The European Union’s highest court has decided that some of FIFA’s rules on international football transfers are contrary to EU law in a ruling that some experts have likened to the landmark Jean-Marc Bosman case in 1995.
Whether this case, which was started by former France international Lassana Diarra in 2015, will have the same transformative effect on European football as Bosman remains to be seen but there is no doubt that this European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling is a setback for FIFA.
Like Bosman, Diarra’s case is complicated but the central argument is that a potential move to Charleroi in 2015 collapsed because the Belgian side was worried it would be held “jointly liable” with Diarra for the financial and sporting consequences of his dispute with his previous employer, Lokomotiv Moscow.
The former Arsenal, Chelsea and Real Madrid midfielder had joined the Russian club on a four-year deal in 2013 but fell out with them a year later when he was sacked for breach of contract. Lokomotiv then claimed damages for the breach, with FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Chamber ruling in their favour in 2015. The FIFA panel gave Diarra a backdated 15-month ban and ordered him to pay Lokomotiv €10.5million (now £8.8m/$11.6m) plus interest.
According to article 17 of FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, the 102-page document that sets out the rules of football’s transfer system, any club trying to hire a player in Diarra’s position could find themselves on the hook for the financial penalty, too, as well as face a transfer ban. Furthermore, the member association of the player’s former club — in Diarra’s case the Russian Football Union — must withhold the International Transfer Certificate that is required for any cross-border move.
But now, nine years after Diarra challenged them in a Belgian court, those rules will almost certainly have to be amended. “The court holds that all of those rules are contrary to EU law,” the ECJ said in a media release on Friday.
In a ruling that had been well-signposted, as the court’s advocate general had already written a non-binding opinion on the matter in April, the ECJ said the rules “impede the free movement” of players in the EU, as they 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”.
The court acknowledged that there are several good reasons for many of football’s rules seeming to break EU laws on free movement and unfettered competition, such as “a certain degree of stability in the player rosters”, the rules in question “go beyond what is necessary to pursue that objective”.
The Diarra case, which was supported by the French players’ union and the global players’ union FIFPRO, will now be sent back to the appeal court in Belgium which asked the ECJ for its opinion on its technicalities.
But, with the ECJ ruling so clear, there appears to be only one possible outcome in Diarra’s case for €6m in damages from the Belgian FA and FIFA for the failed move to Charleroi.
What wider impact the ruling will have on FIFA’s transfer rules is disputed.
“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,” a FIFA spokesperson said. “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.”
Antoine Duval, the head of the Asser International Sports Law Centre in The Hague, has already described the ruling as “massive” in a post on X, while FIFPRO has issued a statement that called it a “major ruling on the regulation of the labour market in football (and, more generally, in sport) which will change the landscape of professional football”.
In a media release, his lawyers Jean-Louis Dupont and Martin Hissel said the ruling was “a total victory” for Diarra and added that any players affected by the rules, which have been in place since 2001, are “can now seek compensation for their losses”.
“We are convinced that this ‘price to pay’ for violating EU law will — at last — force FIFA to submit to the EU rule of law and speed up the modernisation of governance,” they added.
Dupont, of course was Bosman’s lawyer, and he and Hissel also represented the European Super League’s backers in their ECJ case against UEFA last year, another highly nuanced ruling that experts are still arguing about.
(Top photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images)
