Asser International Sports Law Blog

Our International Sports Law Diary
The Asser International Sports Law Centre is part of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Policing the (in)dependence of National Federations through the prism of the FIFA Statutes. By Tine Misic

…and everything under the sun is in tune,

but the sun is eclipsed by the moon…[1] 


The issue

Ruffling a few feathers, on 30 May 2015 the FIFA Executive Committee rather unsurprisingly, considering the previous warnings,[2] adopted a decision to suspend with immediate effect the Indonesian Football Federation (PSSI) until such time as PSSI is able to comply with its obligations under Articles 13 and 17 of the FIFA Statutes.[3] Stripping PSSI of its membership rights, the decision results in a prohibition of all Indonesian teams (national or club) from having any international sporting contact. In other words, the decision precludes all Indonesian teams from participating in any competition organised by either FIFA or the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). In addition, the suspension of rights also precludes all PSSI members and officials from benefits of any FIFA or AFC development programme, course or training during the term of suspension. This decision coincides with a very recent award by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in this ambit, which shall be discussed further below.[4]More...


The Brussels Court judgment on Financial Fair Play: a futile attempt to pull off a Bosman. By Ben Van Rompuy

On 29 May 2015, the Brussels Court of First Instance delivered its highly anticipated judgment on the challenge brought by football players’ agent Daniel Striani (and others) against UEFA’s Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations (FFP). In media reports,[1] the judgment was generally portrayed as a significant initial victory for the opponents of FFP. The Brussels Court not only made a reference for a preliminary ruling to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) but also imposed an interim order blocking UEFA from implementing the second phase of the FFP that involves reducing the permitted deficit for clubs.

A careful reading of the judgment, however, challenges the widespread expectation that the CJEU will now pronounce itself on the compatibility of the FFP with EU law. More...

A Bridge Too Far? Bridge Transfers at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. By Antoine Duval and Luis Torres.

FIFA’s freshly adopted TPO ban entered into force on 1 May (see our Blog symposium). Though it is difficult to anticipate to what extent FIFA will be able to enforce the ban, it is likely that many of the third-party investors will try to have recourse to alternative solutions to pursue their commercial involvement in the football transfer market. One potential way to circumvent the FIFA ban is to use the proxy of what has been coined “bridge transfers”. A bridge transfer occurs when a club is used as an intermediary bridge in the transfer of a player from one club to another. The fictitious passage through this club is used to circumscribe, for example, the payment of training compensation or to whitewash a third-party ownership by transforming it into a classical employment relationship. This is a legal construction that has gained currency especially in South American football, but not only. On 5 May 2015, in the Racing Club v. FIFA case, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rendered its first award involving directly a bridge transfer. As this practice could become prevalent in the coming years we think that this case deserves a close look. More...

20 Years After Bosman - The New Frontiers of EU Law and Sport - Special Issue of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law

Editor's note: This is a short introduction written for the special Issue of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law celebrating the 20 years of the Bosman ruling and dedicated to the new frontiers of EU law and Sport (the articles are available here). For those willing to gain a deeper insight into the content of the Issue we organize (in collaboration with Maastricht University and the Maastricht Journal) a launching event with many of the authors in Brussels tomorrow (More info here).More...

ASSER Exclusive! Interview with Charles “Chuck” Blazer by Piotr Drabik

Editor’s note: Chuck Blazer declined our official interview request but thanks to some trusted sources (the FIFA indictment and Chuck’s testimony) we have reconstructed his likely answers. This is a fictional interview. Any resemblance with real facts is purely coincidental.



Mr Blazer, thank you for agreeing to this interview, especially considering the circumstances. How are you doing?

I am facing ten charges concerning, among others, conspiracy to corrupt and money laundering. But apart from that, I am doing great (laughs)!

 

It is good to know that you have not lost your spirit. And since you’ve been involved in football, or as you call it soccer, for years could you please first tell us what was your career at FIFA and its affiliates like?

