{"id":631716,"date":"2026-04-27T10:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631716\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T10:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:56:08","slug":"premier-league-in-europe-could-a-club-lose-their-european-place-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631716\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier League in Europe: Could a club lose their European place once again?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, Nottingham Forest<\/a> owner Evangelos Marinakis placed the club into a blind trust in case they qualified for the Champions League.<\/p>\n

That could have presented a conflict with his other club, Olympiakos. <\/p>\n

With Forest in the semi-finals of the Europa League, once again they have a chance of being in the Champions League. And Olympiakos look like being in it too.<\/p>\n

In a blind trust, relevant parties transfer their shares to independent trustees, whereby all the decision-making of the club will rest solely under the control of the third party.<\/p>\n

The club are controlled through a company called NF Football Investments.<\/p>\n

Until 28 February, Marinakis was the only person with significant control. <\/p>\n

He was removed and it was passed to another company, Pittville Four Limited, controlled by Janet Lucy Gibson, Henry Peter Hickman and Eleanor Catherine Walsh.<\/p>\n

Those three independent trustees were also added to the football club’s board, replacing Mighael Dugher, Simon Forster and Jonathan Owen.<\/p>\n

Forest’s problem could be that the new additions had to pass the Premier League’s owners and directors test. <\/p>\n

It was not until 17 April that Companies House was updated. <\/p>\n

The Premier League’s register of directors, last updated on 2 April, still lists Marinakis, Dugher, Forster and Owen.<\/p>\n

Will the lodging of the blind trust on 28 February be enough? Or would Uefa consider 17 April to be date the club were compliant?<\/p>\n

Forest are adamant that control was officially relinquished by Marinakis on 28 February and they will have no issue with Uefa. <\/p>\n

Two years ago, the CFCB accepted a blind trust to admit Manchester City<\/a> and Girona to the Champions League, and Manchester United<\/a> and Nice to the Europa League, satisfied that multi-cub ownership issues had been resolved. <\/p>\n

However, at the time it stated that it “will not be bound by this alternative in subsequent seasons”.<\/p>\n

Until the CFCB makes another ruling on a blind trust, there is no absolute certainty it would be accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis placed the club into a blind trust in case they qualified…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-631716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}