TFF, Yanga reluctant to admit they goofed, so throw the matter to CAS

Often enough the father can be heard expressing this or that preference especially if the player is still young or relatively immature, which is not the case for embattled Young Africans SC midfielder, Feisal Salum.

More noticeably the player’s agent could be heard in that direction, and except here, lawyers are not needed in transfer issues as people are compliant with regulations, not desires.

What is noticeable is that Young Africans SC, alias Yanga, the player’s adamant employer and institution-minded committee members at the soccer federation have sort of concluded that if they listen to interventions by the player’s quarter, they will lose face.

So they threw away an appeal for a review of an earlier decision (by a committee on player status or rights, etc) on the basis that there are no new grounds for hearing the matter.

That is plausible at the level of procedure, but psychologically the matter has since been closed.

In the run-up to convening a review panel on the case, there was a powerful intention from the mother of the player, who it turns out was brought to the matter by the club leadership.

When the player opted to move out, seemingly on preliminary accord with a top Premier League side where his payment would be scaled alongside that of professionals recruited from outside the country, the club sought out influential people to sound him out.

The mother was one of them, which was disrespectful, as it implied the club is a ‘father’ to the player.

Bringing a mother into a dispute is to seek out maternal respect because of one or other act of disobedience, and in the eyes of conservative club elders, this is what was taking place.

It was a hallmark of lack of professionalization, with a feudal claim to the player’s loyalty, in that he cannot leave the club when it needs him, and that for a local player 4m/- per month is not a bad salary.

All those supposed influences to have the player reconciled with the club failed and the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) panel stuck to a feudal view, elders want him back.

That was exactly the criticism the mother raised regarding her son, and then his legal team sought out another powerful voice, avowedly irritating and influential advocate Fatma Karume, whose mother is a patron of the Jangwani Street side.

It was simply to say that Yanga and TFF are not being fair to the player and have virtually ganged to serve each other’s interests – as TFF has an interest in keeping local players tied to their contracts, not raising issues on pay levels, etc. So there is no institutional capacity here to solve the matter.

By failing to go back on the facts of the case and admit that the player can indeed separate himself from the club if he pays a particular fee for breach of contract, they leave it to global instances to wash their dirty linen.

So the player will now have to refer the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) where again it will take a while before the matter is cleared.

Still, the court is mindful that the player has lost a half season already and needs to be back on the pitch by the time a new season starts, so the ruling could not take too long.

While the non-professional attitude still rules high in pundits’ discussions on the issue, even when bringing in ostensible legal experts, those versed in the law of sports contracting, there is a slight shift in tonality.

Earlier they tended to agree more or less in a hunting pack mentality, seeking respectability from run-of-the-mill Yanga fans, their elders, and TFF, and saw value in the view that Feisal Salum is a Yanga player. One could add, since ‘his father’ says so…

That level of confidence had by Thursday morning discussions before the TFF panel met on the issue, the view was somewhat constricted, a reluctant admission that ‘even if the player erred’ in seeking to sever his contract with the club, it does not remove his right to break the contract if he so wishes.

The irony is that these legal practitioners had to be put to some stern lecturing by the player’s mother to grasp the idea that contracts can be broken.

They were also coming to grasp that terminating a contract cannot be agreed upon.

This is leagues away from the sort of unprofessional arguments that sports lawyers, speaking more or less as confidants of the club and TFF, were raising earlier, insisting that the player had to seek out the club to negotiate on his wish to break the contract.

Nor have the pundits been open to taking into account that the player raised the issue of comparable pay several times and met with blank stares from club officials.

Now of course the club is resigned that the player is leaving but still perched on a spurious legal battle to the end.