Lets take this from the very beginning:
2008:
Egyptian goaltender Essam El Hadary was signed away from his club Al Ahly and joined the Swiss team FC Sion. Sounds like normal trade talk right? That’s where you’re wrong. El Hadary negotiated with FC Sion without the consent of Al Ahly. As any sports fan knows, a player under contract cannot negotiate with another team without the knowledge or sometimes expressly given consent of the team they’re currently on. The famous Egyptian football (soccer) club instantly claimed that El Hadary was in breach of contract. They took their complaint to soccer’s biggest governing body, FIFA, who quickly ruled in their favor. Al Hadary would serve a four month ban before being allowed to play for his new Swiss team and FC Sion would be slapped with a two year transfer ban. Since there are very specific windows when trades and signings can be made in soccer, this was quite a crippling decision. Of course, this didn’t sit well with FC Sion who appealed to the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sports).
The CAS is an arbitration body that handles disputes related to sports. Most of the time it handles international cases and was created to handle Olympic disputes. It is seen as a third party to best handle disputes without politics becoming an issue.
2010:
The CAS upheld FIFA’s bans but reduced the subsequent financial fine to El Hadary. Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of the controversy. Even though FC Sion was appealing the ruling, FIFA’s ban was still in effect. Sion continued with business as usual making several transfers during the time that the CAS was deciding on the case. Thanks to some smart moves, the team won entry into the 2011-2012 Europa League by winning the season’s Swiss Cup.
Confused yet? It gets worse!
2011:
FC Sion enters the playoff round against the Scottish team Celtic. They win on aggregate after scores of 0-0 and 3-1. Shortly after, Celtic filed a complaint, stating that Sion fielded six players that were not eligible for the competition since they were gained through illegal transfers during the FIFA ban. UEFA (the governing body of the Europa and Champions League) agreed with Celtic and reversed both decisions awarding 3-0 victories to Celtic on both games. This meant that Celtic won on aggregate 6-0.
The drama didn’t end there. Not only did FIFA feel that the Swiss Super League wasn’t adhering to their decision but they felt that they did little to reprimand the team. On December 17th, FIFA made one of the biggest threats that could be made. If the Swiss Super League doesn’t punish FC Sion in one month’s time, the entire country would be banned from world play. This means that teams like FC Basel, who recently earned their way into the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League by defeating super power Manchester United, would be automatically disqualified even though they had nothing to do with the shady decisions made by Sion.
2012:
It’s unsure what the future holds for this scenario. It is one of the most complex yet mind boggling sports stories to come along in quite some time. Not only will a team deserving to play amongst the best in the world be barred from competing, but the national team might see themselves disqualified from World Cup qualifying games beginning in 2012. Not to mention a dismissal from the Euro League. FC Basel is scheduled to play Bayern Munich on February 22nd in the first knockout round of the Champions League. Whether they’ll be replaced by Manchester United or simply disqualified is yet to be determined. Hopefully the Swiss Football League will deal with the issue and allow FC Basel to continue as representatives against some of the best soccer teams in the world. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.