ABSTRACT
Football players are legally obliged to fulfil their contractual obligation to their football clubs but there is a dilemma of obeisance to their national teams during international tournaments. FIFA decided to resolve this dilemma by prohibiting football clubs and footballers from exempting national team call ups for players from their contracts. However, this paper posits that FIFA’s attempt at resolving this issue is theoretical and not practical. This paper examined this prohibition in the absence of a clear and precise functioning sanction for the breach of the prohibition. This research also examined the effect of the principle of contractual freedom on club and players as regards the prohibition. Concepts such as talent ownership by clubs was examined vis-a-vis the international and municipal human rights provisions such as freedom from servitude, slavery and forced labour to determine whether football service or talent are owned during the term of a contract that will empower a club owner from refusing to release a player to his or her nation. The legal instrument of citizenship deprivation was also considered by this paper as a tool for Countries to mandate players to observe national obeisance for participation in international tournaments. This paper recommends to FIFA that every player that intends to sign a contract with a club must notify his nation’s football association to observe the contract execution between football players and clubs and also that such contracts must include terms that support respect for national call-ups to play in international tournaments.
Keywords: Sentencing, Retribution, Deterrence, Rehabilitation