Explainer: Will decision on FIFA’s transfer rules ‘change the landscape of professional football’?

World players’ union FIFPRO says the decision, following a challenge to the rules by former Arsenal, Chelsea and Portsmouth player Lassana Diarra, will “change the landscape of professional football”.

Here is a closer look.

What has happened?

The ECJ was asked for a ruling in the case of Diarra, who argued FIFA rules led to the collapse of a move to Belgian side Charleroi after his contract with Russian club Lokomotiv Moscow had been terminated in 2014.

Diarra’s lawyers argued a FIFA rule making a hiring club jointly liable, alongside a player, to pay compensation to the player’s former club and putting the hiring club at risk of sporting sanction in cases where the last contract was terminated without just cause, restricted a player’s freedom of movement and was anti-competitive under EU law. The ECJ has agreed.

The court reached the same conclusion regarding a rule which allows the national association of the country where a player’s former club are based to withhold an…

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Independent.ie