http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...o-goes-for-16312m-it-could-happen-776041.html Let's use Altidore as an example and assumed he signed a 5 years contract in 2005. Played 2005, 2006, 2007 (3 seasons). He could give MLS a 15 days notice in January 2008 and only pay MLS the wages on the remainder of his contract (2008 + 2009) as compensation and be off. MLS gets $200,000 instead of $2 mil. This would be different if he signed a contract extension. This would reset the clock to year zero again. http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2249715,00.html If the player is over 28, he is only require 2 years instead of 3 years. Thus, Beckham can leave MLS after 2 years in his 5 years contract. He has to pay MLS the wages of his last 3 years as compensation. MLS can renegotiate Beckham's contract and thus set the clock back to year zero though.
This ruling is a huge plus for professional players. Take a look at this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6976231.stm Right now an average Premiership club spent: £31 million in salary a year (per Soccernet link) £21 million in net transfer a year (per BBC link) That's $104 mil on average per club for players. However, only 60% are spent on wages with 40% are spent in net transfer. Image the salary if MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA only spend 60%. Yankees payroll is around $200 mil. But they can only spend 60%, their wages payroll would be only $120 mil and $80 mil on transfer fee. With only $120 mil instead of $200 mil on wages, imagine the salary of Yankees players and all MLB players.
What a slap in the face for Anglo-American law. I find it difficult to believe that courts in England and the US would honor such a ruling. Who let the Frenchies start making decisions? I'm no lawyer, but aren't the terms of a contract pretty sacrosanct in Anglo-American law?
It's a FIFA law. Article 17. So it is applicable worldwide. Just like the Bosman ruling (though European in origin) is applicable worldwide.
umm... "swissies", if you will? not sure your gripe, but england excepted, european law is mostly defined by the continental tradition.
Not necessarily. There are many, many common law rationales for not honoring contracts including unconscionability, impossibility, lack of capacity to contract, etc. If you are really curious, wikipedia has a decent summary of contract law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
A terribly ill-conceived and stupid ruling. This ruling simiply hurts all the smaller teams to the advantage of the bigger ones. Bottom line is that you are already playing for an Arsenal or Real Madrid or Inter, there aren't going to be a ton of other options out there for you as a player to use this ruling to get more money elsewhere. So where does this ruling hit? It pimpslaps all of the smaller clubs who bust their tails developing players whom they bring up and then sell for high fees to keep their team afloat. Now those teams can do all the developing in the world, bring up a potential superstar, who they will now have to sell undervalued because they can't risk having him hang around on their first team for more than a couple of years to actually HELP the team on the field .............. lest he walk away for a pittance of salary. What a ridiculous ruling. And these are the guys that so many on the US and MLS boards want to follow lock-step for their soccer knowledge? Good grief.
And which one of those rationales does this fall under? This is simply allowing players to have their cake and eat it too. If this was like the NFL in which the teams could cut players without eating their entire salaries, this would be a different story. But that isn't the case ........ or is it? So let's sum this up, a team wants to cut an underperforming player who has 3 years left on a 10 mill contract. They can't, without paying him the 10 mill. However, a player on the same team who has been with a team for 3 years out of a 5 year contract at 1 million who overperforms in year 3 after underperforming for the first 2 year, can walk away for a million dollars in order to get with a big club who ultimately will pay him 3 million a year. It's gonna be lovely to be a small fish in the world of soccer, even more so than it already is.
Not exactly. Another court ruled AGAINST fifa in this case which was appealed to the highest "sport" court. It is a world court, but the actual effect of the ruling on sports and contract law within the US will need to be played out in US courts. Also- the most likely outcome of this ruling is that new contracts will be written that pay a player more in the later years of their contract to prevent a player from buying it out an moving somewhere else. Instead of 5 years at 1 million a year, the contract may pay 750k in year one and end with 1.5 million n year 5.
Admittedly, I haven't read the opinion, so I have no idea what their rationale was. Just pointing out that contracts are not nearly as sacrosanct as most non-lawyers think.
FIFA Media Information http://fifa.com/aboutfifa/federation/releases/newsid=682195.html#fifa+dismayed+with+cas+decision -------- FIFA dismayed with CAS decision (FIFA.com) Thursday 31 January 2008 FIFA is dismayed with the decision taken by the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) in Lausanne (Switzerland) on 30 January regarding the case of the player, Andy Webster. World football's governing body is of the opinion that the verdict in favour of the player will have far-reaching and damaging effects on the game as a whole. --------- {snip} --------- The decision implies that the amount of compensation to be paid by a player who terminates his contract prematurely without just cause after the protected period can easily be calculated in advance. This will be detrimental to the system but probably advantageous for players' agents, who, as in Webster's case, will offer their clients to new clubs with a price tag on them. Small clubs that are already now struggling to keep their squad together, in particular if they have promising players in their team, will be faced with an even more aggressive approach towards their players once the relevant contracts have passed the protected period. Furthermore, the motivation to train and educate new players will probably diminish, in particular among wealthy clubs. At the same time, such clubs may sign a greater number of players, knowing that the contracts may be terminated at calculable costs. This will undermine players, who will be less secure about planning their career. The DRC will now analyse the CAS decision in depth and evaluate its impact on protecting contractual stability. Further, it remains to be seen if CAS's decision will become constant jurisprudence with CAS. Should the protection of contractual stability finally indeed be subverted, FIFA will consider appropriate measures to safeguard the special nature of sport with regard to employment contracts. ---------
So the real effect on MLS is that more countries will look to MLS' single-entity management as the model for the future!
