Due to Griona and Manchester City both qualifying for next years Champions League the City Football Group may have to sell their stake in the club as UEFA states, Sad News as Manchester City will not Participate in the upcoming Champions League game next season 😱😭
Girona will have to wait to play in next season’s Champions League because Manchester City, their partner club, has already secured a spot in the 2024–25 season, according to sources who spoke to ESPN.
Girona has made it to the Champions League for the first time in the club’s 94-year history. Their 4–2 win over Barcelona on Saturday put them in second place and ensured they would finish in the top four this season.
But because Girona is one of 13 teams in the City Football Group (CFG), their entry along with Premier League team City has caused a possible problem with Article 5 of the UEFA club games rules, which says that one person can own more than one club.
Four Seven Groups own 47% of Girona. Marcelo Claure, a Bolivian-American businessman who is also the head of another CFG team, owns the other 35%. Pep Guardiola’s brother Pere is the boss of Girona. Pep is the manager of City.
UEFA competition rules say that if two clubs with the same ownership group both qualify for the same UEFA tournament, the place goes to the team that wins its local title. If these two teams end in the same spot, the team with the higher club coefficient (City in this case) will qualify.
City, who won the Champions League in 2023, only needs two points to finish second in the Premier League. If they win all three of their remaining games, they will win the title for the fourth straight season. Because of these factors, City will take the CFG spot in the Champions League ahead of Girona.
But sources say Girona probably won’t be sent to the Europa League to avoid playing City. However, the Spanish club will have to explain its position and organizational independence from Manchester City at a UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) meeting this summer before it can play in the Champions League.
Recently, RB Leipzig and FC Salzburg, both owned by the Red Bull Group, were allowed to play together in the Champions League. Also, in July of last year, UEFA let several teams into its tournaments despite worries about possible problems with shared ownership.
A CFCB hearing found that Aston Villa and Vitoria, Brighton and Union Saint-Gilloise, and AC Milan and Toulouse could all play in UEFA events.
If Manchester United and Nice, which are both owned or partly managed by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS Group, make it to the European football leagues, they will also have to go through a CFCB hearing.
Nice is currently in fifth place in Ligue 1, which puts them in the Europa League. United, on the other hand, is not in the European spots in the Premier League, but they could still make it if they win the league or beat Manchester City in the FA Cup Final on May 25.