Let me see… Starting from the 1990s I was employed by and associated with FIFA and one of its constituent confederations, namely the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF). At various times, I also served as a member of several FIFA standing committees, including the marketing and television committee. As CONCACAF’s general secretary, a position I proudly held for 21 years, I was responsible, among many other things, for negotiations concerning media and sponsorship rights. From 1997 to 2013 I also served at FIFA’s executive committee where I participated in the selection process of the host countries for the World Cup tournaments. Those years at the helm of world soccer were truly amazing years of travel and hard work mainly for the good of the beautiful game. I might add that I even managed to document some of my voyages on my blog. I initially called it “Travels with Chuck Blazer” but Vladimir (Putin) convinced me to change the name to “Travels with Chuck Blazer and his Friends”. You should check it out.

 More...



Financial Fair Play: Lessons from the 2014 and 2015 settlement practice of UEFA. By Luis Torres

UEFA announced on 8 May that it had entered into Financial Fair Play settlement agreements with 10 European football clubs. Together with the four other agreements made in February 2015, this brings the total to 14 FFP settlements for 2015 and 23 since UEFA adopted modifications in its Procedural rules and allowed settlements agreements to be made between the Clubs and the Chief Investigator of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB).[1] 

In the two years during which UEFA’s FFP regulations have been truly up and running we have witnessed the centrality taken by the settlement procedure in their enforcement. It is extremely rare for a club to be referred to the FFP adjudication chamber. In fact, only the case regarding Dynamo Moscow has been referred to the adjudication chamber. Thus, having a close look at the settlement practice of UEFA is crucial to gaining a good understanding of the functioning of FFP. Hence, this blog offers a detailed analysis of this year’s settlement agreements and compares them with last year’s settlements. More...

Book Review: Reforming FIFA, or Not

Editor’s note: This short book review will be published in a different format in the International Sports Law Journal, due to its timeliness we decided to reproduce it here. 

Reforming FIFA, or Not

 Antoine Duval

Book Review: Mark Pieth (ed.), Reforming FIFA, Dike Verlag, St. Gallen, 2014, 28.00 CHF, p.178

 


This book looks back at the work of the Independence Governance Committee (IGC). This Committee, constituted in 2011, had as primary objective to drive a reform process of FIFA initiated by its President Sepp Blatter. After ordering from the Swiss anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth, a report on the state of FIFA’s governance, FIFA decided to mandate him with the leadership of a consulting body composed of a mix of independent experts and football insiders, which would be accompanying and supervising the internal reform process of FIFA. The IGC was officially dissolved at the end of 2013, after completing its mandate. The book is composed of eight chapters, written by former members of the IGC, including former chairman Mark Pieth. In addition to the chapters, it includes the different reports (available here, here and here) submitted by the IGC to FIFA across the years. In the words of Pieth, this account is “fascinating because it gives a hands-on, realistic perspective of the concrete efforts, the achievements and the remaining challenges in the struggle for the reform of this organization [FIFA], avoiding the usual glorification or vilification.”[1] This review will first summarize the core of the account of the FIFA reform process provided by the book, before critically engaging with the outcome of the process and outlining the deficiencies that culminated on 29 May 2015 with the re-election of Sepp Blatter as FIFA president.More...



The Spanish TV Rights Distribution System after the Royal Decree: An Introduction. By Luis Torres

On the first of May 2015, the Spanish Government finally signed the Royal Decree allowing the joint selling of the media rights of the Spanish top two football leagues. The Minister for Sport stated that the Decree will allow clubs to “pay their debts with the social security and the tax authorities and will enable the Spanish teams to compete with the biggest European Leagues in terms of revenues from the sale of media rights”.[1]Although the signing of the Royal Decree was supposed to close a very long debate and discussion between the relevant stakeholders, its aftermath shows that the Telenovela is not entirely over. 

This blog post will first provide the background story to the selling of media rights in Spain. It will, thereafter, analyse the main points of the Royal Decree and outline how the system will work in practice. Finally, the blog will shortly address the current frictions between the Spanish League (LFP) and the Spanish football federation (RFEF).More...

Sport and EU Competition Law: New developments and unfinished business. By Ben Van Rompuy

Editor's note: Ben Van Rompuy, Head of the ASSER International Sports Law Centre, was recently interviewed by LexisNexis UK for their in-house adviser service. With kind permission from LexisNexis we reproduce the interview on our blog in its entirety. 

How does competition law affect the sports sector?  

The application of EU competition law to the sports sector is a fairly recent and still unfolding development. It was only in the mid-1990s, due to the growing commercialization of professional sport, that there emerged a need to address competition issues in relation to, for instance, ticketing arrangements or the sale of media rights.  More...



