Editor’s note: Rhys Lenarduzzi is a final semester Bachelor of Law (LL.B) and Bachelor of Philosophy (B.Phil.) student, at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, Australia. As a former professional athlete, then international sports agent and consultant, Rhys is interested in international sports law, policy and ethics. He is currently undertaking an internship at the T.M.C. Asser Institute with a focus on Transnational Sports Law.
Having considered the history and justifications
for the FIFA training compensation and solidarity mechanisms in my previous blog, I will now consider these systems in the African
context. This appears to be a worthwhile undertaking given these global mechanisms
were largely a result of European influence, so understanding their
(extraterritorial) impact beyond the EU seems particularly important. Moreover,
much has been written about the “muscle drain” affecting African football and
the need for such drain to either be brought to a halt, or, more likely and
perhaps more practical, to put in place an adequate system of redistribution to
ensure the flourishing of African football that has essentially acted as a
nursery for European football for at least a century. In the present blog, I
intend to draw on my experiences as a football agent to expand on how FIFA’s
redistributive mechanisms function in practice when an African player signs in
Europe via one of the many kinds of entities that develop or purport to develop
talent in Africa. I will throughout address the question of whether these
mechanisms are effective in a general sense and more specifically in relation
to their operation in Africa.More...