EU top court says Fifa player transfer rules breach law
Reuters – The transfer rules of world soccer’s governing body Fifa go against European Union laws, the EU’s top court said in a ruling on a high-profile case linked to former France player Lassana Diarra on Friday, citing the bloc’s free movement principles.
“The rules in question are such as to impede the free movement of professional footballers wishing to develop their activity by going to work for a new club,” said the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Fifa’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) say a player who terminates a contract before its term “without just cause” is liable to pay compensation to the club, and where the player joins a new club they will be joint and severally liable for payment of compensation.
Key events
Gary O’Neil of Wolves is having a chat. He is speaking about last weekend’s narrow loss to Liverpool.
“From people who know football, they know last weekend was a fantastic effort [by Wolves] against a team who have won nearly all their games this season, they world-class players from 1 to 20.
“They were pleased to get out of there with an important victory. They were well tested on the day.
“We go to Brentford tomorrow, we will look to play our way, and it’s an opportunity to get our first win.”
Wolves are bottom, with a point from six games.
Guardiola was also asked about clubs apparently being obliged to send their strongest squads to the new, enlarged Club World Cup.
“I am not going to say before the games which [players’] have to play. I will decide, that’s for sure.”
If you have any thoughts on any of this, you can email me.
Guardiola is also asked for a fitness update on his squad. “Erling Haaland is OK,” he confirms, and there is no fresh injury news, according to the manager.
He lists the existing injuries: “Nathan [Aké], Kevin [De Bruyne], of course Rodri and Oscar [Bobb] … the rest are fine.”
“For tomorrow he’s not ready …” Pep adds, asked for more about De Bruyne. Then the fact he’s asked not to play for Belgium in November.
“How can he go when he didn’t play one game? I never understood that. He cannot play with us, he cannot play with Belgium. He didn’t say to me he’s going to retire from the national team from Belgium, he didn’t say that to me. I don’t know ‘in the mind’ from Kevin. But for that game, he’s injured, he’s not available.”
Guardiola refuses to comment on Manchester City future
Before tomorrow’s meeting with Fulham, Pep Guardiola is asked if he feels a personal duty to defend Manchester City this season in view of the allegations against them regarding finances:
“I’m part of my club, deep inside of my bones,” Guardiola replies. “The best way to defend the club is to winning games and do my job as well as possible.
“I’m the manager, the person who talk more, through all the media to send a message to the fans, or whatever.
“Of course, I want to defend my club … The owner, the chairman, the CEO … I know the people working here for many, many years. [I know them] better than any of you. The best way to defend is doing our job the best. Everyone working here has his responsibility.
“My responsibility is to try and ‘hold my players in their hands’ and together to win the games. This is the best way to defend [the club].
“Of course there are situations that are more tough to deal with. But it is what it is, no complaints, you have to do what you have to do … I love this club. It always will be that way. It cannot be different because the way they treat me since day one. It’s impossible. They give me a lot.”
Does Guardiola plan to stay at Manchester City beyond this season?
“I said at the beginning of the press conference. I am not going to talk about this subject. What is going to happen is going to happen.”
Next, Pep is asked about Manchester City’s record against Fulham. City have won their last 16 meetings with the Cottagers in all competitions.
“I don’t like these questions, I said many times … Don’t ask me this question please.”
Is he aware of record? “No.”
Pep asks the reporter: “Is your day yesterday the same like today?”
“No.”
Pep: “So …”
“I would love to say, we won 16 games in a row, we are going to start the game 2-0, and to win.”
More from Postecoglou: this time, on James Maddison missing out on the most recent England international squad. (Spot the Rolling Stones reference.)
The Tottenham manager said: “I’m sure he’s disappointed but he’s playing well, that’s all you can do. These things come along at times, it’s not always perfect in your career, you can’t always get what you want.
“He’s playing well for us, he’s been outstanding all year and has made an impact in every game he plays. I’m sure he’ll be selected again but you can’t put everything in one basket or be disappointed or let it affect the way he’s playing because he’s been brilliant for us.”
On Dejan Kulusevski moving to a more central role this season, Postecoglou said: “‘Deki’ is doing great. He’s been out of this world in many respects as to what he’s able to do in a central role.
“We used him wide last year because we didn’t have too many options out there and that’s where he was comfortable in. We started using him inside and I felt he felt that it unshackled him a little bit. He has an unbelievable capacity to run on and off the ball, his physical numbers are ridiculous and he has the quality to hurt teams with that.” (Quotes via PA Media)
The Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou has revealed Son Heung-min is “unlikely” to feature in Sunday’s Premier League match at Brighton.