Is FIFA fixing the prices of intermediaries? An EU competition law analysis - By Georgi Antonov (ASSER Institute)

Introduction

On 1 April 2015, the new FIFA Regulations on Working with Intermediaries (hereinafter referred as the Regulations) came into force. These Regulations introduced a number of changes as regards the division of competences between FIFA and its members, the national associations. A particularly interesting issue from an EU competition law perspective is the amended Article 7 of the Regulations. Under paragraph 3, which regulates the rules on payments to intermediaries (also previously referred to as ‘agents’), it is recommended that the total amount of remuneration per transaction due to intermediaries either being engaged to act on a player’s or club’s behalf should not exceed 3% of the player’s basic gross income for the entire duration of the relevant employment contract. In the case of transactions due to intermediaries who have been engaged to act on a club’s behalf in order to conclude a transfer agreement, the total amount of remuneration is recommended to not exceed 3% of the eventual transfer fee paid in relation to the relevant transfer of the player.More...

Asser International Sports Law Blog | The aftermath of the Pechstein ruling: Can the Swiss Federal Tribunal save CAS arbitration? By Thalia Diathesopoulou

Asser International Sports Law Blog

Our International Sports Law Diary
The Asser International Sports Law Centre is part of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut

The aftermath of the Pechstein ruling: Can the Swiss Federal Tribunal save CAS arbitration? By Thalia Diathesopoulou

It took only days for the de facto immunity of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) awards from State court interference to collapse like a house of cards on the grounds of the public policy exception mandated under Article V(2)(b) of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards . On 15 January 2015, the Munich Court of Appeals signalled an unprecedented turn in the longstanding legal dispute between the German speed skater, Claudia Pechstein, and the International Skating Union (ISU). It refused to recognise a CAS arbitral award, confirming the validity of a doping ban, on the grounds that it violated a core principle of German cartel law which forms part of the German public policy. A few weeks before, namely on 30 December 2014, the Court of Appeal of Bremen held a CAS award, which ordered the German Club, SV Wilhelmshaven, to pay ‘training compensation’, unenforceable for non-compliance with mandatory European Union law and, thereby, for violation of German ordre public.

Although none of these decisions is yet final, with two red cards in a row, one could presume that the ‘death’ of CAS is closer than ever. Beyond such extreme and rather unconvincing predictions, the two cases set a fundamental precedent: sports arbitration, like all arbitration proceedings, shall abide by minimum standards of institutional impartiality and independence (Pechstein) and apply mandatory EU law (SV Wilhelmshaven).[1] Nevertheless and without prejudice to the need for a potential institutional reform of the CAS (see our analysis here), from a purely international arbitration point of view, the two German courts’ decisions brought into surface the controversial question of the powers of national courts in enforcement proceedings to review CAS arbitral awards with regard to the application of mandatory rules. The Pechstein case illustrates well the potential conflict between two apparently competing policies: the finality of CAS awards and the respect of public policy. In the SV Wilhelmshaven case, the Court went even a step further by implying that sport associations have the ‘duty’ (!) to review a CAS award with regard to its compatibility with German public policy.[2] In view of its uniqueness and complexity, this aspect of the SV Wilhelmshaven case deserves a thorough examination in a future blogpost.

In this blogpost, we will argue that the Pechstein case could be considered as a borderline case with regard to the limits of national courts’ power when scrutinizing CAS awards’ compatibility with domestic public policy. Challenging the validity of CAS awards before national courts, however, is something new under the sun of sports arbitration and could prove fatal for the finality of CAS awards, which is a sine qua non safeguard of procedural equal treatment among athletes[3] and legal coherence in sports law. Should athletes rely on national courts to police the institutional flaws of the CAS? Or is it high time for the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) to abandon the hands-off deferential approach towards CAS arbitration and adopt a broader scope of review in the sporting context?

In this regard, the key claim is the following: national courts’ decisions should not threaten CAS arbitration as long as the Swiss Federal Tribunal review guarantees a minimum quality of CAS arbitrators’ work on the merits.


