Social right. The Football World Cup is a global showcase for this sport. It is also for practitioners who compete in so-called “national” teams., qualified to participate in this tournament. The lawyer has a dual interest in professional sporting activity during this competition, as there are numerous rules derogating from labor law. They come from an “international sporting order”, here “football”.
Thus, the secondment of an employee from one company to another is generally done on the basis of a (free) will agreement between the two companies in question and the employee, therefore a contract. This is not the case for the activity in the team of each of the national football federations, themselves generally constituted in the form of an association and necessarily recognized and affiliated to an association under Swiss law: the International Football Federation association (FIFA).
Indeed, Article 3.1 of Annex 1 of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTJ) provides that “Any player registered with a club is required to respond positively to a summons to play for one of the representative teams of an association which he is authorized to represent on the basis of his nationality”.
Under threat of penalties
Similarly, article 1.1 of schedule 1 of the RSTJ provides that“a club having registered a player must make this player available to the association of the country for which the player is qualified, on the basis of his nationality, if he is summoned by the association in question. Any agreement to the contrary between a player and a club is prohibited..
In other words, by these rules emanating from an association under Swiss law, a third party to the employment contract – the coach -, acting on behalf of the national federation, can oblige the employer – the club – to release his employee.
The other party to the employment contract, the employee, has the obligation under pain of sanctions to practice football, therefore to work for an entity other than that which pays his salary.
In addition, while in the context of a secondment, the entity that benefits from the employee’s work can reimburse the cost represented by the seconded employee, for the national federation of a footballer, the club cannot be reimbursed for the wages he would have maintained despite the suspension of the employment contract. This rule of article 2.1 of appendix 1 of the RSTJ is justified by FIFA in that it would be protective of poor national federations. However, it is no longer fully applied.
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