Club Al Faisaly v. Ahmed Achraf Mohamed Feki & FIFA

Egyptian player Ahmed Achraf Mohamed Feki was under contract with Saudi Arabian club Al Faisaly (based in Harmah, competing in Saudi football under the laws and regulations of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, "SAFF") — a different club from the more widely known Al-Faisaly SC of Amman, Jordan, with which it shares a name but no other connection. Feki suffered an injury, and the club paid him at 100% of salary for four months afterward, then reduced this to 75% and later 50%, before terminating his contract almost a year after the injury — a termination the club itself effectively conceded, before the Panel, was without just cause. FIFA's DRC ordered the club to pay SAR 954,540 in outstanding remuneration and compensation, plus interest, and separately imposed a transfer ban on the club under Article 17(4) of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players; the club appealed specifically against the ban.

FIFA argued several aggravating circumstances justified the ban, including that the breach happened during the contract's protected period and that the club was not a first-time offender. On the protected-period point, the majority of the Panel rejected FIFA's own precedent-based argument (which relied on CAS 2017/A/5056) with a precise piece of reasoning: a breach occurring during the protected period is a prerequisite for Article 17(4) applying at all, not a separate aggravating circumstance that can be counted a second time on top of the very fact that triggers the article in the first place. Without a protected-period breach, Article 17(4) has no application to begin with; treating that same fact as an added aggravating factor would double-count it. The Panel grounded this in FIFA's own official Commentary on the RSTP, which states that "the specific circumstances surrounding the behaviour of the party in breach (the club) must justify the sanction" — meaning a transfer ban is not automatic merely because the bare conditions for one are technically met.

Working through the remaining aggravating factors FIFA raised, the Panel found none of them held up either: the gradual, four-months-at-full-pay-then-tapering pattern documented by the club did not support treating the termination as an egregious, sanction-worthy breach, however wrongful the eventual termination itself was found to be.

The appeal was partially upheld specifically on the transfer ban, which was set aside, while the underlying finding of no just cause and the SAR 954,540 compensation award stood untouched. Costs were split 80% to the club and 20% to FIFA — a useful illustration that a lack of just cause does not automatically mean a sporting sanction is warranted on top of compensation, and a clear example of CAS declining to let a single underlying fact be counted twice toward the same sanction.