Aston Villa owners forced to reduce stake in Vitoria de Guimaraes so both clubs can play in Conference League

Aston Villa owner V Sports has been forced to reduce its stake in Vitoria de Guimaraes so that the two clubs are able to play in the Europa Conference League in the upcoming season.

i first revealed on Monday that Uefa was holding two days of talks to discuss potentially seismic rulings on multi-club ownership in football.

The governing body’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) has been analysing the case of Villa and Portuguese Primeira Liga side Vitoria de Guimaraes, who share the same owners, as well as Brighton & Hove Albion and Belgian club Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, both owned by Tony Bloom and both due to compete in the Europa League.

Premier League owners and executives are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the talks. Current Uefa rules allow clubs to share the same owners but does not permit them to compete in the same competition.

Multi-club ownership, a model pioneered by Manchester City since 2013, is being explored by most elite clubs in Europe. Chelsea’s owner BlueCo became the latest to start a network after purchasing French side Strasbourg last week.

Any softening of the regulations — hinted at previously by Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin — would give Premier League owners confidence to press ahead with buying clubs across the continent.

But a toughening or reinforcement of Uefa’s existing stance could cause smaller clubs to reconsider agreeing to takeovers that place them beneath more lucrative Premier League clubs.

Under Uefa’s current rules, the lower-ranked side is disqualified from the competition, so if Chelsea and Strasbourg qualified for the Champions League in the same season the French side would not be permitted to compete in it.

An outcome of Uefa’s CFCB was expected to be announced on Friday but i has been told that it is now likely to arrive next week, presumably allowing clubs time to make changes to ownership structures to keep within Uefa’s rules.

Villa owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Eden had bought a 46 per cent stake in Vitória de Guimarães via V Sports back in February but decreased it and removed members of V Sports from the Portuguese club’s board following i’s revelations.

Aston Villa said in a statement: “V Sports has today announced that it has reduced its stake in Vitoria Sport Clube – Futebol, SAD to 29 per cent by transferring shares equaling 17 per cent of the club’s total equity back to Vitoria SC.

“It also no longer has any representation on the board of directors of Vitoria Sport Clube – Futebol, SAD in order to comply with all Uefa regulations and ensure the independence of both Vitoria Sport Clube – Futebol, SAD and Aston Villa FC.”

Brighton owner Bloom and Alex Muzio, now president of Union SG, scrutinised Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules in 2018, when the takeover of the Belgian Pro League was agreed, and have been adamant they comply.

“Before Tony and I invested in this club, we looked into that, looked at all the Uefa rules,” Muzio told Belgian broadcaster Sporza in March. “We also talked to them then and in our opinion there is no problem. It’s just that Uefa only shoots into action when it’s effectively there.

“Otherwise they have to do that for maybe 50 clubs, because there are more investors who own multiple clubs.”

This is not the first case of multi-club ownership proving problematic for Uefa, although it is the first time English clubs and their associated clubs in other countries have triggered the governing body’s CFCB to analyse the ownership structures.

In 2017, Uefa investigated Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig after they qualified for the Champions League due to their links to the energy drink giant.

The German and Austrian clubs were only permitted to play in the competition after they underwent “several important governance and structural changes made by the clubs [regarding corporate matters, financing, personnel, sponsorship arrangements, etc.]”, Uefa said in a statement.

Once the changes had been made “the CFCB deemed that no individual or legal entity had anymore a decisive influence over more than one club participating in a Uefa club competition”.

The third pair of clubs the CFCB discussed last week was Italian side AC Milan and French club Toulouse, both owned by RedBird Capital Partners. A potential conflict could arise if AC Milan finished third in their Champions League group and dropped into the Europa League, where Toulouse are set to compete.