July 26 – The Football Forum (TFF) – an association of national football agent bodies – has said that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling against the Professional Football Agents Association’s (PROFAA) challenge of FIFA’s new Football Agents Regulations (FAR), does not apply to their members.
TFF also went further saying that PROFAA was a scam organisation that had almost no members working within the player agency business and had no authority to represent those agents who are actively representing players. The TFF said in a statement: “TFF wishes to stress that the CAS arbitration was initiated following a specific agreement between PROFAA and FIFA and that the relevant award has no binding effect for agents around the world but is a matter between PROFAA (and its members) and FIFA.”
PROFAA by its own admission and former Vice-President statements, is an association “made up of a large contingency of upcoming agents and students, which outweighed the number of licensed agents in the association. It is aneducational platform for those aspiring to become a part of the agency industry, other than a handful of well-established agents.”
PROFAA was appealing the new agency rules which had at their centre a cap on agent commissions. The TFF says the CAS case was a rhetorical move by PROFAA – FIFA’s stooge – who knew that they would lose the case but in doing so would prevent other bodies challenging the new rules and give legitimacy to the new rules that the TFF says do not hold up in law and that individual State Courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) are thecompetent bodies to adjudicate the disputes against this set of FIFA regulations.
The TFF pointed out that the CAS award emphasises that specific rules of the FAR, highlighting the rules on commission caps, were based on suggestions made by PROFAA itself as part of the TFF said was a sham FIFA consultancy process.
“With regards to the so (and self) called “FIFA’s consultation process”, it would be interesting to know what the allegeddifferent proposals are and who are the entities claiming to represent the agents. That way these entities will take responsibilitytowards agents who have now to fight against the FAR.” said TFF President Rafaela Pimenta.
“As an institution specialized in sports law, the CAS has taken a significant responsibility in issuing an award that contradicts State Courts decisions, drafted by judges experts in commercial and competition laws, namely the laws actually breached by the FAR”, said TFF Executive Vice-President Christian Rapp.
The award “manifestly contradicts decisions of competent State Courts on the mater, disregards and distorts applicablejurisprudence of the CJEU and established competition law practice.
“We are asking ourselves what is the strategy behind FIFA insisting on the suspension of proceedings pending beforeState Courts, alleging the need to wait until a decision of the CJEU, while it didn’t show the same deference for the CJEU in the case before the CAS”, said TFF President Roger Witmann.
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