Tribal Football

DAC ousted from Europe over shared ownership

Peter Žember / TASR
DAC will not compete in the UEFA Conference League after being omitted by UEFA.
DAC will not compete in the UEFA Conference League after being omitted by UEFA.TASR - Pavel Neubauer
UEFA delivered bad news to Slovak supporters to start the new week. As part of maintaining the integrity of their club competitions and fair-play based on the rule on multiple ownership of clubs, UEFA have excluded DAC Dunajska Streda from the UEFA Conference League. The information was provided by the site sport.sk after being informed by UEFA.

The reason their removal is that the owner of the club from the Zitny ostrov Oszkar Vilagi also owns the Hungarian club ETO FC Gyor, who also qualified for the Conference League. While both sides finished fourth in their respective leagues, Hungary are ranked higher in UEFA's five-year country coefficient ranking.

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DAC were supposed to second qualifying round of UEFA's third tier club competition. Their opponent was supposed to be the winner of the first qualifying round tie between Urartu of Armenia and Belarus' Neman Grodno. Instead, the winner of the aforementioned tie will get a bye to the third qualifying round.

"Based on the assessment of the documentation submitted by the clubs presented by the first Chamber of the Financial Control Authority of UEFA Clubs, it concluded that FC ETO Gyor and FC DAC 1904 Dunajska Streda violated the ownership rule of several clubs set out in Article 5.01 of UEFA's regulations for club competitions on the relevant date of 1 March 2025," the UEFA said in a statement on their website. 

Slovak football will have only three representatives in the European club competitions in 2025/2026. Slovan Bratislava, who won the title once again, will partake in the Champions League second qualifying round, Spartak Trnava will face Swedish Cup winners BK Hacken in the Europa League first qualifying round, and MSK Zilina will play in the second qualifying round of the Conference League against Rakow Czestochowa.