Termination of the employment contract between the club and the professional and its consequences with emphasis on FIFA rules and jurisprudence of sports law

On the one hand, an employment contract between a club and a professional player is subject to national labor laws and regulations, on the other hand, the contractual relationship should be considered binding upon the parties to it based on the principle of pacta sunt servanda,. The legal basis for terminating such a contract and its effects is set out in the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) and it has been developed by jurisprudence of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) profoundly. While the RSTP does not contain any further details regarding the concept of just cause, the question of whether the parties are entitled to terminate the employment contract unilaterally and prematurely remains subject to the additional application of Swiss law as a subsidiary law as well as case law of DRC and CAS. In this regard, only a material breach of an employment contract can possibly be deemed as just cause as a reason for its termination. A material breach occurs when the main terms and conditions under which the employment contract was entered into force are no longer implemented. This scientific research paper, in the light of a comparative study and analytic method, describes the circumstances and analyzes the subject-matter of termination of the employment contract between the club and the professional and its consequences relying on the FIFA rules as well as case law of DRC and CAS.