Stefan Borson shares Nottingham Forest update after Uefa send official letter
Nottingham Forest came close to qualifying for the Champions League last season following several strong performances at the City Ground.
Owner Evangelos Marinakis ceased control of Forest by placing his shares into a blind trust in April in preparation for Olympiakos, who he also owns, qualifying for the same European competition.
That may have been too late after Uefa set a deadline for 1 March for clubs to resolve their ownership situations, with the governing body’s rules prohibitting teams controlled by the same owners or directors from competing in the same European competition.
There was eventually no issue after Olympiakos qualified for the Champions League and Forest ended up in the Europa League.
Uefa issued a circular on Monday (8 December) warning clubs they must once again comply with its multi-club ownership rules by 1 March next year, with Crystal Palace removed from the Europa League for this season after it was deemed they failed to comply with the regulations.
Nottingham Forest avoided major Champions League blow
Former Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson exclusively told Football Insider Forest would not have been allowed to play in the Champions League had they qualified for the competition alongside Olympiakos.
Palace lost their Europa League place due to former co-owner John Textor’s shares in Lyon, who also qualified for the second-tier competition.
Forest were then promoted to the Europa League after Palace’s appeal was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), with Oliver Glasner’s side demoted to the Conference League.
Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, Borson said: “It’s a real issue for clubs all over Europe. We now have for the first time in the last week, we’ve got all three of the cases that were played out at CAS, clubs appealing against bans from tournaments due to MCO.
“So, you’ve got a good understanding now of the parameters around what happened and who was allowed and who’s not. Now, the interesting thing is a lot of the stuff that we heard before about Nottingham Forest for example not complying by 1 March but still being okay.
“I think it’s pretty clear that Nottingham Forest would not have been allowed to play if Olympiakos would have been in the same competition. They would have been relegated out of let’s say the Champions League because as far as we can tell all of their actions in terms of the blind trusts were all post 1 March.”
Irish side Drogheda United and Slovak club FC DAC 1904 lost their places in the Conference League after also failing to comply with the multi-club rules alongside Palace.
Nottingham Forest would have faced Uefa punishment
Borson insisted Uefa wouldn’t have been lenient on Forest if they had qualified for the same competition as Olympiakos.
“It appears now that, although there were some indications that Uefa would have been lenient, actually the reality was there was no decision from Uefa that they would actually be lenient to the ECA, who are the European Club Association, they went off and said, ‘Yeah, don’t worry about it to all its clubs’, but actually, it looks like the reality is that Uefa gave no leniency to anybody at all,” said Borson.
“Nobody that was challenging any of these cases, Crystal Palace, Drogheda and these other clubs, nobody could point to a situation where they had been lenient and allowed teams to go over 1 March.”
Forest beat Utrecht 2-1 in the Europa League on Thursday (11 December) to move up to 11th in the table.
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