Editor’s note: Serhat
Yilmaz (@serhat_yilmaz)
is a lecturer in sports law in Loughborough University. His research focuses on
the regulatory framework applicable to intermediaries. Antoine Duval (@Ant1Duval) is the head of
the Asser International Sports Law Centre.
Last week, while FIFA was firing
the heads of its Ethics and Governance committees, the press was overwhelmed
with ‘breaking news’ on the most expensive transfer in history, the come back
of Paul Pogba from Juventus F.C. to Manchester United. Indeed, Politiken
(a Danish newspaper) and Mediapart
(a French website specialized in investigative journalism) had jointly
discovered in the seemingly endless footballleaks
files that Pogba’s agent, Mino Raiola, was involved (and financially
interested) with all three sides (Juventus, Manchester United and Pogba) of the
transfer. In fine, Raiola earned a grand total of € 49,000,000 out of the deal,
a shocking headline number almost as high as Pogba’s total salary at
Manchester, without ever putting a foot on a pitch. This raised eyebrows,
especially that an on-going investigation by FIFA into the transfer was
mentioned, but in the media the sketching of the legal situation was very often
extremely confusing and weak. Is this type of three-way representation legal
under current rules? Could Mino Raiola, Manchester United, Juventus or Paul
Pogba face any sanctions because of it? What does this say about the
effectiveness of FIFA’s Regulations
on Working with Intermediaries? All these questions deserve thorough
answers in light of the publicity of this case, which we ambition to provide in
this blog.More...
Doyen (aka Doyen Sports Investment Limited) is
nothing short of heroic in its fight against FIFA’s TPO ban. It has (sometimes
indirectly through RFC Seraing) attacked the ban in front of the French courts,
the Belgium courts, the European Commission and the Court of Arbitration for
Sport. This costly, and until now fruitless, legal battle has been chronicled
in numerous of our blogs (here
and here).
It is coordinated by Jean-Louis Dupont, a lawyer who is, to say the least, not
afraid of fighting the windmills of sport’s private regulators. Yet, this time
around he might have hit the limits of his stubbornness and legal ‘maestria’.
As illustrated by the most recent decision of the saga, rendered in March by
the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in a case opposing the Belgium club
RFC Seraing (or Seraing) to FIFA. The arguments in favour of the ban might override
those against it. At least this is the view espoused by the CAS, and until
tested in front of another court (preferably the CJEU) it will remain an influential
one. The French text of the CAS award has just been published
and I will take the opportunity of having for once an award in my native
language to offer a first assessment of the CAS’s reasoning in the case,
especially with regard to its application of EU law. More...
Editor’s Note: Saverio Spera
is an Italian lawyer and LL.M. graduate in International Business Law at King’s
College London. He is currently an intern at the ASSER International Sports Law
Centre.
In the
football world the use of unilateral extension options (hereafter UEOs) in
favour of the clubs is common practice. Clubs in Europe and, especially, South
America make extensive use of this type of contractual clauses, since it gives
them the exclusive possibility to prolong the employment relationship with
players whose contracts are about to come to an end. This option gives to a
club the right to extend the duration of a player’s contract for a certain
agreed period after its initial expiry, provided that some previously
negotiated conditions are met. In particular, these clauses allow clubs to sign
young promising players for short-term contracts, in order to ascertain their
potential, and then extend the length of their contracts.[1]
Here lies the great value of UEOs for clubs: they can let the player go if he
is not performing as expected, or unilaterally retain him if he is deemed
valuable. Although an indisputably beneficial contractual tool for any football
club, these clauses are especially useful to clubs specialized in the
development of young players.[2] After
the Bosman
case, clubs have increasingly used these clauses in order to prevent players
from leaving their clubs for free at the end of their contracts.[3] The
FIFA Regulations do not contain any provisions regulating this practice,
consequently the duty of clarifying the scope and validity of the options lied
with the national courts, the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) and the
CAS. This two-part blog will attempt to provide the first general overview on
the issue.[4] My
first blog will be dedicated to the validity of UEOs clauses in light of
national laws and of the jurisprudence of numerous European jurisdictions. In a
second blog, I will review the jurisprudence of the DRC and the CAS on this
matter. More...
