In addition to players, officials and referees, the course of great football history can sometimes also be influenced by civil courts. A dispute is starting in Luxembourg that could change the shape of football leagues as we know them.
In England, the legal case that is underway in Luxembourg is being written about as a possible second Bosman. They thus refer to the famous decision of the European Court of Justice from 1995, which redrawn the transfer rules in football to their current form.
That’s when the so-called Bosman rule was created, named after the footballer Jean-Marc Bosman.
The Belgian midfielder wanted to leave for Dunkirk in France after the end of his contract with RFC Liège. It was customary at the time that even though the player was no longer under contract with the original club, the new employer had to pay the transfer fee. However, Liège refused to release Bosman because he considered Dunkirk’s offer too low.
The footballer appealed to the court, which dragged on for five years, but in the end he was right. Since the mid-1990s, clubs have not been allowed to prevent players from leaving after the end of their contracts.
A court case is now underway in Luxembourg that could be similarly groundbreaking.
The small club FC Swift Hesperange planned to join the league of clubs from several different countries, but was prevented from doing so by the Luxembourg Football Federation together with UEFA. So Hesperange turns to the court. The club argues that the aforementioned organizations prevent it from developing sports. At the same time, the Luxembourgers directly challenged the rule prohibiting clubs from creating and running international competitions.
“The club with its main sponsor is ambitious. It has previously publicly criticized some rules of the national federation and UEFA. Above all, the rule on the number of domestic players, which puts clubs from smaller countries at a disadvantage,” explains Belgian lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont. It was he who stood at the birth of Bosman’s rule. “So far, no one has taken them very seriously, so they decided to solve it in court,” he adds.
Plans for larger international club competitions have appeared several times in the past. In addition to the intended and recently heavily criticized Super League project for the biggest clubs in Europe, in 2020 there was, for example, a plan for a league of Scottish clubs Aberdeen, Celtic, Hibernian, Hearts and Rangers in a twenty-man competition together with clubs from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Ireland. That’s when Celtic backed out and negotiations broke down.
The Old Firm, i.e. Celtic and Rangers, have long been thinking about joining English competitions. If the court actually found Hesperange, it could open the door for them.
“Celtic and Rangers are big clubs, but they receive far less from media rights than the smallest club in the Premier League. The low income on the domestic scene negatively affects their competitiveness in Europe,” explains lawyer Dupont.
According to a veteran of the Bosman case, cross-border competitions will appear anyway. At the same time, Dupont emphasizes that for teams from Scotland, the Netherlands or Scandinavia, this is a significant step in order to be able to compete with clubs from the five elite leagues (England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany).
“First of all, however, all legal issues must be resolved. We will have the first hearing at the state court in Luxembourg. It will be up to a specific judge whether to move the case to the Court of Justice of the EU,” Dupont outlined the procedure.
Criticism of transnational competitions mainly points to the fact that these would be selection groups of larger clubs and would lose the sporting side and small clubs that would stand outside these competitions.
