Amendments to FiFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP)

Dear Club Representatives,

The FIFA Council approved in October several amendments to the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP), which will come into force tomorrow (16 November 2022).

These amendments concern both international transfer of minors; and international transfer process for football and futsal players, as well as rules governing the status and transfer of futsal players.

International transfer of minors:

The mentioned amendments concern last year Football Stakeholders Committee and FIFA Council's series of objectives and principles for the "third reform package", which includes the topic of the international transfer of minors. Amendments have been made to clarify the definition of the term "trial" and adjust several articles of the RSTP which focus on:

• The establishment of a clear regulatory framework for trials including rules concerning medical care, minimum age and an effective way to seek legal protection;

• Amendments to the humanitarian exception in article 19 paragraph 2 d) of the RSTP to modernise and apply it more flexibly in order to reflect real-life cases that are currently rejected;

• Introducing additional minimum protection standards (safeguarding) for minors transferring internationally concerning a club’s duty of care towards minors and principles to protect minors against abuse;

• More stringent regulation in relation to private academies to increase oversight of minors within this environment.

International transfer process for football and futsal players, as well as rules governing the status and transfer of futsal players:

Annexes of the RSTP currently govern the international transfer of professional and amateur players both of 11-a-side football and futsal. However, only the international transfer of 11-a-side football players is currently undertaken in the Transfer Matching System (TMS). In this respect, the above amendments concern the definition of several technical terms and the redraft of the mentioned Annexe in order to modernise the regulatory framework and simplify the international transfer process.

The new draft of the Annexe (3) includes now the following main features:

• A more agile structure that follows the procedure to create and complete a transfer in TMS;

• Clear codification of FIFA’s practices (e.g. clubs’ obligation to declare in TMS the training compensation waiver as an “engage/release” instruction);

• Clear codification of special procedures affecting international transfers of players, namely: Player confirmation, Validation exceptions and Cancellation

Read more:

- The revised version of the RSTP is available clicking here.

- You can also visualise the full circular letter issued by FIFA on 8 November 2022 here.