The general rule has been in force for a few years now. I mean, it's part of Football Manager! I *think* the only difference here is that the amount of the payout is codified. And it's pretty low. Well, lower than it is in FM anyway. There, it's an arbitrator's amount, and it's much higher than the remaining salary. Also, if you look at the ages when players can exercise this right, you'll see that onefineesq's rant doesn't really apply.
So if this applies to Twellman he would be able to leave after this year (his second year of a four year contract). His buyout price would then be about $650K? If that's the case, Twellman will want to have a very good year but NE will really regret not sellling.
Yeah, sure.... The problem would of course be that the EPL single entity would by players from the Brazilian single entity or the Ghana single entity and a EPL player might walk out and go to the German single entity instead. Nothing would change, trust me...
This is how it would work in the U.S. Contracts are governed by state law. In addition to the rationales mentioned above, a state can enact a statute that affects contractual rights, such as refusing to recognize contract terms designed to have a certain effect. If this decision were a statute enacted by a U.S. state, that would be the law in that state. That could actually block application of what Sachin suggested. If the statute were written to say that "a player can terminate his contract with a club, and if he does so, the club is only entitled to compensation equal to the remaining salary under the terms of the contract," a buyout term in the contract would be invalid. Even if the statute did not say the remaining salary was the only compensation the club could get, courts might interpret it that way, which would also make buyout terms invalid. In this situation, there are all kinds of issues of international law, and the fact that it is a decision from an arbitration entity rather than a statute. The Bosman ruling came from the European Court of Justice, which is an actual court with the power of a government (the EU). The CAS is an arbitration entity. Its decisions only apply to contracts in which the parties have agreed that they will take any disputes about the contract to the CAS. It has a lot of respect and media attention, but it doesn't have automatic/natural/government-style jurisdiction over every contract. This seems like a reason to get the G-14 back together to litigate with a coordinated mission. The clubs would be taking serious risks signing new contracts without understanding how they'll be interpreted down the road. We'll see how this turns out.
I have brought up the Andy Webster's case with relation to Clint Dempsey's situation over a year ago. Clint was making ~ $80K then with the Revs and Fulham could have taken his contract over (technically, Clint would have had to breach his MLS contract and then Fulham could have signed him but that's splitting hairs) for next to nothing. Yet it agreed to pay MLS ~ $3M in transfer fees. There was also a case of Andres Mendoza, who decided to quit Brugge in 2005 just 'cos Metalurh Donetsk offered him more money. The Belgian court ruled that a player could break an absolutely valid contract and subsequently Mendoza made it to Ukraine with no compensation going to Brugge. As to reaction to this ruling (if binding, as it seems to be), there's not that much benefit to the players here. First of all, with more players available, the wages wouldn't go up based on the old supply&demand law. Marvin Miller and Donald Fehr got brilliantly around it by keeping the players with their clubs but at the arbitration prices. Had they allowed players onto the free agent market, their salaries would not have risen that quickly. Second of all, you'll have the pyramid based deals - 1st year performance rolled as bonuses into the 2nd year, then both rolled into the 3rd year, etc. over some basic value. Third, you'll have more short term deals and those have always benefited the employers due to the motivation of the employees. (Parcells said recently that if everyone in the NFL was on 1-year contracts, you'd have 120 people in the Pro-Bowl). Fourth, there may have to be some intra- and/or inter-league agreements not to raid the competitors talent, coached into more obtuse work permit or registration rules. The important difference is that the players universally welcomed the original Bosman rule. They may be lukewarm about this. It benefited Webster because of his personal problems with the Hearts management. It may also help guys like Twellman, since MLS is a FIFA signatory league. It may also help some superstars. It will not help the rank-n-file players much because they will not be offered long term contracts anymore unless a solution to this unilateral contract breach is found between the players, their agents and the clubs.
Understand all that Bill. My question was more of a dig than an actual question. But even so, I still have to take issue with part of your analysis ......... and that's the part about the G-14. After I made my comments, tab5g linked an article about FIFA. And it seems that FIFA was reading my mind (I'm joking of course). The hugest effect on this isn't the G-14, although I'm sure they would like to be able to protect their contracts too. Heck, I'm not even sure why the G-14 would be seen as the entity to enact change here. FIFA has already lost, and they are the larger body that includes the G-14. The bottom line is that the smaller clubs (which is 99% of the clubs out there) are hurt far worse than the G-14, but this ruling would seem to allow those G-14 clubs to not only take players from the other clubs more easily, but to take take them more easily for FAR less money. We'll see how it plays out in different jurisdictions, but of the people available to complain about this, the G-14 would almost certainly be at the end of the line.
If this ruling stands, it will essentially do away with large transfer fees because there won't be any need for them -- just calculate the buyout clause (which, as a percentage of salary, will probably be much lower) and you are done. It's a perfect mechanism for teams that want to buy high profile players and are willing to pay them very well, but won't, or can't afford high transfer fees -- which describes MLS. I think this might usher in a new era of designated players where the transfer fee otherwise would have made them unaffordable to MLS. It could be huge.