Steve Parish has responded to reporter Bobby Manzi's post on X and story
https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/sport/25668144.parishs-palace-contract-used-evidence-multi-club-case/ about the chairman's contract being used as evidence in the CAS hearing.
"Come on Mr Manzi that’s cherry picking of a long ruling to create mischief and make it look like the club had no case. I am sure having diligently read the whole ruling you know that this is not in any way a fair reflection. I don’t think anyone doubts who makes decisions at the football club - indeed Bobby you generally blame me for pretty much every goal we concede, so it’s a particularly strange point for you to try to make.
In the context of our case that employment contract is an irrelevant formality. I am one of four main owners and partners and I act as principle partner at the club and again as I am sure you will have read our case was based on three distinct things.Sporting Merit - the rule says that in the event of a conflict the club that takes precedence is the one that qualifies for the higher UCC comp on ‘Sporting Merit’.
We say we won the FA cup and qualified directly for Europa League, as opposed to Lyon who qualified on sporting merit to the Conference League were reclassified into Europa League because PSG won the domestic cup but didn’t need the Europa place having already qualified for the Champions league. The court struggled to find a reason for this clause if it wasn’t to give a club in our situation precedence. Three judges on the panel and we lost this 2-1 - very much ‘hitting the bar’ if you like.
We remain of the opinion that we are right on this point and one judge did concur (much as we didn’t want Lyon fans to lose out either ) Anti Trust (unequal treatment) - We knew, and the court and UEFA’s lawyers basically accepted, that other clubs had been given past the 1st March deadline to comply for various reasons, not least because there were conflicting communications about the date and it didn’t leave time to sell or even get clubs into trusts .
We were also in turn told by the original panel chair, both on the record and informally, that if the the buyout of the shareholder in question was completed prior to the draw that would likely be a cure as clearly no distortion of the competition could then occur, especially as the process to sell had begun prior to March 1st. On this basis we spent the summer with Woody’s help completing a difficult and complex $200+ transaction only to still be removed. We strongly believe this was unequal treatment and that were we in any other court where competition law was properly applied we would have won this point.
For technical reasons it’s hard for us to get UEFA outside of their own system and into a ‘higher’ court but I believe this will change over time (although not necessarily a good thing overall) . Decisive Influence - We never argued in court or publicly that JT had no ‘influence’, we argued that in reality myself and the exec team at the club made the decisions and in any event he was 1 of 4 votes so his vote wasn’t in any way decisive, this was backed up by my other partners with whom there is a long standing relationship and a great deal of trust and indeed JT’s own evidence and many public pronouncements that he felt he had no influence. The court sadly for us decided ‘any potential’ for influence is decisive .
As a footnote I would say The UEFA disciplinary and CAS appeal process has some benefits against say the full judicial system that the Premier League have saddled themselves with. It moves faster and allows the system to run effectively but in our view is too skewed towards expedience and as such can produce unfair outcomes and unequal treatment of some clubs. Apologies for the long post but this is detailed and important stuff, how clubs are treated in these process matters and can’t be dealt with in click bait - In the end we thank the judges for their time and we move forward."
England
www.bbc.co.uk