Editor's note: Adriaan Wijckmans is an associate specialized in sports law at the Belgium law firm Altius.
In a recent judgment, the Brussels Court of
First Instance confirmed the legality of a so-called surety undertaking, i.e. an
agreement in which the parents of a minor playing football guarantee that their
child will sign a professional contract with a football club as soon as the child
reaches the legal age of majority.
This long-awaited ruling was hailed, on the one hand, by clubs as a
much needed and eagerly anticipated confirmation of a long-standing practice in
Belgian football[1] and, on
the other hand, criticised by FIFPro, the international
player’s trade union, in a scathing press release. More...
Editor’s Note: Shervine Nafissi (@SNafissi) is a Phd Student in sports law and teaching assistant in corporate law at University of Lausanne (Switzerland), Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC).
Introduction
The factual background
The dispute concerns a TPO contract entitled “Economic Rights Participation Agreement” (hereinafter “ERPA”) concluded in 2012 between Sporting Lisbon and the investment fund Doyen Sports. The Argentine player was transferred in 2012 by Spartak Moscow to Sporting Lisbon for a transfer fee of €4 million. Actually, Sporting only paid €1 million of the fee while Doyen Sports financed the remaining €3 million. In return, the investment company became the owner of 75% of the economic rights of the player.[1] Thus, in this specific case, the Portuguese club was interested in recruiting Marcos Rojo but was unable to pay the transfer fee required by Spartak Moscow, so that they required the assistance of Doyen Sports. The latter provided them with the necessary funds to pay part of the transfer fee in exchange of an interest on the economic rights of the player.
Given that the facts and circumstances leading to the dispute, as well as the decision of the CAS, were fully described by Antoine Duval in last week’s blog of Doyen vs. Sporting, this blog will solely focus on the decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (“FSC”) following Sporting’s appeal against the CAS award. As a preliminary point, the role of the FSC in the appeal against CAS awards should be clarified.More...
At
the end of December 2015, the CAS decided on a very public contractual
dispute between Sporting Clube de Portugal Futebol SAD (Sporting) and
Doyen Sports Investments Limited (Doyen). The club was claiming that
Doyen’s Economic Rights Participation Agreement
(ERPA) was invalid and refused to pay Doyen’s due share on the transfer
of Marcos Rojo to Manchester United. The dispute made a lot of noise
(see the excellent coverage by Tariq Panja from Bloomberg here, here and here)
as it was the first TPO case heard by the CAS after FIFA’s ban. Yet,
and it has to be clear from the outset, the case does not affect the
legality of FIFA’s TPO ban; it concerned only the compatibility of
Doyen’s ERPA with Swiss civil law. The hearing took place in June 2015,
but the case was put under a new light by the football leaks revelations unveiled at the end of 2015 (see our blog from December 2015). Despite these revelations, the CAS award favoured Doyen, and was luckily for us quickly made available on the old football leaks website.
This blog will provide a commentary of the CAS decision. It will be
followed in the coming days by a commentary by Shervine Nafissi on the
judgment, on appeal, by the Swiss Federal Tribunal. More...
Editor’s note: This report compiles all relevant news, events and
materials on International and European Sports Law based on the daily coverage
provided on our twitter feed @Sportslaw_asser. You are
invited to complete this survey via the comments section below, feel free to
add links to important cases, documents and articles we might have
overlooked.
The Headlines
The Diarra
ruling of the Tribunal of Charleroi
On 19 January 2017, the Hainaut Commercial Tribunal –
Charleroi rendered its decision on the lawsuit filed by the football player
Lassana Diarra against FIFA and the Belgian FA (URBSFA) for damages caused by
not being able to exercise the status of a professional football player during
the entire 2014/2015 season. The lawsuit is linked to the decision, rendered by
the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) on April 2015, to support Lokomotiv’s
decision to terminate the player’s contract and to order Diarra to pay Lokomotiv
the amount of EUR 10,500,000 for having breached his contract. According to the
plaintiff, Diarra’s opportunity to be recruited by Sporting Charleroi was
denied due to the club being potentially considered jointly liable for Diarra’s
compensation pursuant to Article 17 (2) RSTP. The Belgian court held strongly
that “when the contract is terminated by the club, the player must have the
possibility to sign a new contract with a new employer, without restrictions to
his free movement”. This case highlighted, once again, the need to read
the RSTP in the light of EU law. Moreover, the decision is laying further
ground for broader challenges to the RSTP on the basis of EU law (for a deeper
insight into the Diarra ruling, see the recent blog written by our senior researcher
Antoine Duval) More...
