In Lebanon, solving disputes between clubs takes a lot of time, because sports arbitrage is not developed enough in the country, and the sector seriously lacks experts in sports law.
One situation that clearly demonstrates Lebanon’s poor sports law is the never-ending dispute between Nejmeh and Ahed, sparked last season, when the former did not attend the game against Ahed at the Fouad Chehab stadium, “for security reasons”. The final verdict over which sanctions to impose was pronounced several weeks later, and dealt Lebanese football a severe blow. Indeed, players spent weeks without competing, and the national team suffered collateral damage, many of its players unfit to compete ahead of the 2022 World Cup. According to attorney-at-law Ralph Charbel, the problem is that “sports arbitrage in Lebanon is underdeveloped because of limited sports law specialists, sports law being a discipline in its own right with a big presence worldwide. Hence, political pressure exerted on sports in Lebanon is huge.” One must mention the fact that countless disputes arise in Europe following fan feuds or referee abuse, but they never stop competitions from taking place.
Incompetent and ill-intentioned player agents
One of the main components of the sports ecosystem is the player agent. An agent usually manages a player’s contract and negotiates their transfer from one club to another. It is therefore imperative for an agent to be a lawyer, or at least have solid knowledge of sports law. That is why many elite athletes have lawyers for agents. It is, for example, the case for Kylian Mbappé, one of the best professional footballers of the world, who works with Delphine Verheyden, a famous sports lawyer. The legal competence of agents is crucial to the protection of players against contract abuse at the hands of clubs. An agent’s ethics and professionalism are equally important when it comes to keeping players away from bad, financial interest driven decision-making. Many athletes choose to put management in the hands of family members to avoid such problems. Agent regulation has evolved greatly over recent years: Mr. Charbel explains that “FIFA no longer organizes the work of agents. It now simply recommends certain individuals to that end. Each national federation has its own laws, inspired by FIFA’s, which results in a form of disorganization with enormous commissions being paid to agents. These commissions can vary from one country to the other. For example, they are limited to 3% of a player’s total salary in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, whereas they can go up to 10% in countries like Saudi Arabia. Changes will be made, again, and the FIFA will have to take over once more, in order to manage the issuing of agent licenses and adjudicate on agent disputes, as was the case before 2015”.
Agents’ legal incompetence is even more noticeable in Lebanon and the Arab world: according to Ralph Charbel, “in the Arab world, most agents don’t have knowledge in sports law. This is why players, managers, and clubs alike need lawyers specialized in sports law. Contracts in Arab countries are filled with loopholes, for lack of specialists, which gives way to illegal and abusive terms in the regions’ contracts”.
Mr. Charbel is one of the very few sports law specialists in Lebanon. To facilitate the understanding of this aspect of the sports ecosystem (clubs, players, federations, journalists, lawyers, etc.), he recently wrote a book entitled “Elhadaf”, published by SADER 1863 in Arabic. It is a collection of articles analyzing the most important football events in Europe and the world, between 2017 and 2021. It also features legal studies related to football that cover Coronavirus and its consequences on the sport, the evolution of discrimination laws and the breach of professional footballers’ contracts.