The Pechstein case: Testing the limits of a national court’s power to review a CAS award

In the latest decision of the Pechstein saga, the Higher Regional Court in Munich found the underlying arbitration agreement between the athlete and ISU in favour of the CAS invalid and that the CAS award issued on the basis of that agreement violated mandatory German cartel law prohibits abusive conduct by companies that have a dominant position on a particular market. The ISU, as sole organizer of speed skating world championship, enjoys a monopolistic position in speed skating and forced the athlete to sign the arbitration agreement at issue. Initially, the Court hold that the arbitration agreement as a prerequisite to the athlete’s participation in competitions does not constitute per se an abuse of a dominant position, since it responds to the specificity of sport and particularly to the need of consistency in sports disputes. However, considering the decisive influence of sports organizations on the selection and appointment of arbitrators under the CAS regulations, the Court concluded that the independence of CAS is questionable. In this light, forcing the athletes to sign an arbitration agreement in favour of a rather dependent and partial tribunal would constitute an abuse of the international sports organizations’ dominant position in the market, thereby infringing the mandatory German antitrust law. More importantly, unlike the First Instance Court, the Higher Regional Court concluded that the res judicata effect of the CAS award does not prevent the athlete from bringing her claim before the Court. Instead, it found  that the recognition of the CAS award would be contrary to Germany’s public policy, since it would perpetuate the abuse of ISU dominant market position.

From a substantive point of view it is evident that the decision primarily concerns the independence of CAS arbitration. However, considering that the Court based its reasoning on the application of German competition law, it could also serve as a model for an abuse of dominant position in the meaning of Article 102 TFEU[4], since the decision provides important insights on the role of a national court in tackling competition law issues at the enforcement stage of an arbitral award. In the Pechstein case, the Court examined the enforcement of a CAS award, which failed to deal with competition law, since the issue was not raised during the arbitral proceedings.[5] Indeed, a competition law issue was never raised before the CAS and neither before the Swiss Federal Tribunal. Interestingly enough, the invalidity of the forced arbitration agreements was raised only in the German courts proceedings.

Given the mandatory nature of competition law, one could argue that if the matter was not raised during the arbitration proceedings by the parties or ex officio by the arbitrators, it could still be considered in enforcement proceedings.[6] However, this approach could hardly be followed in a situation where the applicability of competition law is not prima facie evident and the alleged breach would in no case amount to a hard-core violation of competition law.[7] The answer to this dilemma is to be found in the difficult balance between the public interest in the application and enforcement of competition law on the one hand and the public interest in the finality of CAS arbitral awards on the other. In this light, the following remarks can be made regarding the Pechstein case.

First, it is debatable whether the enforcement of the CAS award results in serious violation of competition law.[8] The Court alleged violation of German cartel law based on the structural imbalance of the CAS and the subsequent challenge of its independence. However, this was rather an examination of the potential effects of the absence of CAS independence which could be hardly interpreted as a hard-core violation of competition law. While the CAS is still “perfectible”[9], the German Court’s decision did not clearly demonstrate to what extent the so-called structural imbalance actually weighted against Pechstein before the CAS. Moreover, one cannot not exclude the possibility that a national court reviewing a CAS awards would be less neutral than the CAS itself as it may have the unconscious intention to safeguard its own athlete.[10] Furthermore, as Nathalia Voser interestigly remarks, the Pechstein ruling failed to provide an assessment of actual excluding and exploitative effects of the forced arbitration clause, in absence of which, it is questionable whether the rules of an arbitral institution could be considered anticompetitive.

Even assuming that the violation of competition law is serious, it is problematic that this issue was raised only in the proceedings before the national courts. The German Court argued that the athlete had no choice but to sign the arbitration agreement and the fact that she never raised a violation of competition law could not justify a perpetuation of the abuse of a dominant position by the ISU.[11] Nevertheless, this argument seems hardly convincing. A refusal of enforcement of an award for failure to apply competition law in the arbitration proceedings, notwithstanding that the party which would have benefited from its application did not raise the issue during the arbitration, could be conceived as an invitation to the parties to behave in bad faith.[12] Had Pechstein won before the CAS, she would not challenge the validity of the arbitration agreement and the Court would not delve into the conformity of the forced arbitration agreement with competition law.

For these reasons, it is the opinion of the author that competition law issues should have been raised in a timely fashion in their proper venue, before the arbitrators. This solution does not entail a danger of systematic violation of competition rules, since the national courts can still protect athletes in case of hard-core violations. On the contrary, treating competition law as a second bite of a cherry for athletes seems to be at odds with the rationale of the public policy exemption and open the road to abusive practices seriously compromising the principle of finality of CAS awards.


