When famous soccer players come to mind, it is usually revered pioneers such as Pelé, Bobby Charlton and Diego Maradona.
Later came Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Samantha Kerr.
But who has heard of Jean-Marc Bosman?
A man who changed soccer forever
Anyone interested in association football (soccer) or sport in general should know about Bosman.
He is responsible for the European Court of Justice’s landmark December 1995 Bosman Ruling (often just called Bosman) that enabled players in Europe to move freely between clubs.
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This rather obscure Belgian soccer player, who never represented his country at senior level, is arguably as or more important to the world game and some other sports such as basketball than much more gifted athletes.
Elements of the Bosman story echo the late-19th-century feudalism of the Netflix series The English Game. Akin to peasants unable to switch lords and ladies of the manor, professional soccer players in the late 20th century were still forcibly attached to clubs.
Soccer goes to court
In 1990, Bosman was at the end of his contract with Belgian club RFC Liège and wanted to move to French club Dunkerque.
Jeff Chiu/AP, Andrew Cornaga/AAP, Petros Kardijias/AP
Sports can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, these moments create immediate shockwaves. Other times, it’s not until much later that their impact become obvious. This is the second story in a rolling series that explores key (and sometimes long forgotten) moments in sports history.
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But the clubs could not agree on the mandatory transfer fee and he remained at Liège, outside the first team on reduced wages.
He appealed to the European Court of Justice, which ruled in his favour. It determined preventing athletes from moving freely within the European Union was an unreasonable restraint of trade.
This decision dramatically shifted the balance of power between players, their agents and the associations and clubs.
Within the powerhouse Union of European Football Associations confederation (UEFA), recruiting, retaining and remunerating players became much more complicated.
Bosman did not create today’s overheated transfer market and hyper-commercialised football, but he certainly fuelled it.
One effect was to exacerbate the enormous financial losses of clubs chasing the best players for inflated sums.
This bubble expanded as US private equity firms and Middle Eastern investment funds infused vast amounts of capital into soccer, creating multi-millionaire athletes and loss-making clubs.
UEFA was forced to intervene with financial fair play regulations and, later, financial sustainability rules in an effort to stop clubs haemorrhaging cash.
Mobile players, static fans
Players soon had to pay a physical and psychological price for their newfound riches as leagues and clubs sought to generate more revenue in a globalised sport market.
To the consternation of their “union” – Fédération Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels (FIFPRO) – they were soon required to play more games in more competitions and travel on intercontinental promotional tours.
Although centred on Europe, Bosman had a ripple effect across the globe, including in Australia.
While Australian players such as Craig Johnston had long made their fortunes in Europe, the post-Bosman honeypot was especially attractive to the likes of Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwarzer and others.
Finding long-lost relatives in the European Union sometimes helped with immigration authorities.
One of Bosman’s greatest beneficiaries was the English Premier League (EPL), which was formed in the early 1990s with money from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
The EPL became by far the richest league in Europe after luring the world’s best (and most mobile) athletes. The combined transfer value (the estimated cost of buying their entire squads) of Chelsea’s and Manchester City’s 101 players is around A$5.5 billion.
Ironically, the UK’s Brexit threatened to curtail the sport’s labour supply. But the Bosman mobility template has largely survived.
Bosman also had deeper social and cultural ramifications for the relationships between players and fans. The former transitioned from proto-employee to small businessperson selling athletic services to the highest bidder.
This was good for the bank balances of professionals with short, precarious careers.
But hometown fans, unlike most athletes, are static rather than mobile in their loyalties. They tend to regard some players as money-grubbing mercenaries, while perhaps hypocritically welcoming big-money recruits from other clubs.
Bosman helped widen the gap between the celebrity player and everyday fan, exposing professional soccer’s corporate-capitalist underbelly and disenchanting many romantics.
Soccer culture has changed substantially as a result, dramatically exacerbating the inequalities between apex predator and tiddler clubs.
Those same inequalities are reproduced among players. The still-developing women’s game has seen professionalisation and Bosman-inspired mobility enable some players to prosper in relative terms, while many more still need to supplement their incomes outside the game.
What happened to Bosman?
What became of the man whose legal victory was so important to these developments?
Now in his 60s, Bosman benefited little from the ruling, ending up bankrupt and divorced, an alcoholic with a conviction for assaulting his partner.
His life is a far cry from those of the many fabulously rich footballers for whom he paved the way.
But his impact on soccer is still being felt today. Thirty years after the Bosman Ruling, the Justice for Players foundation served notice of a class action against FIFA, football’s governing body, and several European football associations.
Involving more than 100,000 players, the action seeks compensation for lost income since 2002 attributed to FIFA’s restrictions on player transfers.
The similarity does not end there.
French player Lassana Diarra sparked the dispute after he was obstructed from moving between Russian and Belgian clubs in 2016. His lawyer, Jean-Louis Dupont, represented Bosman in his case and is advising the new class action.
This latest development demonstrates the 2020 documentary Bosman: The Player Who Changed Football was not exaggerating – the shock of the Bosman Ruling continues to reverberate around the world game and beyond.
