news & analysis: the Webster ruling or how C.Ronaldo could go for just £12 million.

By Pierre Bachas (edited by Serena)

Andy Webster, doesn’t have Drogba’s strength nor C.Ronaldo’s skills. Neither is he one of the wonder kids in Arsenal’s youth team. However his name could well be remembered as marking football history. Going back to the summer transfer window of 2006, Webster signed a contract with Wigan Athletic, while still on the third year of his four year contract with Heart of Midlothian. While the world of football was expecting Wigan to have to pay a major fine to Heart, this January the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in favour of Webster, the only compensation for his former employer being the remaining value of the contract, £150 000.

The ruling will most certainly have a vast impact for the football economy.
First, transfer fees, such as the £19 m recently paid by Chelsea for Nicolas Anelka, could soon be a thing of the past. Indeed why pay exorbitant fees when one can sign a player for a negligible amount, after the two years of the "protected period" included in the contract. To give you an idea, Tottenham asks for £30 m for Berbatov, its star striker, whereas he could leave for as little as £1.3 m in the summer of 2009.
Secondly, this would be extremely beneficial to the labour force – the football players. Shame for those who thought players were already getting enough money, wages could now rise to unprecedented heights, since it will become the only way for teams to keep a hold on their players.
Furthermore the duration of contracts could decrease and as a consequence, player mobility would increase.

However FIFA, the governing football body, does not look favourably upon this major shift in revenue allocation from the team to the players. A further increase in player’s mobility would mean the potential downfall of team values and identity and the fall in transfer revenues would be a huge loss for less wealthy clubs, who rely on training young talents. FIFA stated that: "Should the protection of contractual stability finally indeed be subverted, FIFA will consider appropriate measures to safeguard the special nature of sport with regard to employment contracts."
This is one more episode in the long lasting opposition between EU law and FIFA, and raises the question of whether the employment of players should abide the same laws as other labour markets. FIFA is on the counter.