The Cinderella story of Crystal Palace booking their spot in the 2025/26 Europa League campaign and winning their first-ever FA Cup trophy could be having a sad ending before the new season begins.
Crystal Palace earned a spot in the Europa League by winning the FA Cup in May 2025 which sent their supporters into seventh heaven. This is a big deal for a club that’s never qualified for European competitions in recent seasons.
There are reports that Palace could be kicked out of the competition before the start of the 2025/26 season due to sharing ownership of two different clubs in the same competition.
Why will UEFA kick out Crystal Palace from the Europa League?
UEFA has strict rules about multi-club ownership, a football club can’t have the same person owning or influencing multiple teams in the same competition. John Textor, who owns 43% of Palace, also owns Lyon, a French club in the Europa League next season which is not acceptable by UEFA.
Textor and another co-owner, David Blitzer, have tried to get around this by putting their Palace shares into a “blind trust” basically handing control to trustees so they’re not directly involved. However, this was not accepted by the body because the deadline date of changing ownership is expected to be submitted by March 1 of every year. Other clubs like Manchester City and United pulled this blind trust trick last season with their partner clubs and got away with it, but they did it on time.
What is next for Crystal Palace?
Textor has been trying to sell his stake in Palace to fix the issue, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening fast enough either. If they can’t resolve this, Palace might get banned from Europe entirely, which would be a gut punch after their FA Cup win. This gives a chance to Nottingham Forest who could sneak into the Europa League if Palace gets the kicked out. The other twist is that they might not even get Conference League because Blitzer owns a chunk of Brondby, a Danish club in the Conference League, so even dropping down to that competition might not be an option for the Eagles.
Crystal Palace will have to keep their fingers crossed to wait for the final verdict of UEFA which will most likely happen before July 2025.
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