The Brazilian Football Federation (CBF) said in new transfer regulations published on Tuesday that third-party ownership of footballers "will become illegal in Brazil from May 1," according to Andrew Downie of REUTERS. The move "aims to bring Brazil into line with a FIFA ban on the practice that comes into effect on the same day." The practice "is already illegal in some European leagues but common in Portugal, Brazil and other South American countries, where investors buy up players in the hope of making a profit when they are sold to big name clubs" (REUTERS, 1/13). BLOOMBERG's Tariq Panja wrote investors "own a stake in the transfer rights of a majority of Brazilian top division players, leading to concerns that teams could be pressured to sell an athlete to realize gains for speculators." Marcos Motta, a Rio de Janeiro-based lawyer specializing in football trades, said, “As far as I’m concerned it’s the first national association that’s brought in domestically FIFA regulations." Motta, who acted in the transfer that took forward Neymar from Pele’s former club Santos to Barcelona in '13, said that "the ban on investors is already having an effect in Brazil." He said, "For sure there has been a big decrease in the market" (BLOOMBERG, 1/14).