Yesterday the sports law world was
buzzing due to the Diarra decision of
the Tribunal de Commerce du Hainaut (the Tribunal) based in Charleroi, Belgium.
Newspapers were lining up (here, here and here) to spread the
carefully crafted announcement of the new triumph of Jean-Louis Dupont over his
favourite nemesis: the transfer system. Furthermore, I was lucky enough to
receive on this same night a copy of the French text of the judgment. My first
reaction while reading quickly through the ruling, was ‘OMG he did it again’!
“He” meaning Belgian lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont, who after a string of defeats in
his long shot challenge against FIFA’s TPO ban or UEFA’s FFP (see here and here), had [at least
I believed after rushing carelessly through the judgment] manufactured a new
“it”: a Bosman. Yet, after carefully re-reading the judgment, it
became quickly clear to me that this was rather a new Mutu (in the sense of the latest CAS award in the ‘Mutu
saga’, which I have extensively analysed on this blog and in a recent commentary for the new Yearbook of International Sports Arbitration) coupled with some reflections reminding a bit (but
not really as will be explicated below) the Pechstein
case.
In this blog, I will retrace briefly
the story behind the case and then analyse the decision of the Belgium court.
In doing so, I will focus on its reasoning regarding its jurisdiction and the
compatibility of article 17(2) RSTP with EU law.More...
Editor’s note: Kester
Mekenkamp is an LL.M. student in European Law at Leiden University and an
intern at the ASSER International Sports Law Centre. This blog is, to a great
extent, an excerpt of his forthcoming thesis, which he shall submit in order to
complete his master’s degree.
This final blog aims to provide some broader
perspective, by sketching first the grander scheme in which Article 19 RSTP –
FIFA's provision on the protection of minors – operates. Thereafter, the focus will
shift towards testing Article 19 RSTP, thereby keeping in mind the previous
blogs (Part 1: The Early Years and Part 2: The 2009 reform and its aftermath), against EU free movement law.
Putting Article 19 RSTP into perspective: The bigger
picture
After having investigated the nuts and bolts of FIFA’s
provision on the protection of minors in the first two parts of this blog, it
might be useful to address its bigger picture.
Article
19 RSTP and its accompanying provisions regulate only a small share of the targeted
activity. There is, unfortunately, also an illegal
world. Circumvention of the prohibition is allegedly commonplace.[1]
Visas and passports can be falsified.[2]
Work permits can be obtained on the basis of jobs arranged by clubs.[3]
More...
Editor’s note: Kester Mekenkamp is an LL.M. student in European Law
at Leiden University and an intern at the ASSER International Sports Law Centre.
This blog is, to a great extent, an excerpt of his forthcoming thesis, which he
shall submit in order to complete his master’s degree.
This is the
second part of a three-piece blog on FIFA’s provision on the protection of
minors, Article 19 of the Regulations
on the Status and Transfer of Players. The contribution in its entirety aims to provide
an encompassing overview of the rule’s lifespan since its inception in 2001. The previous
(first) part has shed light on the “birth” and “first years” of the provision, and
as such illustrated the relevant developments from 2001 till 2009. This second
part covers the rule’s “adolescent years”, which span from 2009 to the present.
The major changes put forward in the 2009, 2015 and 2016 versions of the RSTP
will be addressed. Thereafter the important CAS decisions concerning Article
19, Muhic, Vada I and II, FC Barcelona, RFEF, and the FIFA decisions relating to Real Madrid and Atlético
Madrid, will be scrutinized. The third, and final, part will constitute a
substantive assessment of the provision under EU Internal Market law.
Given that the
version adopted in 2008 left Article 19 untouched, the 2009 RSTP
represented the next significant step in the regulation of the protection of
minors. It had become clear that the system as used up to that point was
inadequate to achieve its goal,[1]
most notably because several national associations still neglected to strictly
apply the rules.[2] More...