The generic transfer thread

[BRO_BOT]

Currently FIFA rules say any player who terminates their contract 'without just cause' will owe the club compensation, and to further encourage this to not happen their rules also say any club that signs a player who has terminated their contract elsewhere 'without just cause', will have to share said compensation cost, and further still the rules say while this situation remains, the club the player just walked out on is fine to hold on to the players registration document so that any new club that does go ahead and sign someone in that situation then can't register them to play.

This happened to Diarra when he walked out on Lokomotiv Moscow after they decided to lower his wages without his approval. He told them to do one and walked out on them. He went to FIFA and put in a claim for all his unpaid wages to the end of his contract. Locomotiv Moscow then put in a claim with FIFA against Diarra saying he left 'without just cause' and he owes them compensation.

FIFA backed the club and Diarra was told to pay them €10.5M.

Charleroi in Belgium contacted Diarra and said they wanted to sign him. They then contacted FIFA to ask for clearance to sign him. FIFA said no.

Diarra has taken FIFA & Belgian FA to court over this and he won, with Diarra being awarded €6M damages from those 2 parties.

FIFA & Belgium FA appealed this to the EU Court Of Justice, and the decision will be announced on Friday over whether Fifa's decision was in line with EU articles 45 (freedom of movement of workers) and 101 (prohibition of cartels)

Legal folk are suggesting FIFA will lose.

Knock on effect, if FIFA regulations are not changed, are that players can just walk out on contracts at any point, for any reason they want (being offered more money elsewhere being the obv example) and the football authorities won't be able to stop them moving clubs and being registered by those new clubs

tldr...can you summarize please

Fifa won't let players leave clubs mid contract. A court case verdict on Friday may disagree with them being able to stop that happening and so players may get the right to just walk out on clubs and go join another club any time they want.

ta

[Sanguine]

Bit I'm missing is, what is it about the Diarra case - he left Lokomotiv when they unilaterally cut his pay - that means if the court rules in his favour, players can just walk out on contracts? Didn't he have just cause, a breach of contract on the club's side?

[Winston Biscuit]

Bit I'm missing is, what is it about the Diarra case - he left Lokomotiv when they unilaterally cut his pay - that means if the court rules in his favour, players can just walk out on contracts? Didn't he have just cause, a breach of contract on the club's side?

All I can find on this is that the club say they were within their rights to lower his salary as his performances has dropped. He says they weren't, and so walked out on them.

Maybe it's more complex and there was actually something loosely worded in his contract around this or maybe he just disagreed with them around his performances being gash.

[Winston Biscuit]

Looking at this from a positive point of view, this could send transfer fees crashing down. Who wants to spend tens of millions on a player who could just hand in their notice 6 months later and leave for free?!

Would put more power in players hands, and would likely send their financial rewards even higher as teams try and find ways of getting players to commit to them.