Martyn Ziegler reported inThe Times this morning that Everton’s owners have not put in place a blind trust should the club qualify for the same European competition as Roma. Instead, The Friedkin Group believes it has a “structural solution” that will allow both clubs to pass UEFA’s multi-club ownership test. Once you understand what the legal landscape actually looks like right now, however, the word “solution” deserves at very least a question or two. If Friedkin has tried to be clever rather than engage with UEFA, it is Everton and their fans who will likely pay the price.
1 March 2026 deadline confirmed
To understand what is at stake, you have to start not with this morning’s Times, but with a letter signed by UEFA General Secretary Theodore Theodoridis on 8 December 2025.
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That letter went to every UEFA member association. It carried a simple message: the UEFA Executive Committee had met on 3 December 2025 and confirmed, in terms that left no room for interpretation, that the 1 March compliance deadline for multi-club ownership would continue to apply for the 2026/27 season. No softening, no new exceptions, no transitional arrangements. The circular explicitly acknowledged three separate Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) awards from 2025 that had established the deadline as a strict requirement, and confirmed that no substantial changes to Article 5 of the club competition regulations would be made.
As I noted at the time, MCOs simply could not wait and see without inviting risk of a ban or competition “relegation.”
That circular landed on the desks of the most senior officials of every national association in European football. The Friedkin Group, owners of both Everton and Roma, have no basis to claim ignorance or that they were unaware. The letter was not a suggestion - it was a restatement of settled UEFA law, backed by three arbitral awards and confirmed by the governing body’s highest executive committee. Every multi-club ownership group in Europe was on notice that 1 March 2026 was the hard deadline by which compliance with Article 5 had to be established.
That date has now passed.
What the rule requires and why Friedkin’s position is exposed
Article 5 of the UEFA Club Competition Regulations prohibits clubs under common ownership, control or decisive influence from competing in the same UEFA competition. The test is not whether the owner has actually interfered in sporting decisions. It is whether the capacity for “decisive influence” exists. The rule operates at the level of structure, not conduct.
Although it is possible changes have occurred but are not yet publicly confirmed, we understand that The Friedkin Group holds 99.5% of Everton and 95.97% of AS Roma through their centralised vehicle, Pursuit Sports.
[X avatar for @gregorypcordell
Greg Cordell@gregorypcordell
And here is the updated ownership diagram specific to Everton FC. Once the post-acquisition (reduced) debt picture is clear, I'll layer in notable lending arrangements for reference.
3:56 PM · Dec 19, 2024 ·815 Views
1 Reply ·3 Reposts ·3 Likes](https://x.com/gregorypcordell/status/1869773831365349431?s=20)
Combined investment across both clubs runs to around €1.6 billion. The governance picture is a pressing problem. Dan Friedkin serves as Chairman of Everton and President of Roma. Marc Watts is Executive Chairman of Everton and sits on Roma’s Executive Committee. That is a 50% overlap at the most senior decision-making level of both clubs. Article 5.01(b) targets precisely this configuration, and three CAS panels last year confirmed that the CFCB is entitled to look through formal corporate structures to the practical reality of who controls what.
According to Ziegler’s reporting, insiders claim TFG did not set up a blind trust before 1 March 2026, instead relying on what they describe as an alternative “structural solution”. What that solution actually consists of has not been publicly disclosed, which in itself raises questions the clubs should be able to answer.
What the CAS awards actually established
To appreciate how significant the December circular was, it is worth understanding what the three 2025 CAS awards actually decided, because Friedkin’s lawyers will know this territory intimately.
In the FK DAC 1904 case, the club’s legal team ran nine separate arguments before CAS challenging the validity and enforceability of the 1 March deadline. They argued it was retrospective in effect, disproportionate, contrary to Swiss law, inconsistent with UEFA’s own prior conduct, and in breach of EU competition law under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The CAS panel rejected every single argument. It found the deadline had been validly adopted by the UEFA Executive Committee in September 2024, properly communicated to all member associations, and was enforceable as written. On the EU competition law point, the panel applied the Meca-Medina test and found the rule pursued a legitimate objective, was inherent in achieving it, and was proportionate. The panel also noted the scale of UEFA’s task - 258 clubs had to be assessed in the 2025/26 cycle. The June deadline was administratively unworkable. The March deadline was not.
