Chelsea have stepped up pastime in purchasing a stake in Strasbourg after Uefa’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, opened the door to stress-free restrictions on golf equipment with the similar proprietor enjoying in the similar European competitions.
The Strasbourg president, Marc Keller, showed this month he used to be in talks with Chelsea’s co-owner Todd Boehly over a complete or partial sale of the Ligue 1 membership and it’s understood the ones discussions have intensified. Ceferin mentioned this week that Uefa used to be bearing in mind a rule alternate, after Manchester United’s takeover talks raised problems across the doable battle of 2 golf equipment in the similar festival coming beneath one proprietor.
“We’ve had five or six owners of clubs who want to buy another club,” Ceferin informed Gary Neville’s The Overlap YouTube channel. “We have to see what to do. The options are that it stays like that or that we allow them to play in the same competition. I’m not sure yet.
Any change would be a major boost for Boehly, who revealed in September that Chelsea “had talked about having a multi-club model” as a method of making sure “we can show pathways for our young superstars to get on to the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time”.
He is believed to have appointed Chelsea’s new president of business, Tom Glick, to take charge of the process, with approaches previously rejected by Lyon, Sochaux and Bordeaux, the six-time French champions who are aiming for promotion from Ligue 2. understood that Strasbourg, who are 15th in Ligue 1 and clear of the relegation zone only on goal difference, have been looking for investment and could provide an end to Chelsea’s search for a club in a country that has one of the most potentially lucrative sources of young players in the world.
Chelsea declined to comment. Keller, who is a frontrunner to replace Noël Le Graët as president of France’s football federation, said at the beginning of March that he had had lunch with Boehly and Boehly’s partners to discuss a potential deal after it was reported by the French newspaper L’Équipe . “I’m assembly folks, from Chelsea and somewhere else, however not anything is finished because it stands,” he said. “The different shareholders and I’ve a way of accountability and shall be cautious in regards to the profile of doable buyers, no matter their nationality.”
Chelsea have also sounded out clubs in Belgium and Portugal, with Boehly believed to have consulted Jorge Mendes over which clubs to consider in the Portuguese agent’s homeland and held talks with Portimonense’s owners over potential investment.
At present, UEFA regulations bar entry to European competition to clubs that “hold or deal in the securities or shares of any other participating club”, although this does not apply if a person with a 100% shareholding in one club has a “non- decisive influence” at the shareholding in every other membership in the similar festival.
The Newcastle director Amanda Staveley has advised the membership’s house owners are concerned about including a membership to their portfolio to “grow Newcastle and our brand”.