The lawyers are taking over soccer

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Pack your bags, because it’s a wonderful month to travel. (Have you read Reason‘s travel issue yet?)

But if you’re heading to Europe to watch soccer, you might want to double check the schedule. The schedule for a few teams is a bit up in the air, and some fans are more worried about how the team lawyers are doing in court this week rather than their players. More on that below, plus a quick trip to Philadelphia and a survey for readers on how to fix sports. 

If two teams go to court in Switzerland, does it make a sound?

Yes and no. Yes because the court can have wide-ranging effects. No because its proceedings are confidential.

This is the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It can pummel your enemies and help your team—or vice versa.

The court has been in the news lately for soccer-related reasons. UEFA, which governs soccer in Europe, has rules against multiclub ownership. This isn’t much of a problem in U.S. sports because the main leagues are closed to outside competition—one person can’t own two teams in the same league because there’d be an obvious conflict of interest (although Philip Anschutz once concurrently owned six MLS teams in the league’s earlier years). But with soccer as big as it is in the world, people can and do own many different soccer teams.

One such person is American John Textor. He currently owns teams in Brazil (Botafogo), France (Olympique Lyonnais), and Belgium (RWDM Brussels). But he used to own another team in England (Crystal Palace) until UEFA’s multiclub ownership rules intervened. The problem is that UEFA won’t let teams with the same owner play in the same competition. Those four teams all play in different countries most of the time, but when they do well, they qualify for continent-wide competitions too. So when Lyon and Crystal Palace both qualified for UEFA’s Europa League competition, UEFA bumped Crystal Palace into a lower competition in favor of another English team, Nottingham Forest, and Textor had a problem on his hands.

That wasn’t the only problem for Textor, though. Lyon was $634 million in debt, and the French soccer authorities weren’t happy about it. They were prepared to kick Lyon out of the top level of French soccer solely for its financial problems, and if it happened, UEFA would kick Lyon out of the Europa League too. So Textor gave up control of the team, but still maintains ownership. For good measure, he decided to sell his stake in Crystal Palace too. Two American billionaires were happy to help Textor out: Michele Kang (owner of the NWSL’s Washington Spirit) took over as president of Lyon, and Woody Johnson (owner of the New York Jets) bought Textor’s stake in Crystal Palace (good luck with that, Palace fans!).

But the legal issues still haven’t been resolved, and the competitions start later this month. So now Crystal Palace, Lyon, and Nottingham Forest are all headed to CAS in Switzerland, with a hearing set for August 8 and a decision expected on August 11.

All this to decide who gets to play in Europe’s crummy second- and third-tier continental competitions. If it were college football, it’d be like going to court over your spot in the Fenway Bowl versus the Pinstripe Bowl: only the lawyers win, and either way you end up playing somewhere cold in December.

Meanwhile, soccer fans are still waiting for the result of 130 charges against English giant Manchester City. Also, if you look at CAS’s list of recent decisions, you’ll notice FIFA gets sued a lot. (And in case you missed it above, the U.S. Justice Department is reportedly investigating incidents at MLS stadiums.)

There are more than 100,000 male professional soccer players in the world. There might be even more lawyers working on soccer-related cases.

“Unfortunately, one person’s common sense is another’s opinion — fun to debate, but not the best foundations for a cross-border sports competition involving huge prizes,” as Matt Slater and Matt Woosnam wrote in The Athletic. “To do that, you are better off with a set of written rules which are fair, proportionate, transparent and well-drafted. If they are not, well, that’s why we invented lawyers.”

Ever wondered what would happen if you wore the opposing team’s gear in Philadelphia? My beloved Detroit Tigers (best team in the American League!) went to Philadelphia for a three-game weekend series. My brother and I made the quick trip up from Washington, D.C., for two games.

Yes, I wore Tigers gear to both games. Yes, I stood and cheered loudly when we hit home runs (six in two games). And yes, I survived without a scratch. In fact, the only trash-talking I heard was a child yelling “You suck! Go home!” after one home run (unclear if the child was yelling at me or the Tigers).

The stadium, Citizens Bank Park, is great—not one of the league’s best, but certainly above average. The food is pretty good and very accessible with lots of variation. But I didn’t catch much in the way of must-see local amenities, history, or traditions at the park (maybe I caught the start of one). There’s a great skyline view from the upper deck, but be prepared for jammed stairs and escalators after the game (and you should definitely park in an outer lot closer to the main roads).

Go see your team in Philly if you can make it without much trouble. Just don’t blame me if you’re not lucky enough to come out unscathed like I did.

Let’s try to fix sports together: Click here for an open-ended survey on how to fix the NFL, college football, and MLB.

Think a tweak to the NFL rulebook could save the game? Let us know. Maybe you’ve got the perfect way to balance college football’s many competing interests that makes everybody happy. Let us know. Or maybe you’ve got an idea for a government regulation (or deregulation, I hope) that could solve all of baseball’s problems. Let us know.

Next time there’s a slow news week in the sports-meets-politics space, I’ll discuss a few of your ideas. So put on your commissioner, school administrator, or legislator hat and let us know how you’d fix sports.

Love to see a volley hit the roof of the net.

It simply had to be Trinity Rodman ???? pic.twitter.com/gYkd1TgcvG

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) August 3, 2025

That’s all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend when the Philadelphia Waterdogs face the New York Atlas in the Premier Lacrosse League on Saturday (two A-plus team names).