Kieran Maguire raises ‘shameful’ Man City concern after Uefa ‘collapse’
Man City and other multi-club ownership models pose a threat to sporting integrity and could result in 'shameful' football matches.
That is the opinion of finance expert Kieran Maguire, who spoke exclusively to Football Insider about Aleksander Ceferin's latest comments from Uefa on multi-club ownership.
Uefa president Ceferin told The Overlap that Uefa will rethink its rules on multi-club ownership amid an increase in usage of the model within modern football and its risks regarding conflict of interest.
Ceferin said owners could theoretically tell one of their teams to lose if they played another member of the same ownership model in a competitive match, but insisted it would be hard for coaches to convince players to lose on purpose.
City are the mothership of the City Football Group network, which consists of 11 teams over four continents.
Maguire believes that there is a cause for concern over multi-club networks and their risk to sporting integrity.
"Uefa have collapsed and adopted an ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ approach in regard to multi-club ownership models," Maguire told Football Insider.
"There is a cause for concern over this model used by the likes of Man City.
"One of the great things about football is the belief that there is sporting integrity at both domestic and international level.
"If you have an owner who has more than one team then there is the opportunity to break that integrity.
"We have seen in other sports such as Formula 1 what happens when there are effective team orders.
"Although Ceferin believes that all players will want to win every match, sometimes team orders do override this and we could end up with more shameful events like the Austria vs Germany match in 1982."