The publication of recent CAS awards concerning minors in Spanish football involving two football giants, Fútbol Club Barcelona and Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, and the national association, The Real Federació Española de Fútbol, offers a valuable opportunity to analyse the operation of the regulatory regime for the protection of minors under FIFA's Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP). By synthesising legal reasoning used by the CAS Panels and the Sole Arbitrator in three cases, this article presents a holistic view of the regulatory framework for minors established by FIFA which extends beyond Art. 19 of the RSTP and then highlights some important lessons for its operation in practice. The liability of national associations concerning minors, the applicability of the regulatory framework to all minors, and the distinction between the registration requirements of minors in participating in organised football and reporting requirements in relation with minors in academies are all discussed and explained. This paper represents a contribution into a limited literature with regard to both the regulation of minors in football and the analysis of CAS jurisprudence on the topic.
Children who interact with football's recruitment and transfer processes encounter a complex web of regulations and practices. Debates over how to ensure that the interests and well-being of young football players are adequately protected, and that risks to their rights and welfare are identified and addressed, have become a topic of academic, political, and media concern. This commentary article provides an overview of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) regulations concerning the mobility and representation of minors in player recruitment processes, in particular the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) and the Regulations on Working with Intermediaries (RWI). We examine these regulations through the lens of the United Nations Children's Rights Conventions (UNCRC). In so doing, the article demonstrates how football's regulatory frameworks and commercial practices inadvertently yield consequences that operate against the best interests of children involved in the sport. To counteract this, it is proposed that all planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of regulations involving the recruitment and transfer of young people should be explicitly informed by globally accepted standards of children's rights, such as the UNCRC. More specifically, it is argued that FIFA should adopt an approach that places the child at the centre of regulatory frameworks and characterises the child as a 'rights holder'.
While discussion on corruption in sport is intensifying and football match-fixing in particular is attracting increasing attention, new fixing scandals emerge offering new accounts of actors and corrupt practices within the football industry and the level of the external threat to the sport. The scandal exposure of fixed matches in Turkey in 2011 sheds light on the fixing of 17 matches played in the 2010/11 football season and allowed for insights to the actors, structure and processes behind the fix. Following four criminal and seven disciplinary proceedings, the case is still pending appeal for its final decision, involving a total of 93 suspects and having already resulted in the exclusion of two teams from European competitions. The evidence collected by the authorities points towards a hierarchical criminal organisation led by the President of a football club that arranged and coordinated the fixing in order for his team to win the national Championship. The aim of this article is to provide an account of the organisation and coordination of match-fixing in Turkey, with its actors, specifics and criminal characteristics, while offering an examination of matchfixing for sporting success, the least documented type of match-fixing.
This paper explains the development of the socio-cultural dimension of the European Union (EU) sports policy over the course of the decade from 2005 to 2015. By adopting the theoretical lenses of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the paper firstly offers a novel perspective on the belief systems of the members of the socio-cultural advocacy coalition that operates within the EU sports policy subsystem. A set of empirical policy core beliefs of the coalition actors reflecting their concerns regarding to sport's integrity and economic welfare that affect its healthy development is presented and explained as the basic causes of the policy problem, i.e., threats that undermine sport's specific characteristics. In this light, the paper then illustrates that the coalition members have perceived the issue of players' agents, in particular problems in the activities of agents in European football, to be detrimental to the integrity of sport. As a result, the issue has been the subject of a considerable policy activity by the coalition actors with a view to establishing an alternative regulatory framework to effectively govern players' agents. Consequently, the paper elucidates the evolving nature of the socio-cultural model of sports regulation that not only promotes the social role of sport in Europe but now also addresses the problems that affect its well-being and clear image. The paper's principal method of investigation is based on the content analysis of official policy documents and statements of the coalition actors. .
Through the increased attention match-fixing has received from both academia and policy makers in recent years, its complexity and the consequent inability to identify a one-fits-all description of the phenomenon have been underlined, highlighting that we have yet to fully capture the various forms of its manifestation in modern day sport. At the same time, and despite academic endeavours, the scholarly work on policy responses against match-fixing is remarkably scarce. In addressing these gaps, this study aims to examine two high-profile match-fixing cases in Greece and Turkey, the 'Koriopolis' and the 'Şike Davası' scandals, respectively, while considering the policy responses of UEFA, through the analysis of its normative framework and the way in which it was implemented in the two cases. This comparative study offers details of the social organisation of the two scandals, highlighting the various actors, structures and processes within them, as well as the UEFA policy responses they were met with. What is underlined through the study is not only the key role of individuals embedded in the football ecosystem, but also the potentially adverse effects of adopting the 'organised crime' narrative in both official and media accounts, preventing us from truly capturing the phenomenon and policy makers from responding to it. Simultaneously, this study highlights that despite its existing detailed and thorough normative framework, UEFA's inconsistency in its implementation in the two cases sends a mixed message about tolerating match-fixing, while inviting much needed further research on the matter.
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