Spurs defeated Ferencvaros 2-1 in the Europa League on Thursday night – Son missed the trip as he recovers from a hamstring injury picked up against Qarabag last month.
Postecoglou said: “First thing’s first, we’re all good after last night, obviously tired but, physically, no issues from last night’s game.
“Of the guys who stayed back… Destiny [Udogie], we think will be okay. We train today and tomorrow, so he has to get through that. Sonny is unlikely, he’s pushing hard, but the turn around might be too quick for him to be available at this stage.”
The official Tottenham website states: “Radu Dragusin is available again after being suspended for Thursday night’s win in Budapest. Richarlison and Wilson Odobert remain sidelined.”
Borussia Dortmund will be without forwards Karim Adeyemi and Julien Duranville for several weeks after they both picked up injuries in Tuesday’s 7-1 victory over Celtic in the Champions League, coach Nuri Sahin said.
The Ruhr valley club earned their biggest European win, with Germany international Adeyemi scoring a hat-trick before taken off with a muscle injury and replaced by 18-year-old Belgium international Duranville, who also suffered an injury.
“We will be without Karim and Julien (Duranville) for some time. They are expected to be back after the international break in mid-November,” Sahin said.
He added that Gio Reyna, sidelined since last month, will also delay his comeback after suffering a setback in his own recovery.
Dortmund, in fifth place in the Bundesliga on 10 points, three behind leaders Bayern, travel to Union Berlin on Saturday, hoping to make it two league wins in a row for the first time this season.
Sahin’s team have struggled for consistency so far, suffering a 5-1 defeat by Stuttgart two weeks ago before bouncing back with a 4-2 win over Bochum.
“When something is supposed to grow together you need time,” Sahin, in his first season in charge at Dortmund, said. “Every day in this development is important. I am not looking for excuses. I know well how to rank the Celtic game. It is not that we are hugging each other saying ‘we are the coolest’ because we won 7-1.
“We are expected to deliver such performances every three days and if we win (on Saturday) then the world may look a bit cooler.” (Reuters)
The lunchtime rush of football-manager-streams-of-consciousness is nearly upon us. I’ll be aiming to take each press conference as it comes.
Thank you John. Hello everyone.
Right. That’s my stint done. More to come. Luke McLaughlin has the floor.
Tim Bak gets in touch from the United States: “I believe it means a club who terminates a player “with cause” can only seek damages from the player, and a second club later signing the player cannot be prevented from doing so or be liable for damages to the first club unless the second club somehow induced the player to breach their contract. It likely removes FIFA and its dispute resolution chamber as the trial setting and puts it in the courts (in a shock, the lawyers win).”
So does John O’Connell: “If the transfer system as we know it is dismantled, I wouldn’t be so cocky if I was the players union. The logical thing for clubs to do is to make every player a contractor, and be able to be terminated at any transfer window. After all, if they can leave at when they want, why can’t teams fire players at any point?
”If you are constrained by only having a squad of 25, then players will have to be released to accommodate new signings. No more training with the kids on £300k a week for a couple of years, you’ll be unemployed.”
Will Lane raises a question: “In terms of implications, does this mean that a player can terminate their contract at any time and sign for a free elsewhere? For example, Marcus Rashford after being disillusioned by being subbed early last night could terminate his contract this morning and sign for Liverpool to spite Ten Hag?”
The talk on Tyneside has been of a move away from St James’ Park, where the value of land around Newcastle United’s stadium could fund a new place, say on the old quayside. But Eddie Howe is resistant to the loss of one of the great cathedrals of English football.
It’s an incredible place to play football, it’s our home, so to think about moving somewhere else feels a little bit of a betrayal to somewhere that’s served us so well. But we are well aware that as a football club, we need to increase our revenue, so people with more brain cells will make the decision for the benefit of the long-term future of the football club, and that’s always the most important thing. I could be swayed, but just my natural instinct is to want to stay.
Ten Hag’s key quote from Porto: “Don’t judge us in this moment. I judge us at the end of the season. We are in the process. Just wait. We have to develop this team. We will work and continue. We will fight.”
Should you speak – or read – French, then the full Diarra judgment is here.
