Let’s play a game of guess who. First clue: I am a Belgian footballer who played in France and Belgium in the 1980s and 1990s. Second clue: I am best known for the court case, and the subsequent ruling, which bears my surname. Third clue: I have had a bigger impact on the modern game than any chairman, manager or player. Got it yet? I am Jean-Marc Bosman.
If you haven’t heard of him on a first name basis, there’s a fairly good chance that his surname rings a bell. In 1990 following the expiration of his contract, Jean-Marc Bosman fancied a move from FC Liege to French side Dunkirk . In an attempt to stop him leaving, FC Liege slapped a large transfer fee on the player and thus priced Dunkirk out of a move. The legal dispute which followed became known as the ‘Bosman Ruling’.
In a continuation of Football FanCast’s week of reminiscing about football in the 90s, here is a look back at the law which would ultimately change football in England, and the rest of Europe, forever.
For those of you familiar with the fuss surrounding a player who runs down his contract so he can ‘leave on a Bosman’ but can’t quite remember what football was like before the days of super high salaries and player power, the transfer procedure was much more club-focused, yet still rather complicated.
In the early part of the twentieth century a player had to request a transfer in order to move clubs, but if his current side refused to let him leave then that was pretty much it – in essence, clubs really did own their players. Then in around 1960, a player called George Eastham challenged this law in front of the High Court who ruled that the transfer system in place was an unreasonable restraint of trade. The transfer system changed in that a player could now leave for free if his contract had expired, unless he had been offered a new deal in which case a fee would have to be paid. So the freedom imposed was still very limited because the teams’ decision to rehire a player would always keep him at the club. This system remained until the late seventies when the clubs’ power over their players lessened slightly further. A player could still leave a club for free when his contract ran out, but now his club had to offer him a contract with terms equal to or greater than his current deal in order for a fee to change hands. However the biggest change was that the player now had the choice of whether or not to accept the new deal or move elsewhere. Crucially though neither the player nor his agent could initiate a transfer, the interested buyer had to approach the club in order for negotiations to begin. If a transfer fee couldn’t be agreed by the clubs then the matter would be decided by a tribunal.
This was how the footballing world stayed until 1995. Then on the 15th of December of that year the ‘Bosman Ruling’ was passed by the European Court of Justice, this meant that free movement of players between clubs and EU countries was now possible, and crucially a player could now talk to other teams when his contract had expired and move without a fee changing hands. The following day the Daily Express ran with the headline ‘Foreign Invasion’, and the Daily Mirror used the ominous: ‘The rule that will change the face of soccer forever’ – an uncannily accurate assessment of things to come.
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As a result of the case, all of the power was now in the hands of the players and the subject of large weekly wages was quick to come to the fore. With no transfer fee being paid, clubs were now able to afford to pay their players huge wages, so it was often in the best interests of the player to run down his contract, move on, and earn more money elsewhere. One of the first big cases of an English player using this rule to his advantage was the controversial move of Sol Campbell from Tottenham to Arsenal in 2001. Despite being offered a new contract and assuring Spurs that he wanted to stay, Campbell saw out the duration of his contract before deciding to move to Arsenal and earn a reported £60,000 a week plus bonuses – a sum which saw him become one of the world’s best paid footballers at the time.
The fear that this rule would make the rich richer and the poor poorer was initially rubbished, but optimism soon turned to realism as business and money started to rule proceedings. It was thought that lower-league clubs could use the new rule to their advantage by signing their best players to long-term contracts which would mean that they could demand a good transfer fee for their stars. However as money became tighter, smaller clubs couldn’t afford to tie players down to long-term contracts so they were increasingly forced to sell their best young players for a minimal transfer fee in fear that they could soon lose them for nothing. As former UEFA top-dog Lars-Christer Olsson explained: “Those clubs who had access to all the money started to rob the smaller clubs, not just to get stronger themselves but to weaken the opposition”. This meant that money which before would be paid between clubs in the form of transfer fees (thus keeping money in the game and strengthening the footballing infrastructure), was now money was going straight into the pockets of players and agents.
As previously stated, the new Bosman rule allowed freedom of movement for players between European countries. Previous to this ruling, many leagues in Europe imposed a quota as to the amount of foreign players each team was allowed to field (a rule allowing only three foreign players per team was also imposed by UEFA in European competition). But the Bosman rule meant that this was no longer allowed and clubs could now field any number of European players in their team. In England this has undoubtedly increased the quality of the football in the Premier League, but it became clear that this would also have a negative impact on lower-league clubs. While small clubs used to rely on transfer fees for their best players to keep them afloat, the new ease with which teams could sign foreign talent meant that local players were overlooked in favour of signing a cheaper, foreign alternative.
Jean-Marc Bosman got nothing from the court case which dragged on for over five years other than an entry on ‘www.famousbelgians.net’. He was 25 years-old when he started his legal proceedings and spent much of this time without a club and with no income. He ended up bankrupt and with a collapsed marriage and ironically never benefitted from the rule which he fought so hard to put into place.
There were many golden moments in English football during the 90s, too many to mention here, yet it would be the ruling of a court case in Luxembourg that would change the mentality and infrastructure of the beautiful game for the foreseeable future. Jean-Marc Bosman could never have known what impact his desire to play for Dunkirk could have had, but it’s an impact that we’re still feeling today.
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