Santa Clara Açores v. Kennedy Kofi Boateng & SC Austria Lustenau

Ghanaian-born defender Kennedy Kofi Boateng, who represents Togo internationally through his mother's nationality, signed a two-season contract with Portuguese club Santa Clara on 1 July 2021, running to the end of 2022/23, with a third-season option the club could exercise by 30 March 2023. Santa Clara notified Boateng on 17 November 2022 — well ahead of that deadline — that it was exercising the option. Boateng disputed the option's validity and, when the original contract term ended, moved instead to Austrian club SC Austria Lustenau. Santa Clara brought a claim before FIFA seeking to enforce the option and a penalty of €4,000,000 for the alleged breach; the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber rejected the claim and found the option invalid, a decision Santa Clara appealed to CAS.

The Panel had two independent bases for holding the option invalid. First, Article 19 of Portuguese Law 54/2017 prohibits unilateral extension options in Portuguese employment contracts outright, a straightforward statutory bar under the contract's own governing law. Second, applying CAS's established multi-part test for such options where FIFA's own regulations leave a gap — filled here by Article 335a of the Swiss Code of Obligations — the Panel examined factors including the length of notice, the fairness of the resulting contract term, and whether any pay increase attached to the extension was genuinely substantial. A 5% salary increase was found not substantial enough to support extending the contract against the player's wishes. On either basis, the contract had ended on 30 June 2023, before Boateng's move to Lustenau.

Because the option was invalid, