International Sports Arbitration sentenced Rostov to pay 20 million rubles

Fair game

The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne (CAS) made a decision on the claim of Spartak Moscow against Rostov. The red and whites demanded that the Rostovites be obliged to pay compensation for the transfer of three young football players - Maxim Grigoriev, Dmitry Malyaki and Evgeniy Filippov - last spring. It is noteworthy that formally “Rostov” received players who were students of “Spartak” from the modest Novocherkassk “Mitos”, where they allegedly moved after the expiration of their contracts with “Spartak”. But the court decided that Mitos acted only as a cover. And the real purpose of the deal was to evade payment of due compensation. Its size, according to Spartak owner Leonid Fedun, is 20 million rubles.

The story of the appearance of Maxim Grigoriev, Dmitry Malyaka and Evgeny Filippov in “Rostov” is quite interesting. By the start of last year's spring re-application campaign, their contracts with Spartak had all expired, and therefore the players had the right to negotiate with anyone. But the problem was that none of them were 23 years old at the end of their contracts. And the transfer rules stipulate that for such players, even if their contracts have already expired, their previous club is still entitled to compensation. The minimum bet is the player’s income for five years. It only applies if the player moves to a second division team. If he signs a contract with a first division team, the amount of compensation is calculated taking into account the coefficient of 2. If he moves to a Premier League team, then the multiplication is already by 3.

Obviously, not wanting to pay triple the price, “Rostov” resorted to a generally simple trick. Its essence was that the modest Novocherkassk “Mitos” from the second division acted as the buyer of the players.

"Mitos" sent a proposal for a deal to "Spartak", which was rejected by the Moscow team, not without reason believing that "Rostov" was behind "Mitos" (the players held training camps with the Rostov team). Then Mitos appealed to the dispute resolution chamber of the Russian Football Union (RFU) and, oddly enough, won the case. The RFU ordered Spartak to accept the deal and registered the transfers of the players, who by that time had been promptly leased by Mitos to Rostov, after the expiration of the additional application period. By the way, this led to another scandal. After Grigoriev scored a goal against Lokomotiv (interestingly, he now plays for the railway workers), club president Olga Smorodskaya demanded that the player’s transfer be cancelled.

As a result, Spartak had no choice but to turn to CAS, where the club’s lawyers argued that the deal to transfer the players to Mitos was a sham. Spartak general director Valery Karpin was more categorical and called the incident simply theft of football players.

Unlike the RFU, the Lausanne court heeded the arguments of Spartak, recognizing Rostov as the beneficiary in this story and obliging it to pay the required compensation (the decision is final and cannot be appealed). After which Valery Karpin did not fail to convey “hello to Sergei Aleksandrovich Fursenko (former president of the RFU - Kommersant ) from Lausanne.” “There is still justice in the world. Even if not here, even in Lausanne, but I think now others will be discouraged from stealing players,” noted Mr. Karpin. As for the exact amount of compensation that Rostov will have to pay, we are talking, according to Spartak owner Leonid Fedun, about 20 million rubles.

In turn, the General Secretary of the Trade Union of Football Players and Coaches Nikolai Grammatikov focused on the fact that CAS actually overturned the decision of the RFU on the dispute between Spartak and Rostov. “This is not the first such case. And, apparently, it’s time for the RFU Dispute Resolution Chamber to change its operating principles. It’s time to understand that cases must be considered based not only on documents. After all, the same CAS studied in detail, first of all, the intentions of the parties. And for It was obvious to the judges that “Rostov” wanted to reduce the compensation that was due to “Spartak,” noted Mr. Grammatikov.

Afsati Jusoity

"Spartak" won the case due to youth