This article aims to evaluate the current FIFA rules and practices regarding sanctions against clubs and whether they are efficient. Some of FIFA’s main objectives are ensuring compliance with its rules and safeguarding football interests. To achieve such goals, FIFA (within its regulations) implemented sanctions that can be imposed against clubs found in breach of FIFA rules, providing “contractual stability”. However, practitioners repeatedly witness that clubs not complying with final decisions (i.e. not paying creditors) are banned for up to three consecutive registration periods. Nevertheless, this sanction is enforced only until the club pays. In other words, once the club pays, it survives all kinds of sanctions, even if that payment has been due for 18 months. In addition, clubs breach players’ contracts within the protected period, yet they survive sporting sanctions most of the time. This article highlights the leniency of FIFA towards clubs, precisely regarding the sanctions of Articles 17 and 24 of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) and whether such treatment benefits football.
Article 24 of the RSTP provides that a club shall be banned for up to three consecutive registration periods if it does not comply with a final decision (i.e. if it fails to pay a creditor the decided amount within 45 days from the notification of the decision). At first, one might think this rule is beneficial in ensuring compliance and serving creditors’ interests, but that is not the case. Clubs’ practices nowadays indicate that this “ban” is a “grace period” to comply with a final and binding decision rather than an actual consequence. Here is a scenario that we witness frequently: a club breaches a player’s contract, receives a notice but ignores it, receives a FIFA...
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