Olympic Soccer Ruling
Update: Messi & Argentina won the gold – AMS
The NYT has this interesting story about today’s decision of The Court of Arbitration for Sport that holds that private football clubs are not required to release their players for Olympic competition.
The court, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, but with an adjunct office in Beijing for the Olympics, decided Wednesday that the clubs were not legally bound to release the players since the Olympic tournament was not on the match calendar of FIFA, soccer’s international governing body.
The FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, said in a statement Wednesday that he was “surprised and disappointed” by the decision, saying he regretted that the court “has not taken the Olympic spirit into consideration.”
Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona, the Argentinian at the center of this dispute, is one of the players to watch in this years’ games, which kick off tomorrow, Aug 7 in Shanghai. It’s clear that the home clubs have a strong financial interest in the health and conditioning of their players. Evidently part of the FIFA schedule overlaps with Olympic competition, but it’s is unclear at this time whether any of the players will be called back by their employers.
A 1998 article in the Florida State Law Review provides some helpful background on the arbitration process and examples of its use during the Atlanta Olympics. The men’s soccer schedule can be found here, with Japan v. USA playing tomorrow.
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