LEGAL STRUCTURE OF FOOTBALL CLUBS IN YUGOSLAVIA AND CROATIA WITH EMPHASIS ON THE EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30925/zpfsr.39.2.12Keywords:
legal status of football clubs; Football Association of Yugoslavia; legal and labour status of football players; self-management; collective labourAbstract
Today, football clubs are mostly associations or companies, while professional football players usually have the status of a worker or, in rarer cases, the status of an independent contractor. In socialist Yugoslavia and Croatia, sports were grounded in the principles of amateurism and socialist self-management. Professionalism in Yugoslav football was legalised in the 1960s, while, in the 1970s, it managed to fully establish itself and overcome the legal and sociopolitical frameworks that existed for amateur sports. Clubs became organisations that, in addition to sports activities, also conducted economic activities. This paper presents the attempts of the Football
Association of Yugoslavia and republic-level and region-level federations at finding solutions to the opposition that had been created between professionalism and the governing system of socialist self-management and collective labour. It outlines the legal regulations that were in force at the time and analyses the proposals for changing the status of professional clubs and football players that were given by football
federations and clubs. The paper also explains how the Football Federation failed to achieve an appropriate solution on its own, and how the regulation of the status of football players had to wait until the enactment of a relevant law. In the drafting of this paper, we used original sources created by the Football Association of Yugoslavia and
Croatian Football Federation, as well as federal and republican regulations that were of relevance in the government of the stated matters.
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