Drogheda United FC v. UEFA

Trivela Group's ownership network extends across three continents: it acquired Drogheda United (Ireland) by 28 January 2025, controls Silkeborg IF (Denmark), owns Walsall FC (England, which has never itself qualified for a UEFA competition), and has owned Togolese club Trivela FC since July 2024. When both Drogheda and Silkeborg qualified for the 2025/26 UEFA Conference League on sporting merit, that triggered a direct conflict with UEFA's multi-club ownership (MCO) rule under Article 5 of the UEFA club competition regulations, which bars common ownership of two clubs in the same UEFA competition as of a fixed assessment date — revised by UEFA, via an October 2024 circular, to 1 March 2025.

Drogheda proposed a set of remedial measures to UEFA's Club Financial Control Body to bring itself into compliance: a deed of trust under Irish law transferring 100% of Trivela's shares in the club to independent trustees (named as Irish solicitor Ciaran Doyle and club director Conor Hoey) until 30 June 2026; a €600,000 capital contribution from Trivela to the club; and the conversion of a €1.8 million Trivela loan into the club's own capital. UEFA's CFCB First Chamber rejected these measures because they were communicated after the 1 March deadline, and decided to admit Silkeborg to the 2025/26 Conference League while rejecting Drogheda.

Drogheda appealed to CAS, arguing the revised deadline had not been validly adopted or properly communicated with adequate notice. A Panel of Prof. Philippe Sands KC and Prof. Fabio Iudica held this was the first CAS decision to specifically address UEFA's revised 1 March 2025 MCO deadline, and found it had been validly adopted through UEFA's normal circular process and communicated with adequate notice via the October 2024 circular. Critically, the Panel held that remedial measures proposed after the assessment date — however substantive, including a genuine blind-trust structure — cannot cure a breach that already existed on the fixed date itself.

Drogheda's appeal was dismissed, and Silkeborg's admission in its place stood. The same MCO regime produced two closely related outcomes decided around the same period: CAS 2025/A/11604 Crystal Palace FC v. UEFA, Nottingham Forest & Olympique Lyonnais, and a further pair of cases involving Győri ETO FC and FC DAC 1904 Dunajská Streda, where CAF's counterpart panel reached the identical conclusion — that no post-deadline action can be considered, regardless of its substance. Read together, these decisions confirm a consistent, strict CAS approach to UEFA's MCO enforcement across multiple ownership groups in the same season, a pattern worth knowing for any client involved in cross-border club ownership structures.