The world of football as we know it is celebrating its 30th anniversary. On December 15, 1995, the Court of Justice of the European Communities (now the Court of Justice of the European Union, CJEU) delivered a decision that would revolutionize the football ecosystem. The Bosman ruling – named after the Belgian midfielder Jean-Marc Bosman – notably led to a liberalization of the transfer market, an increase in transfers of footballers between teams and forced the International Federation (FIFA) to establish, at the beginning of 2002, the regulations on the status and transfer of players (RSTJ).
Three decades later, will this emblematic stop be forgotten? Seized by Lassana Diarra, a former French international who contested sanctions for wanting to join a club while a contract still linked him to another, the CJEU ruled, on October 4, 2024, certain rules of the RSTJ incompatible with the community principles of free movement and free competition.
Some have since called for the Diarra ruling to be made the new reference and the starting point for a framework more respectful of the rights of footballers. Among them, the Justice for Players foundation, created in the summer of 2025, which will submit, at the beginning of 2026, a class action – or collective action – before the court of Utrecht (Netherlands), by summoning FIFA as well as five national federations (Dutch, Belgian, German, Danish and French) targeted for their influence on the proceeding. The objective? Force the latter to change its regulations, but also obtain financial reparations for those who have been harmed by the RSTJ. The bill could rise to several billion euros.
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