Unless you happen to be a mid-noughties football connoisseur, you could be forgiven for never having heard of Lassana Diarra.  The journeyman midfielder, who plied his trade for clubs including Portsmouth and Real Madrid (as well as the French national team), has recently re-emerged at the centre of the European Court of Justice's latest ruling on freedom of movement for football players.

Case summary (in brief):

• The story starts in 2014, when Diarra was sacked by his club (Lokomotiv Moscow) after a falling out with the club's manager culminated in Diarra failing to turn up to training, and the club subsequently terminating his contract for breach.  This breach resulted in Diarra being fined 10.5 million Euros following a hearing by FIFA's Dispute Resolution Chamber.
• After his exit from Lokomotiv, Diarra received a conditional offer to join Charleroi (playing in the Belgian league).  The offer was conditional upon Charleroi receiving assurances from FIFA that Diarra would be able to move to Charleroi and that the club would not be liable for any of the costs owed by Diarra to his previous club.  FIFA was unable to give these assurances, because Article 17 of its Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) states that “if a professional is required to pay compensation [for terminating a contract without just cause]  the professional and his new club shall be jointly and severally liable for its payment.”  Later in the same Article, the RSTP provides that sporting sanctions (including transfer bans) may be imposed on clubs that sign players in Diarra's situation, based on an assumption (set out in the RSTP) that the buying club has induced the player’s breach of contract.  Ultimately, Diarra’s move to Charleroi collapsed.
• Diarra responded by bringing proceedings against FIFA and the Belgian FA claiming loss of earnings.
• Nine years later (on 4 October 2024), the ECJ (giving an opinion following a referral from the Belgian appeal court) has ruled that the relevant sections of Article 17 of the RSTP fall foul of EU laws on free movement. 
• Diarra's case will now be referred back to the Belgian appeal court to decide if he can recover for loss of earnings. 

Reaction: 

As a next step, it would appear that the two offending paragraphs of the RSTP will need to be re-drafted, or at least fine-tuned, in light of the ECJ's findings.

At its core this is an issue about the balance between individual players’ rights to free movement on the one hand and, on the other, the integrity and stability of football squads and the proper functioning of the transfer market.  Critics of the ECJ's decision might say that it shifts the dial too far towards players’ interests, making it easier for players to simply terminate their contracts and move to other clubs, undermining the existing transfer system and resulting in lower transfer fees for clubs (which may also harm clubs further down the pyramid, who often benefit from sell-on clauses).  The real world impact remains to be seen, but it does seem clear that there will be some kind of relaxation of the current rules, which should benefit players and may encourage more stand-offs between players and their clubs.  In time, it will be interesting to see whether clubs are forced to evolve the way in which they structure transfer deals and contract negotiations to better protect the value of their player assets.

It is worth noting that this is an ECJ decision, so it is immediately relevant for EU national players in the context of a cross-border transaction.  Having said that, realistically it would be impractical for FIFA to adopt different rules for different nations, and so we expect its rules to end up being adapted (and cascaded down into national rules respectively) to apply across the board.  Ultimately, we would therefore expect domestic transfers of UK national players within the UK to also be affected, notwithstanding the fact that (post-Brexit) the UK is no longer bound by EU principles of free movement and decisions of the ECJ. 

FIFPro (the union representing professional footballers internationally) has welcomed the decision as a win for players, with its European President, David Terrier, commenting that as a result of the ECJ’s ruling “the social partners of professional football have a blank page to implement labour market regulation that ensures a fair and effective balance between the interests of players and the interests of clubs."   On the other hand, FIFA has been keen to downplay its significance, with an initial press release focusing on the fact that “the legality of key principles of the transfer system have been re-confirmed” instead of the changes that will inevitably be required to be made to Article 17 of the RSPT in due course.  

Diarra's legal team (clearly in a bullish mood) have commented that any players affected by these rules since 2001 (when they came into force) “can now seek compensation for their losses”.  Only time will tell whether Diarra has in fact opened the floodgates for similar claims from other players, but in the meantime one thing that is certain is that lawyers at FIFA (and various clubs and national governing bodies to boot) will be watching closely and sharpening their pencils.