{"id":371625,"date":"2025-08-25T06:12:35","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T06:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/371625\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T06:12:35","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T06:12:35","slug":"fa-to-investigate-crystal-palace-fans-evangelos-marinakis-morgan-gibbs-white-banner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/371625\/","title":{"rendered":"FA to investigate Crystal Palace fans\u2019 Evangelos Marinakis-Morgan Gibbs-White banner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The English FA will investigate a banner displayed by Crystal Palace fans showing Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis holding a gun to the head of midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White.<\/p>\n<p>The banner was displayed in the Lower Holmesdale Stand, where the Holmesdale Fanatics supporters\u2019 group sits, at Selhurst Park during Sunday\u2019s Premier League game between the sides. It was not shown during Sky Sports\u2019 UK broadcast of the match.<\/p>\n<p>On the banner, Gibbs-White is shown with a speech bubble next to him reading: \u201cMr Marinakis is not involved in blackmail, match-fixing, drug trafficking or corruption!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Marinakis has always strongly denied any wrongdoing in relation to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/5888132\/2024\/11\/01\/marinakis-defamation-case-match-fixing-threats\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">these allegations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As well as Gibbs-White, the banner also depicts Marinakis holding a briefcase overflowing with cash; what appears to be a UEFA delegate standing behind bags which read \u201ccorrespondence\u201d with the UEFA and Forest badges on; former Palace minority shareholder John Textor as a clown; and a ship with Marinakis\u2019 name on \u2014 the Greek businessman is the founder and chairman of Capital Maritime &amp; Trading Corp.<\/p>\n<p>On the Palace <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cpfc.co.uk\/information\/ground-regulations\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">website<\/a>, in a statement which ends with \u201cPublished by The Football Association Premier League Limited\u201d, the club say, \u201cBanners must not contain foul language, be defamatory or contain political or offensive slogans and the club reserves the right to turn banners away if the content is felt to be offensive in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When contacted by The Athletic, the Premier League indicated the incident was a matter for the FA. Palace and Forest were approached for comment. The Holmesdale Fanatics declined to comment.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-6572442 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/palace-forest-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Sunday's game finished 1-1 (Eddie Keogh\/Getty Images)\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>      Sunday\u2019s game finished 1-1\u00a0 after goals from Ismaila Sarr and Callum Hudson-Odoi (Eddie Keogh\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the game, Palace said on social media that they \u201cwould like to remind supporters that acts of discrimination, including inappropriate chanting, violence and entering the field of play, will not be tolerated at Selhurst Park\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Gibbs-White signed a new contract at Forest in late July, having been the subject of bids from Tottenham Hotspur and appearing set to have a medical at the north London club. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6553746\/2025\/08\/15\/gibbs-white-tottenham-nottingham-forest-transfer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Athletic reported<\/a> that Gibbs-White had a key 30-minute meeting with Marinakis before committing his future to Forest until 2028.<\/p>\n<p>Tensions between Palace and Forest have grown over the summer after the former was demoted from the Europa League to the Conference League \u2014 with the latter promoted as a result \u2014 having been found to have breached UEFA\u2019s multi-club ownership rules. UEFA\u2019s decision to demote Palace was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>In 2021, a banner displayed at Selhurst Park by the Holmesdale Fanatics was the subject of a police investigation. That banner was on display when Newcastle United faced Palace, shortly after the north-east club\u2019s takeover, which was largely funded by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF). The banner took aim at the Premier League\u2019s owners\u2019 and directors\u2019 test, and the Croydon Metropolitan Police said it had been reported as \u201coffensive\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Explaining the Palace-Forest tensions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6569415\/2025\/08\/23\/crystal-palace-nottingham-forest-parish-marinakis-rivalry\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">By Nick Miller<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath of Palace\u2019s demotion, their chairman Steve Parish did a round of media interviews in which he intimated that someone else had been behind the punishment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re led to believe that\u2019s the issue,\u201d said on The Rest Is Football podcast, when asked by host Gary Lineker if Forest had \u201cplayed a part\u201d in the process. \u201cIf there wasn\u2019t someone who wanted to get in as a consequence, then there wouldn\u2019t be a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was in reference to a letter that Forest had written to UEFA about the issue, which they have always insisted was a matter of them simply seeking clarity about which competition they would be in this season, so they could plan accordingly. Forest also say the letter was sent when UEFA was already investigating Palace\u2019s status amid a crackdown on these rules, which had already seen European football\u2019s governing body kick Irish side Drogheda United and Slovakia\u2019s DAC 1904 out of the Conference League for similar breaches.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, Forest\u2019s owner Marinakis, along with former Palace minority shareholder John Textor \u2014 whose controlling stake in French side Lyon had been the trigger for Palace\u2019s demotion \u2014 and UEFA, became the focus of Palace fans\u2019 ire.<\/p>\n<p>At their first three games of this season \u2014 the Community Shield at Wembley, the goalless Premier League draw away to Chelsea and the first leg at home against Fredrikstad \u2014 Palace fans displayed a banner with the words \u2018UEFA MAFIA\u2019 on a version of the body\u2019s logo with a Euro symbol replacing the map of Europe, and also chanted \u201cF*** UEFA, f*** John Textor, f*** Marinakis.\u201d It\u2019s clear who they blame for the situation, and it\u2019s not anybody in the current Palace hierarchy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">(Top photo: Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The English FA will investigate a banner displayed by Crystal Palace fans showing Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,1925,393,4884,12,1144,178,101,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-371625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-crystal-palace","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-nottingham-forest","15":"tag-premier-league","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115087929791598560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}