the “competition/multi-club ownership”, a club is required from 1 March 2025 to have complied with the requirements necessary to prove they are not “simultaneously involved in any capacity whatsoever in the management, administration, and/or sporting performance of more than one club participating in a Uefa club competition”.
In the past clubs have sought to divest the stakes of key shareholders with a view to complying with Uefa’s regulations.
For example, the City Group, Ineos, Red Bull group and most recently Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis have adapted their shareholdings in clubs accordingly to ensure their teams can compete in the same European competitions.
Last year Ineos, which owns Manchester United, put its shares in French club Nice into a blind trust to ensure both clubs could compete in the Europa League last season.
Ineos made a similar move earlier this season by placing its ownership of Swiss club Lausanne-Sport into a blind trust, before a potential conflict in the 2025-26 campaign.
Uefa’s rules regarding the 1 March deadline are clear – and clubs have sought to comply with the regulations and cut-offs. A template for Palace to follow is in place.
However, Palace are understood to have made clear that Textor’s position means he cannot be enforced by the club to place his shares into a blind trust, owing to a lack of legal authority, unlike previous precedents where a single entity owns multiple clubs.
Parish, as has been well documented, effectively holds the deciding vote at Palace with the backing of Harris and Blitzer, so existing shareholder agreements would need to be altered to enforce a blind trust scenario – which is not within the club’s power and infringes on Textor’s property rights.
There is also a sense that the chain of events that have left Palace’s position in European football in jeopardy were unforeseen and is a factor towards why they failed to meet the deadline for ownership restructuring.
Palace faced Millwall in the FA Cup fifth round on 1 March. Since then they beat Champions League clubs Aston Villa and Manchester City en route to winning the trophy.
French side Strasbourg conceded a 90th-minute goal on the final day of the season to hand Lyon the final Europa Conference League spot, before Paris St-Germain later won the French Cup to elevate Lyon into the Europa League.
If Uefa rules that Lyon and Palace cannot both compete in the Europa League, regulations state that the French side will play in the competition because of their higher league finish.
In that scenario Palace could play in the Europa Conference League, but even then there is the added complication that Danish club Brondby, who have qualified for the Conference League, are owned by Harris and Blitzer.
Having missed the deadline, Palace have expressed to Uefa that they are prepared to take immediate steps to comply with their requirements.
Sources with knowledge of the situation have told BBC Sport that one of those measures includes the resignation of Textor as a director of Palace, which would mean he will have no influence in any capacity.
