One of Crystal Palace’s biggest fanzines is calling upon Eagles fans, and supporters of other clubs with a sense of fair play, to lobby UEFA with emails sent to the football bureaucrats in Switzerland who decided to demote the FA Cup-winners to the Conference League.
Protest movement: FYP is asking fans of all clubs to email UEFA, probably after they’ve joined tonight’s protest march
The decision was announced last week, dropping Crystal Palace from Europe’s second-tier Europa League competition for an alleged breach of club multi-ownership rules.
UEFA made its decision based on the share-holdings of John Textor, who also had shares in another Europa League club, Lyon. Textor sold his Palace stock last month, but after the March 1 UEFA deadline.
Steve Parish, the Palace chairman, described UEFA’s decision as “probably one of the greatest injustices that has ever happened in European football”.
There is a fans’ protest organised by the Holmesdale Farantics planned for tonight (meeting at South Norwood Clocktower at 7pm, marching to Selhurst Park at 7.30pm).
Five Year Plan fanzine, meanwhile, wants football fans to deluge UEFA with emails laying out the case for reversing the ruling against Palace.
“We’re calling upon Palace fans to contact UEFA to raise their concern and disappointment at the decision made last week to demote Palace from the Europa League,” the fanzine says.
In-box him: Aleksandr Ceferin, the UEFA president
They wanted the emails to go to UEFA president Aleksandr Ceferin, seeking his personal intervention in the matter. But Ceferin’s direct email is no longer published on the UEFA website.
“Unfortunately the UEFA president’s email address is not public anymore – so the best option is to use the one we’ve provided above and to put it for Ceferin’s attention.” The email address is media@uefa.ch.
“It’s important that we do this respectfully. Frustrations are high but we want to encourage change.
“We’ve created a template on our site, which is easy to copy and paste.”
The FYP email, which the fanzine suggests senders should mark “FAO Aleksandr Ceferin” in the subject field, says that UEFA’s decision to demote Palace will “undermine the sporting integrity of European competition”.
The email states: “Crystal Palace earned their place in the Europa League on merit, and altering their status now would be deeply unfair – especially on the basis of an ownership issue that, at the kick-off of the competition, will already be resolved.
“We urge UEFA to uphold the principles of fairness and transparency.”
Read more: Palace fury as Forest set to benefit from their UEFA demotion
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The invitation for any club by UEFA to place shares in a “Blind Trust” – is in fact an invitation to “Legalise” cheating by UEFA.
Though not intended – it has pressed a self destruct button for the integrity. respect and love of the game of football – which will long in the memory of fans worldwide and make restoring it;s own credibility impossible within the global football community.
Unfortunately, the rules are the rules. The Man City and Nottingham owners did the whole blind trust thing, not sure why CPFC’s BOD didn’t even consider it. Perhaps they thought they didn’t think they would win the FA Cup…but either way Textor offloading all of his stake all a sudden signifies wrongdoing . It’s a massive shame, but looking at Steve Parish’s X , he only has himself to blame as he has total control of the club.
UEFA changed the rules for Liverpool in 2005 to allow them to defend their Champions League title which they had won in the previous season .