The counterbalance? A stricter review of the CAS awards by the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT)

In the wake of the Pechstein ruling, it is almost certain that more athletes will resort to national courts to challenge CAS awards aiming to reverse them in their favour and even claim damages against the sports governing bodies imposing sanctions on the basis of these awards. This can lead to a problematic situation as States adopt different standards of protection of fundamental rights of the athletes and arbitration clauses inserted in statutes of international sports federations can potentially conflict with non-Swiss legal systems.[13] Furthermore, it has been demonstrated in this blogpost that a meticulous review of the application of mandatory rules by national courts poses a serious risk for the effectiveness of arbitration without necessarily guaranteeing much better protection of public policy.

In this light, the concentration of jurisdiction at a single forum is an overriding need in order to ensure that the athletes participating in competitions are on equal footing.[14] Nevertheless, this does not come without limits. In view of the ‘forced’ nature of sports arbitration and the specificity of sports disputes, athletes should enjoy further safeguards for their rights. To this end, the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) should play a key role. By adopting a broader and stricter review of the CAS awards, (namely one that would really take into account the forced nature of sports arbitration) the SFT could at the same time safeguard the enforceability of CAS awards and uniform application of sports law at domestic and international level, while guaranteeing athletes’ fundamental rights.

In fact, a CAS award can be challenged before the SFT on the limited grounds provided in Article 190 (2) PILA and particularly: (a) if the sole arbitrator or the arbitral tribunal was not properly appointed or composed; (b) if the arbitral tribunal erroneously held that it had or did not have jurisdiction; (c) if the arbitral tribunal ruled on matters beyond the claims submitted to it or if it failed to rule on one of the claims; (d) if the equality of the parties or their right to be heard in an adversarial proceeding was not respected; or (e) if the award is incompatible with public policy. The current SFT jurisprudence reviewing CAS awards has demonstrated its capacity to protect parties’ procedural rights.[15] Nonetheless, when it comes to the merits of the dispute, the SFT has consistently adopted a hands-off approach by interpreting the concept of incompatibility with public policy under Article 190 (2)(e) very narrowly, covering only those fundamental principles that are widely recognized and should underlie any system of law according to the prevailing conceptions in Switzerland.[16] For example, in practice, this means that the SFT will not consider whether an award is compatible with EU competition law and EU fundamental principles, irrespective of whether such an award could be enforced within the EU, since they are not embedded in Swiss legal tradition.

It was only in 2012 that the SFT for the first time in over twenty years took the bold step to annul a CAS award on the basis of a violation of substantive public policy.[17] In this judgment, the SFT has answered the criticism that its substantive review under Art 190(2) (e) PILA is a dead letter[18] and more importantly it made it clear that the CAS has the primary responsibility of ensuring that its awards are fair on the merits and the SFT’s role is to examine whether the CAS successfully assumed this duty. However, the Matuzalem ruling instead of marking a turning point in the SFT review on the merits, was soon proven to be a rare exception. The repeated ‘excuse’ of the SFT for this pro-CAS arbitration approach has been that Art 190(2) (e) PILA mandates an excessively limited review on the merits. The CAS arbitration being under the sword of Damocles, should this hands-off approach be sustained?

This question has to be answered negatively. In fact, Chapter 12 of the PILA, including Article 190(2), was originally drafted for the purpose of governing international commercial arbitration. Nevertheless, in its almost 20 years of practice, the SFT has acknowledged that sports arbitration should be treated differently than standard commercial arbitration.[19] It could be argued, therefore, that in view of the particularity of sports arbitration, the restrictive reading of substantive public policy under Art 190 (2)(e) could be tolerated in international commercial arbitration, but not for CAS arbitration. It has been suggested, instead, that in view of protecting athletes’ fundamental rights, the SFT should engage in a broader review and take into account the specificity of sports arbitration in defining the scope of its review on the merits of CAS awards.[20] A suggestion has also been made for a redefinition of public policy under which the SFT could freely review whether CAS has complied with the essential rights of athletes.[21] Considering that athletes are forced to accept CAS arbitration, a broader scope of review that would ensure a minimum quality guarantee of the CAS awards on the merits should be offered to athletes. Therefore, a potential institutional reform of the CAS to ensure independence and impartiality coupled with a more stringent review of its awards by the SFT should bring about a more restraint approach of national courts when reviewing CAS awards’ compliance with domestic public policy and ensure the subsequent finality of CAS awards.


