April 24 – The president and secretary general of the international players’ union FIFPro have met with the EU’s commissioner for Sport to re-iterate their opposition to the current transfer system.
Philippe Piat (pictured) and Theo van Seggelen held talks this week in Brussels with Tibor Navracsics to discuss some of the most important football and EU sport policy matters and expressed their “severe concerns” that, 20 years after the Bosman ruling, there was still not enough governance over the transfer market.
In a statement, FIFPro said it had stressed that there was also an “unacceptably high prevalence” of overdue payables to players and that many players still lacked basic labour rights.
“Our meeting with Commissioner Navracsics provided an important opportunity to highlight some of the most pressing concerns of professional players across the EU, the European continent and effectively around the world,” said Piat.
Van Seggelen added: “FIFPro remains committed to a significant reform of the football industry, in which football players are no longer considered as tradable assets of clubs, exploited by agents, third party owners or other third parties. We will do whatever is required to bring about the long overdue change and we are confident that today we took another important step in this struggle.”
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