The football business is evolving and the new century has seen a growing trend towards grouping clubs from different countries and categories under the same ownership. This is something that favours the income of marketingsaves costs in player scouting and allows young talents to mature.
The phenomenon has grown to the point of posing a problem for UEFA. What to do if two of these clubs coincide in one of its competitions? It was decided to avoid any occasion in which one club had visible influence over the other through shareholders, financial support, governance by the same people or transfers of players between them in the previous summer.
In 2023-24, they found that Aston Villa and Vitoria de Guimaraes, on the one hand, and Milan and Toulouse on the other, shared owners. UEFA was faced with the dilemma of preventing the registration of one of the two in each case or looking for subterfuges to open the door. There had already been one case, although not so clear, in 2020-21: the company that then owned Milan was a large creditor of the owners of Lille. It was decided that this was tolerable.
But this was something else: there were shared owners in the Aston Villa-Vitoria de Guimaraes and Milan-Toulouse pairs. Plus Leipzig and Salzburg, both of which belong to the Red Bull group. In the latter, the theory was accepted that Red Bull only owns Salzburg and that in the case of Leipzig it is limited to being a sponsor, which was like defining the octopus as a pet. Regarding the Aston Villa-Vitoria de Guimaraes and Milan-Toulouse pairs, the issues were resolved by establishing that different people would sit on the boards of directors and prohibiting any player from moving from one team to the other in the summer.
Now we are faced with a new case: Girona is part of the City Group, whose head is Manchester City, and both are qualified for this Champions League. The new provisions have forced City to reduce its stake in Girona to below 30% (it was 47%), which has already been done, although there is no exact news of who the divestment went to.
Nobody can hold the position of director at both clubs at the same time. One Girona player, Savinho, left for City this summer, but by a route that circumvents the ban: he belonged to City, who had him on loan to Troyes, who in turn loaned him to Girona after he had been at Eindhoven. This summer, Girona returned the player to Troyes, from whom City in turn claimed him.
I suppose that the algorithms that determined the draw for the League phase included the fact that clubs with business ties could not coincide in the group. But if City and Girona advance in the competition, the crossover could occur later. It would be uncomfortable for the Guardiola brothers: Pep, City’s coach, and Pere, who grew up in his shadow, president of the Girona board. And worrying for everyone.
There are curious precedents in Spain. In 51-52, Mestalla, a Valencia reserve team, won the right to go up to the First Division, but was prevented from doing so. In 55-56, España Industrial, a reserve team of Barça, also won promotion and resorted to a ruse: it was re-founded, renamed Condal, and was accepted into the First Division. Its squad included returning Barça veterans and promising players who would later be promoted to the first team. However, it did not lose either game against Barça, only one, and drew another. Returning to the Second Division that same year, it once again defined itself as a reserve team.
In this century, the businessman Antonio Asensio became the owner of several clubs, two of which were Mallorca and Hércules. In 2010-2011, the Alicante team and the Mallorcan reserve team coincided in the Second Division. On the last day, Hércules, already relegated to Second Division B, visited Mallorca B, who would have secured permanence by winning. It was taken for granted that Hércules would not put up any resistance, but a bonus from Eibar encouraged them, they won 0-1 and dragged the Balearic reserve team with them to Second Division B.
The opposite was true: in the 1980 Cup, an unstoppable Castilla team was gradually winning the knockout stages. As Madrid was also still in the race, they were not paired in each draw, postponing the confrontation between father and son until it was inevitable, in the final. In it, the Castilla boys played intimidated and lost 6-1.
