Bosman: game, set and match

Date: 21/12/1995

By Fiona McHugh

THE European Court of Justice's ruling that football's multi-million-ecu transfer fee system is illegal has sent shockwaves through the sports world.

The result is a significant victory for Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman, whose claim that the system which allows clubs to charge transfer fees and rules restricting the number of foreigners a team can field were in breach of EU law was upheld by the Court.

The verdict raises serious doubts about the future of small football clubs, which traditionally have survived by breeding young players for sale to bigger ones. It was greeted with dismay by the game's governing body, Uefa, which said it would lead to bankruptcy in lower division clubs and a drop in investment in young players.

Many predicted the judgement would lead to a huge escalation in wages among leading players and to the emergence of clubs comprised exclusively of top stars.

Calling on clubs not to panic, British Premier League Chief Executive Rick Parry said the ruling would only affect cross-border transfers and not internal moves. But that optimistic interpretation of the judgement's likely repercussions was soon dismissed by Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert, who said that, in his opinion, it applied to internal transfers as well cross-frontier ones.

Van Miert insisted that soccer, like all businesses within the bloc, should be bound by EU rules.

He told the game's authorities that the current system falls foul of competition rules, which ban organisations from banding together to fix prices.

A last glimmer of hope for football associations was raised by Belgian Premier Jean-Luc Dehaene, who said during last weekend's Madrid summit that he would ask counterparts to grant sports a derogation from EU rules at the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference.

Dehaene, disagreeing with Van Miert, said football was not only a big business, but also an important part of Europe's cultural heritage which needed to be protected.

Bosman sacrificed his football career by taking the Belgian club FC Liège to court for effectively blocking his transfer to French club Dunkerque in 1991.

Despite the fact that Liège had cut his wages by three-quarters after his two-year contract expired, the club sabotaged his chances of moving on by charging a transfer fee which was out of Dunkerque's reach. After he took his case to the national courts, the midfielder was blacklisted by Belgian clubs.

Bosman's lawyers are now expected to seek compensation from both his old club and Uefa.