Preston’s Osmajic given eight-match ban for biting
Preston striker Milutin Osmajic has been given an eight-match ban and fined £15,000 for biting Blackburn defender Owen Beck. The incident took place in a Championship match between the two Lancashire clubs on September 22.
Announcing Osmajic’s punishment, an FA spokesperson said: “The forward admitted that he committed an act of violent conduct around the 87th minute by biting an opponent.”
Lovely stuff from Will Unwin here.
Ten Hag says this every week, doesn’t he?
More to follow on Diarra. In the meantime, we’ll preview the weekend’s action, starting with Sunderland v Leeds. Fine piece here from Louise Taylor on some old friends meeting at the Stadium of Light.
Nick Smith gets in touch: “I’d love to see Todd Boehly’s reaction to today’s ruling, having spent £1,600,000,000 on players now on long term contracts with potentially no resale value. Wait until he realises he can’t terminate them either!”
Caution: it hasn’t come to that just yet. We think.
The ruling will now be referred back to the appeal court in Mons to inform its decision in Diarra’s specific case. Diarra’s legal team, led by Jean-Louis Dupont who helped bring about the Bosman ruling in 1995 have said this “paves the way for a modernisation of governance, in particular through the use of collective bargaining between employees and employers”.
As stated previously, this may some time to shake down. The Bosman case took over two years to become law. It came into force in December 1995, and by the summer was in force. Remember those? Paul Lambert left Motherwell and joined Borussia Dortmund; Edgar Davids left Ajax for Milan; Christian Dailly left Dundee United for Derby.
Fifpro – the international player’s union – has released a bullish statement.
They say the ruling will “change the landscape of professional football”.
Phil Johnson gets in touch: “If this decision reduces the perceived value of footballers as assets, then I’m all for it. Hopefully it will work in partnership with Bosman to show the money folk currently ruining the game, that a club’s only reliable asset is its fan base. “
A Fifa briefing note here:
Fifa is satisfied that the legality of key principles of the transfer system have been re-confirmed in today’s ruling. The ruling only puts in question two paragraphs of two articles of the Fifa Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, which the national court is now invited to consider.
Fifa has taken note of the ruling issued today by the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to the case involving the player Lassana Diarra.
Fifa is satisfied that the legality of key principles of the transfer system have been re-confirmed in today’s ruling. The ruling only puts in question two paragraphs of two articles of the Fifa Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, which the national court is now invited to consider.
Fifa will analyse the decision in coordination with other stakeholders before commenting further.
Diarra’s lawyers’s press release is fairly explicit in claiming a big win.
Diarra’s lawyers are claiming a big win.
Diarra’s lawyers: “This is a total victory.”
“All professional players have been affected by these illegal rules (in force since 2001) and can therefore now seek compensation for their losses.”
— Rohith Nair (@RohithNair) October 4, 2024
We await the full verdict. The devil, as always, will be in the detail.
More from that press release:
The Court holds that all of those rules are contrary to EU law.
First, the rules in question are such as to impede the free movement of professional footballers wishing to develop their activity by going to work for a new club, established in the territory of another Member State of the European Union.
Those rules impose considerable legal risks, unforeseeable and potentially very high financial risks as well as major sporting risks on those players and clubs wishing to employ them which, taken together, are such as to impede international transfers of those players.
Although restrictions on the free movement of professional players may be justified by overriding reasons in the public interest consisting in ensuring the regularity of interclub football competitions, by maintaining a certain degree of stability in the player rosters of professional football clubs, in the present case the rules in question nevertheless seem, subject to verification by the Cour d’appel de Mons (Court of Appeal, Mons, Belgium) in a number of respects, to go beyond what is necessary to pursue that objective.
Secondly as regards competition law, the Court holds that the rules at issue have as their object the restriction, and even prevention, of cross-border competition which could be pursued by all clubs established in the European Union, by unilaterally recruiting players under contract with another club or players about whom it is alleged that the employment contract was terminated without just cause.
In that regard, the Court recalls that the possibility of competing by recruiting trained players plays an essential role in the professional football sector and that rules which place a general restriction on that form of competition, by immutably fixing the distribution of workers between the employers and in cloistering the markets, are similar to a no-poach agreement.
The Court further observes that, subject to verification by the Cour d’appel de Mons (Court of Appeal, Mons, Belgium), those rules do not appear to be indispensable or necessary.
