The Bosman Legacy in Footbal

Bosman's legacy still influential, 10 years on

By Darren Ennis

BRUSSELS, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Ten days before Christmas 1995, soccer's rulers received an unwanted "gift" they have been saddled with ever since.

On December 15 1995 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg delivered its ruling in the Bosman case and changed the game in Europe forever.

The ruling -- which dealt with the legality of soccer's rules on contracts and its restrictions on overseas players under European Union law -- was named after an obscure Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman. Its effects were far from obscure.

It changed the rules on transfers, it changed the rules on the numbers of foreign players who could appear for teams and it transformed the bank balances of the best players in the world.

The irony was that it never enriched Bosman himself. Although he spent six years with Standard Liege in the 1980s, the catalyst for what became known as the Bosman Ruling was the collapse of his proposed move from RFC Liege to minor French club US Dunkerque in 1990.

What followed was a highly complex five-year legal battle that finally ended in December 1995 when the ECJ found that football's transfer system contravened the Treaty of Rome.

The court had dismissed appeals from world governing body FIFA, European governing body UEFA and letters from UEFA's then 49 national associations that a ruling in favour of Bosman would leave EU countries out of step with the rest of the world.

The ECJ ruled in favour of Bosman and a new era in the sport began.

Bosman told World Soccer magazine in January 1996: "I expected to win my case, but not so decisively. It was a total defeat for all my opponents.

"I feel proud I had the courage to do something no other player had the courage to try. I showed that football is not above the law.

"I hope that in the years to come other players will realise precisely how much I have done for them."

BILLIONAIRE OWNERS

Before Bosman, the clubs ruled the roost; after Bosman, the player became king with the best in the world earning millions from the game every year.

The ruling banned transfer fees for players out of contract and removed the limit on the number of foreigners clubs could field.

Bosman has had such a legacy that to attract the best players these days, clubs ideally need billionaires such as Roman Abramovich or Malcolm Glazer to grab the best players in the world.

Before the ruling, a club could receive compensation for a player even if he was out of contract. Otherwise they could stop the player moving, which was what sparked the Bosman case when Liege blocked his transfer to Dunkerque even though he was out of contract.

After the ruling, a club could no longer hold a player to ransom. If a player's contract was over, he became a free agent.

Instead of, for example, his club receiving 10 million pounds for his signature, the club would get nothing and the buyers could hand the player the money as his salary over the terms of the new contract they were offering him.

Running alongside this development was UEFA's Champions League, revamped from the old European Champions Cup in 1992 to provide more guaranteed top-quality matches for Europe's best sides.

UEFA was offering serious prize money, so the acquisition by the top clubs of the best players to ensure success in the competition -- as well as lucrative television payouts -- became a self-fuelling cycle that helped to change soccer's landscape.

It is now almost a forgotten footnote that before Bosman, clubs could not play all their best players in Champions League or UEFA Cup matches if they exceeded their foreign quotas as defined by UEFA's old "three-plus-two" rule.

That allowed them to play only three foreign players plus two "assimilated" players who might have come through a youth season. These days dozens of clubs fail to field a player from the country in which they compete and it barely raises a headline.

HOMEGROWN PLAYERS

UEFA and FIFA are still unhappy about this aspect of the Bosman Ruling and UEFA are planning to introduce a rule regarding "homegrown players" in their competitions from the 2006-2007 season.

The acceptance of this rule by the EU has not yet reached its conclusion and like the Bosman case it may yet end up in the courts.

While the leading players and clubs undoubtedly benefited from players, there were losers too.

A number of clubs went bankrupt because they could no longer rely on the transfer money that secured their futures when they sold on a big player.

Ticket prices shot up as clubs tried to limit their losses. Traditionalists wanted football to continue to be run as a sport, while others saw it as a business opportunity.

Today, FIFA and UEFA are more alert to the influences that the courts and the EU would like to exert on the game and are far more receptive to outside influences.

If they had been more receptive in the early 1990s, the Bosman case could have been solved within football -- and the huge changes it brought to the sport, for good and bad, might never have happened.

Bosman never reaped the benefits of his bravery and his football career ended in the late 1990s in obscurity but he left a lasting legacy.