The Athletic exclusively reported on Wednesday that Crystal Palace has formally appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport regarding UEFA's decision to demote them to the UEFA Conference League.

According to the report, the club's management is still upset with UEFA's decision to deprive Crystal Palace of their Europa League qualification and demote them to the UEFA Conference League simply because UEFA's former co-owner John Textor was also Lyon's former largest shareholder, and ruled that Crystal Palace and Lyon violated the Multi-Club Ownership Rules.

At the same time, they also believe that Nottingham Forest's management and Olympiacos, which had also violated the Multi-Club Ownership Rules, also disrupted and caused disputes to a certain extent, which led to UEFA's decision.

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish believes that UEFA selectively targets small clubs like the club, but avoids punishing big clubs such as Chelsea, Strasbourg, Manchester United, Nice, Manchester City, Girona, etc., which is the signs that the authorities bullying the good and fearing the evil, and only picking on those weak small clubs.

However, the fact that Red Bull Group who has been the the best example, and has violated the Multi-Club Ownership Rules for many years, but neither RB Leipzig or Red Bull Salzburg were ever been disqualified from the European competitions, further proves how unfair it is for Crystal Palace to be demoted to the UEFA Conference League due to this dispute.

Although Crystal Palace will start its first UEFA Conference League qualifiers on August 4, Parish said that even if there is a last glimmer of hope, the club must defend and restore their original qualification to the UEFA Europa League.

The report also pointed out that since UEFA announced that it would relegate Crystal Palace to the UEFA Conference League, Crystal Palace fans have been dissatisfied with the decision and collectively held banners to protest on the streets.

Many fans believe that the authorities' bias towards Lyon is shameful and there is also suspicion of abuse of power.

Reporters also tried to contact UEFA but the authorities refused to respond.

The Multi-Club Ownership Rules have indeed caused a very heated debate in the football world recently. A few months ago, FIFA also disqualified Pachuca from participating in this year's Club World Cup because they and León had the same largest shareholder.

At the same time, there are also rumours claiming that the Danish Superliga club Silkeborg was also disqualified by UEFA for violating the Multi-Club Ownership Rules because it had the same shareholders as the Irish Premier League club Drogheda United.

Similar to the situation of Crystal Palace, Silkeborg also appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for this ruling, but even the authorities rejected their appeal.

However, the difference is that Textor is no longer one of the co-owners at Crystal Palace, and is no longer even the largest shareholder of Lyon, so the Premier League club still has some chances of winning. Let's see what the Court of Arbitration for Sport will finally decide.