The official press release:
Judgment of the Court in Case C-650/22 | FIFA
Football: some Fifa rules on international transfers of professional footballers are contrary to EU law Those rules hinder the free movement of players and competition between clubs A former professional footballer residing in France is challenging before the Belgian courts a number of the rules adopted by Fédération internationale de football association (Fifa), the association responsible for the organisation and control of football at world level, arguing that they hindered his being employed by a Belgian football club.
The rues in question are contained in the Fifa ‘Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players’ (RSTP). Those rules, which are applied by both Fifa and its member national football associations, such as the Belgian association (URBSFA), apply, inter alia, in cases where a club considers that one of its players has terminated his employment contract without ‘just cause’ before the normal term of that contract. In that case, the player and any club wishing to employ him are jointly and severally liable for any compensation due to the former club.
Moreover, the new club may, in certain situations, be subject to a sporting sanction consisting in being banned from registering any new players for a given period. Lastly, the national association to which the player’s former club belongs must refuse to issue an International Transfer Certificate to the association where the new club is registered as long as a dispute between the former club and the player concerning the termination of the contract is pending.
The Cour d’appel de Mons (Court of Appeal, Mons, Belgium) asks the Court of Justice whether those various rules are compatible with the free movement of workers and competition law.
Another interesting football-related ruling from the EU today.
We await the implications of that, and those may take years to shake down. It doesn’t currently seem like the transfer system as we know it will need to be broken up, but perhaps some reform may be in order. It certainly appears to loosen clubs’ hold on players.
EU top court says Fifa player transfer rules breach law
Reuters – The transfer rules of world soccer’s governing body Fifa go against European Union laws, the EU’s top court said in a ruling on a high-profile case linked to former France player Lassana Diarra on Friday, citing the bloc’s free movement principles.
“The rules in question are such as to impede the free movement of professional footballers wishing to develop their activity by going to work for a new club,” said the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Fifa’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) say a player who terminates a contract before its term “without just cause” is liable to pay compensation to the club, and where the player joins a new club they will be joint and severally liable for payment of compensation.
The verdict is in
And it doesn’t look like good news for Fifa. More details to follow …
Per AP: the European Union’s top court says some Fifa rules on international transfers are contrary to EU law.
BREAKING: FIFA’s rules on player transfers go against EU laws, Europe’s top court said in its ruling on the case linked to Lassana Diarra, citing the bloc’s free movement principles.
— Rohith Nair (@RohithNair) October 4, 2024
“The rules in question are such as to impede the free movement of professional footballers wishing to develop their activity by going to work for a new club.” – Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
— Rohith Nair (@RohithNair) October 4, 2024
.@FIFAcom takes a dent from the EU courts again.
Judges say the transfer rules (which affected Diarra) are stricter than appear necessary and contrary to EU law on free movement and competition.
— Lewis Crofts (@lewis_crofts) October 4, 2024
David Weaver is an early caller: “I find it odd that since everyone’s woken up to the game-changing possibilities of the Diarra case, very little has been said about Andy Webster. Underachieving mid-level Scottish international centre back he may be, but when he broke his contract with Hearts to force a move to Rangers in 2006, many hailed that as “Bosman 2.0”, as it meant players could buy out their contracts. But it was never the revolution that many thought it would be. I wonder if you could explain why the consequences of that case were never as far reaching as anticipated, and why this case might be more significant?
“PS if you’re looking for some new music, I’d highly recommend the brand new album by Denver, Colorado’s Blood Incantation – a real analogue delight of proggy cosmic death metal, featuring none other than Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning; my album of the year so far”
Players have bought out contracts – this can happen in Spain, if I recall the Ander Herrera case – but it seems costly, so may not happen too often. Perhaps that’s it.
(I am off to see the mighty Dream – in whatever version it is – at the Barbican on Monday.)
Preamble
Good morning, all. A big day ahead of us? It seems so. Perhaps Harry Maguire’s late goal at Porto stopped it all being about Manchester United and Erik ten Hag. United play Aston Villa this weekend, on the crest of a rather different wave.
The big news is the Lassana Diarra case.
“The court of justice of the European Union (CJEU) will deliver a verdict on Friday in the case of Fifa v the player “BZ” – AKA the former Chelsea, Arsenal and Portsmouth midfielder Lassana Diarra. It concerns the functioning of the transfer market and the verdict could throw a stick of dynamite under the system.”
A new Bosman? Some experts think so. Plenty of reaction to come.
Meanwhile, there will be plenty of Premier League preview bumph to come in. It’s the last weekend before the international break.
Join us.