[1] B Hess and F Kaps, ‘Claudia Pechstein and SV Wilhelmshaven: Two German Higher Regional Courts Challenge the Court of Arbitration for Sport’ (6 February 2015).

[2] Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht in Bremen, SV Wilhelmshaven e.V. gegen Norddeutscher Fußball-Verband e.V. (30 Dezember 2014) “i) Der Senat sieht weder sich noch den Beklagten durch die Satzung des Beklagten und die darin in Bezug genommene Satzung des DFB daran gehindert, die Ent-scheidung des Beklagten vom 13.01.2014 unter diesem rechtlichen Aspekt zu prüfen und im Hinblick auf die Unvereinbarkeit der der Vereinsstrafe zugrunde liegenden Festsetzung der Ausbildungsentschädigung mit Art. 45 AEUV die Rechtswidrigkeit des angegriffenen Zwangsabstiegs der ersten Herrenmann-schaft festzustellen. Im Gegenteil war der Beklagte verpflichtet, die „umzuset-zende“ Disziplinarentscheidung und den ihr zugrunde liegenden CAS-Schiedsspruch darauf zu überprüfen, ob diesen nicht zwingendes nationales oder internationales Recht entgegensteht.’’

[3] A Rigozzi, ‘International Sports Arbitration: Why does Swiss Law Matter?’ in Citius, Altius, Fortius-Mélanges en l’ honneur de Denis Oswald (2012), 446.

[4]A Duval, ‘The Pechstein ruling of the Oberlandesgericht München - Time for a new reform of CAS?’ (19 January 2015).

[5] A similar example of this situation is the Eco Swiss v Benetton arbitration, which led to the C-126/97 judgement of the Court of Justice.

[6] L Radicati di Brozolo, ‘Antitrust: a paradigm of the relations between mandatory rules and arbitration-a fresh look at the “second look” ’ (2004) 7 (1) International Arbitration Law Review, 31.

[7] Ibid

[8]  For an interesting analysis on the competition law perspectives of the Pechstein case, see N Voser ‘The Most Recent Decision in the Pechstein Saga: Red Flag for Sports Arbitration?’ (22 January 2015)

[9] Decision 4P.267–270/2002 du 27 mai 2003, Lazutina c. CIO, ATF 129 III 445, Bull. ASA 2003, 465

[10] L Mintas, ‘Dr Laila Mintas: Is this the end of CAS arbitration?’ (3 February 2015)

[11] OLG München · Teil-Urteil vom 15. Januar 2015 · Az. U 1110/14 Kart, paras 135 and 137.

[12] L Radicati di Brozolo (n 5) 32.

[13] J Lukomski, ‘Arbitration clauses in sport governing bodies statutes: consent or constraint? Analysis from the perspective of Article 6(1) of the ECHR’ (2013) 13 The International Sports Law Journal, 69

[14] S Netzle, ‘Jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals in sports matters : arbitration agreements by reference to regulations of sports organisations’ in Arbitration of sports-related disputes (1998,  Basel : Association suisse de l'arbitrage) 47

[15] A Rigozzi, ‘L’importance du droit suisse de l’arbitrage dans la résolution des litiges sportifs internationaux’ (2013) Revue de droit suisse 2013, 320.

[16] Ibid

[17] Swiss Federal Tribunal, Francelino Da Silva Matuzalem v FIFA (27 March 2012) 4A_558/2011

[18] P Landolt, ‘Annulment of Swiss International Arbitration Awards for Incompatibility with Substantive Public Policy: First Annulment in over Twenty Years’ (2012) 27 MEALEY’S International Arbitration Report Issue 4, 22.

[19] Swiss Federal Tribunal, Guillermo Cañas v. ATP Tour (22 March 2007) 4P.172/2006 See also, A Rigozzi (n 13), 321-322.

[20] M Baddeley, ‘La décision Cañas: nouvelles règles du jeu pour l’arbitrage international du sport’ (2007)  CAUSASPORT 2007, 161.

[21] A Rigozzi (n 13), 325.

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