Marathe’s 49ers departure will not prevent the UEFA scrutiny coming Ibrox’s way.

Yesterday brought an interesting announcement from the Ibrox ownership network. Paraag Marathe is leaving his executive role with the San Francisco 49ers after 25 years so that he can concentrate more fully on Leeds United, the Ibrox club and his other sporting interests.

Marathe has gone to considerable lengths to insist that this changes nothing at either football club. In one sense, he is right. It does not diminish his influence. If anything, it appears to confirm that football on this side of the Atlantic will now receive more of his time and attention.

But one distinction is important. Marathe is leaving the NFL organisation, not necessarily walking away from 49ers Enterprises or the wider investment structure around Leeds. Published information from Leeds says that Marathe and Jed York hold more than ten per cent of the entity with voting rights in the company which owns the English club. Marathe also remains Leeds chairman.

So, this announcement does not bring an end to the relationship which Ibrox supporters were told would unlock the muscle, contacts and commercial reach of 49ers Enterprises and which so far hasn’t done it. Nor does it resolve the European ownership questions.

What amazes me is the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of the messaging. We are again being told that Marathe’s involvement with Leeds and the Ibrox club presents no UEFA issue because he no longer sits on both boards.

That is far too simplistic.

A boardroom title is not the only thing UEFA considers. Its regulations are concerned with control and influence. A person does not necessarily cease to matter simply because his name has been removed from one list of directors.

Marathe remains the chairman of Leeds. He freely discusses his involvement in the Ibrox project, appears alongside its leading figures and has now left his long-standing NFL role specifically to devote more attention to his football interests, and the statement makes it pretty clear that Ibrox is part of that network.

Every statement seems to confirm that he remains an important figure around both clubs. That is exactly why the European question cannot simply be waved away.

UEFA’s rules state that no individual or legal entity may exercise control or influence over more than one club taking part in its competitions. The regulations then provide examples, including voting rights, appointment powers and the capacity to exercise decisive influence over a club’s decision-making.

Marathe already stepped down as Ibrox vice-chairman because of UEFA’s multi-club rules and his position at Leeds, after claiming when the takeover was signed off that it was irrelevant and would not matter. Turned out it did.

That alone demonstrates that the overlap was not imaginary and that the job titles did matter, despite earlier attempts to suggest otherwise.

His departure from the San Francisco 49ers does not automatically solve that issue. The NFL team was not the source of the potential UEFA conflict.

Leeds and the Ibrox club are.

Should those two clubs qualify for the same UEFA competition, the governing body would be entitled to examine the reality of the arrangement rather than merely accepting the organisational chart placed in front of it.

Those who read the article on the fabulous Joseph Heller novel Something Happened will know that there are different kinds of hierarchy determining who has influence in a company. It’s not all on the chart showing where people sit on the corporate ladder. There are people who cast long shadows regardless of what the plate on the door says … and at Ibrox Marathe is one of them. Who says so? He does.

Who makes important decisions? Who holds voting influence? Are sporting or commercial operations shared? Does the same individual exercise decisive influence at both clubs? Those are the important questions.

I am not claiming that UEFA would automatically expel either club. That judgement would depend on the structure in place, the evidence of influence and whether the clubs could demonstrate genuine operational independence.

But the notion that there could not possibly be a problem is plainly ridiculous.

Marathe’s own public profile makes his own argument harder to maintain. Every interview in which he discusses both clubs, every appearance alongside the Ibrox hierarchy and every statement emphasising his continuing involvement adds to the impression that he remains an important figure in both projects.

The Scottish media can publish as many flattering stories as it likes. It can repeat the claim that there is no conflict and decline to ask the obvious follow-up questions. UEFA is unlikely to base its conclusions on a Daily Record interpretation of events.

It will look at the substance.

Marathe left his 49ers role partly because he wanted more time for Leeds and Ibrox. That is the explicit link, right there. Announcing that he intends to become more deeply involved in both only sharpens the questions around him.

The dishonesty around this is difficult to understand because it serves no lasting purpose. Marathe can deny the possibility of a conflict, and sympathetic journalists can repeat his denial, but neither of those things changes UEFA’s regulations.

He appears to believe that multi-club ownership rules may eventually become more permissive. There may indeed be further changes around clubs qualifying for different competitions, but the basic concern over common control and decisive influence is not about to disappear.

European football has already seen clubs sanctioned, demoted or excluded because ownership arrangements failed UEFA’s integrity requirements. Crystal Palace was moved from the Europa League to the Conference League, while other clubs were removed entirely. The rules have demonstrated that they are not merely theoretical.

Marathe and the Ibrox hierarchy can conduct all the public-relations exercises they like. Eventually, should Leeds and the Ibrox club enter the same European competition, the structures will have to survive genuine regulatory examination.

At that point, merely saying that he is not formally on one board will not necessarily be enough. The regulators will be interested in who actually exercises influence.

That is why I do not understand the insistence that there is no potential issue whatsoever. A more honest position would be to acknowledge that the current structure works while the clubs do not collide in the same competition, but that further separation might be required should that situation arise.

Instead, supporters are being told that there is nothing to see.

Leeds supporters appear considerably less willing than sections of the Scottish media to accept every piece of messaging uncritically. Some have been unimpressed with the ownership’s decisions, and Marathe’s reputation there is not the flawless success story sometimes presented to Ibrox supporters. His departure from the 49ers has also been welcomed by some followers of the NFL team.

The takeover was supposed to deliver enormous benefits to the Ibrox club through expertise, commercial relationships and the power of the wider sporting network. So far, the tangible football results have been difficult to find.

The club remains trophyless under the new ownership, went through another managerial change and finished third last season. Whatever commercial revolution was promised has not yet transformed the football team.

From my perspective, Marathe taking a more hands-on role is excellent news. He has not been remotely impressive so far, and the supposedly transformative Leeds connection has produced no obvious competitive benefit.

Long may that continue.

But the European issue will not disappear merely because the Scottish media chooses not to examine it. Should Leeds and the Ibrox club eventually qualify for the same UEFA competition, there will have to be serious scrutiny of ownership, voting rights, management structures and actual influence … and that scrutiny will burst the bubble.

UEFA will not need to rely solely on forensic corporate investigation to discover that Marathe is closely connected to both. It can read the announcements. It can watch the interviews. It can listen to the man himself.

Hell, if they really need convincing, they can read the Daily Record. That paper has no end of stories about how deeply embedded in the structure of both clubs he is. They appear not to know that they are laying out the future case for the prosecution.

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