The Court of Arbitration for Sport has given useful, practical guidance about the unilateral termination of a football coach’s contract under the relatively new provisions covering coaches in the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (‘RSTP’).
The award will be especially relevant for manager and coach contracts expressly subject to the RSTP or of an ‘international dimension’ (i.e. not with two purely domestic parties), thereby covered by the RSTP in any event.
In Elnur Chodarov v. Sumgayit Football LLC & FA of Azerbaijan CAS 2002/A/8905, in which John Mehrzad KC and Martin Palmer acted for the successful appellant, the sole arbitrator (Espen Auberg) noted that (at paragraphs 105-115 in particular):
‘employment duties consist of one or more of the following: training and coaching players, selecting players for matches and competitions; making tactical choices during matches and competitions, and/or employment requires the holding of a coaching licence in accordance with a domestic or continental licensing regulation’.
Applying the principles above to the facts of the case, the club materially breached the coach’s employment contract without ‘just cause’ since it did not clarify the situation following the head coach’s termination and there was no evidence of the Appellant being warned prior to receiving a termination letter. Accordingly, by way of damages, the coach was entitled to the residual value of his employment contract with the club.
Further, on the issue of jurisdiction, the sole arbitrator found that the Appellant had exhausted all internal remedies prior to filing his appeal to the CAS since the FA of Azerbaijan’s Appeal Arbitration Tribunal did not remit the original decision prior to the CAS appeal being filed and, in any event, no information had been provided to the Appellant concerning its remission to its first instance domestic tribunal (paragraphs 61-62).
Moreover, on the issue of the AFFA’s standing to be sued, the proper respondent was the club, not the local federation, since the only horizontal contract in existence was between the Appellant and the club (paragraph 93).