Crystal Palace's tumbling from the Europa League before it even started is a sporty catastrophe that they should have seen coming. That they did not do that is overwhelming on them. This is essentially the own fault of the London Club.
Yes, there are too many shades of gray in the UEFA rules on Multi-Club ownership. The administrative body of European football has allowed subjectivity and interpretation to play too much a role in this embarrassing mess.
What is a 'decisive influence' on a football club? Discuss.
It sounds like an exam question and on this occasion it is one that John Textor, Steve Parish and everyone in Palace involved in this sorry mess have failed.
There are meshes in the UEFA rules. There are usually.
Clubs such as Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest knew them and exploited them. So – no matter how absurd it sounds – there is no conflict of interest in the eyes of UEFA between United and Nice, City and Girona, Chelsea and Strasbourg and Bos and Olympiakos.
Palace also had a way out of this pickle. They knew about the tricks. Move shares. Sell ​​shares. UEFA e -mailed everyone in March to ensure that they were aware of problems that emerged further.
But Palace did nothing about it. They were on their hands. They took a risk.
Speaking at Talksport this week, Textor seemed to suggest that UEFA's Missive had gone to an e -mail address that nobody in Selhurst Park is watching. You can't make up for it.
Textor still knew. For all his strenuous and to a certain extent convincing protests of having no significant input in what happens in Palace – where his shareholding is 43 percent – deep inside his bones he knew.
That is why he saw how Palace Captain Marc Guehi lifted the FA Cup on Wembley in May with the kind of feeling that a 100m runner would have to settle in his blocks to realize that he had forgotten to bind his shoelaces.
“I thought,” Oh S ***, we're going to have a problem, “he told the White and Jordan show of Talksport.
Listening to Textor Talk this week was enlightening. It seems that board meetings in Selhurst Park are quite tense. Textor did not even refer to the parish – the chairman of the palace – by his first name when he spoke about him.
“I'm on the board with four other boys,” Textor said.
“Parish makes decisions. He involves us, but he doesn't really listen to us. '
And here we come to the layers of this. Textor – in the process of selling his interest in Palace to New Yorks Jets – owner Woody Johnson – UEFA has told that he has no decisive influence on decisions in Palace – in contrast to his other club Lyon – and says that he has provided documents that prove it.
Likewise he talks about paying off the debts of the club and helping with the establishment of the Palace Academy. Is that not a decisive influence on the construction of the modern palace? It is an argument that it is worth at least.
“I help,” Textor told Talksport.
“I help a lot.”
In the meantime, Textor gives Palace by hiring FA Cup-winning coach Oliver Glasner shortly after admitting that he almost gave him the Lyon job as a happy coincidence. Maybe it was.
But again, it is not difficult to imagine that UEFA is quite interested in it, because they have made a decision that even as recent as breaking the story of Mail Sport a few weeks ago that no one in Palace really thought they would ever go against them.
And these are the shades of gray that the palace would always endanger a UEFA judgment that has happened now and this brings us back to complacency, back to that point earlier this year where people in Palace thought this would not happen.
None of this fits well with what we know about Parish, a chairman who has built a sustainable, successful, progressive, community -based football club. He is generally much smarter than this.
But it is all in telling this sad sports story.
Seeing how clubs effectively laugh in the face of UEFA by dumping shares in 'Blind Trusts' to get round ownership problems is embarrassing.
For example, while Forest expected a Champions League place towards the end of last season, owner Evangelos Marinakis-Die used the owner of Greek champions Olympiakos-this known tactics in an attempt to distance themselves from business on the city.
When the forest fell at the last obstacle, trust was resolved. Okay and precisely and within the lines, but also so transparent that it is rather ridiculous.
UEFA's next step should be to visit all this in an attempt to remove much of this subjectivity. The ownership of several club in Europe threatens the sporting integrity and the administrative body is absolutely right to be on top of that. It's just that they are not on top of it. Their rules and regulations are full of moving goals and so they have allowed some of their affiliated clubs to fool them.
But that is the case, if everyone succeeded in doing that, why on earth would not be able to Crystal Palace? They would still have to wonder when the Conference League will start next season with Glasner and his players in it.