In the Crystal Palace/Olympique Lyonnais case, the CFCB and CAS demonstrated that the analysis goes beyond formal ownership charts. The panel examined player transfer flows between sister clubs, shared services, the degree of operational integration, and whether individuals who held positions across multiple clubs couldin practice exercise control over sporting decisions. Formal legal separation that does not reflect operational reality is not compliance.
The December 2025 circular was UEFA’s explicit acknowledgment of all three decisions. It was a clean statement that the framework had been tested, validated, and would be applied unchanged.
What a compliant solution looks like
A genuine blind trust, established before 1 March 2026, with independent lawyers/parties holding legal control of Everton’s governance and no operational overlap with Roma’s management would likely satisfy UEFA. Manchester City and Girona used this model for the Champions League in 2024/25. INEOS used a comparable arrangement for Nice and Manchester United. Although it creates friction and short-term inconvenience on an integrated group, UEFA accepts it, or has historically. It is not clear what other structure does work or what a “structural solution” even is.
The Friedkin Group elected not to take the blind trust route, at least not through the standard mechanism. Perhaps they received legal advice that their “structural solution” is genuinely equivalent. Perhaps they have engineered something that achieves real separation without the administrative disruption of a formal trust. If so, the CFCB will need to be satisfied of that on the evidence, against the backdrop of three CAS awards that have made the threshold for compliance demonstrably high.
What Everton stand to lose
The stakes are not abstract. Roma are sixth in Serie A but three points off fourth (a Champions League place). Everton are eighth in the Premier League but three points off fifth, with the same competition within reach. Under UEFA’s rules, if both clubs qualify for the same competition and the ownership structure is found non-compliant, only one can participate. The tiebreaker is domestic ranking. In all scenarios, it is likely that Everton would be the loser there. The closeness of the chasing pack in both leagues, from Italy’s fourth to seventh and England’s fifth to eighth, means there will be intrigue until the final day.
Everton is a club that has endured years of financial chaos, and that has finally, under Friedkin’s ownership and with a Bramley-Moore Dock home now open, begun to look like a stable football operation with genuine forward momentum. Qualifying for European football on merit and then losing that place to a compliance failure by their own owners would represent a serious and entirely avoidable failing.
Benefit of the doubt but...
Friedkin may have got this right and under control. The “structural solution” may be substantive, independently verified, and sufficient to satisfy the CFCB. There is no basis yet to conclude otherwise, and they deserve the benefit of the doubt until the assessment process reaches a conclusion.
The history of multi-club ownership enforcement over the last twelve months is, however, a history of owners who concluded they had found the sophisticated route, only to discover the CFCB and CAS were more rigorous than anticipated. FK DAC discovered this in June 2025. Crystal Palace spent months in procedural uncertainty before a share sale resolved the position but not before a competition relegation. Nottingham Forest and Chelsea probably would have faced issues had they clashed with Olympiakos and Strasbourg respectively. Notably we’ve also seen nothing from those potential conflicts but there is little risk of overlap this season.
UEFA gave the industry an unambiguous signal in December. Three CAS panels gave the industry unambiguous signals before that. The framework rewards simple compliance by the stated dates. It has not, so far, rewarded convoluted arguments after the event.
Everton’s fans need to know their club’s European future is not hostage to Roma’s performance on the field and a corporate structure their owners have not publicly explained. Either way, what have the clubs and UEFA got to hide - there is no reason not to explain the MCO fix to the general population of clubs and fans.
Until then, the question is whether Friedkin’s lawyers have genuinely solved the problem, or whether they have found an arrangement that looks like a solution without being one.
In this regulatory environment, those are not the same thing.
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