For professional football clubs, the introduction of foreign players during the transfer window is always a top priority. In order to get in touch with as many foreign players as possible during the limited registration period and preparation period, especially in order to prevent competitors from poaching their interested players, many clubs choose to negotiate with many players at the same time, even sign pre-contract agreement on employment, which is commonplace in the current transfer market of Chinese Super League.
It is understandable to massively search for and negotiate with lots of foreign players, but too many legal issues worth to be noticed when several negotiations are undergoing at the same time, otherwise it is very likely to fall into troubles and traps. For example, attempting to use a pre-contract agreement to "stabilize" the player and further seeking new targets seem to have wisely found a “Back-up Player” for itself, but actually huge risks are concealed: Not only the legal effects of employment contract, transfer agreement and other texts are controversial, but the institutional systems of judging the content of these texts are different as well, it is not applicable in terms of Chinese Civil and Commercial Law, Contract Law and other regulations and laws, but the highest criteria are FIFA's rules and regulations and CAS's precedents.
Based on the above, the club lacking of protection and facilitation of professional football legal services, it will encounter many setbacks and even get into disputes during the process of transferring and negotiation, signing up and joining, registration, and even the management of players and termination of contract, risks can only be minimized to as less as possible with the subsequent professional legal services in football field.
In 2014, a well-known domestic football club entrusted our Shanghai Harvest Sight Law Firm to deal with a contract dispute with foreign player. The cause of this case is the club’s misjudgment of formation criteria of Transfer Agreement and Employment Contract during the process of transferring foreign players. The case has been under procedures for more than two years until now, going through the FIFA DRC stage and CAS trial stage (FIFA case: 14-01358 / pam; CAS Case No. 2016 / A / 4489). In the FIFA stage, Shanghai Harvest Sight Law Firm provided a lot of evidences on behalf of the Chinese club to support the Chinese club's points of view. Finally, about 70% of losses are reduced for the club. In the CAS stage, Shanghai Harvest Sight Law Firm reinforced own viewpoints through primarily trying to persuade the arbitral tribunal to hold a hearing, requesting key witnesses to testify in court, and forming a chain of evidences by series of indirect proofs. Secondly, further losses are very likely to be reduced after nearly a day of cross-cross-examination and mutual debates.
Although the case is still in the CAS trial, the trip to Switzerland has convinced the attorneys, lawyers Ms. Zhang Rui and Ms. Ge Qing, that the civil law system and the Anglo-American legal system, football rules and rules of civil and commercial laws differ a lot in legal systems and legal theories. and the flourishing transfer market of Chinese soccer hides huge legal risks which are not easily avoided only by possessing legal awareness or basic qualities. Only a professional lawyer team specializing in football laws are able to adapt to different types of legal environment, tackle all kinds of unexpected issues, and provide accurate and efficient judgments to help the club cope with frustrations and achieve more successes.
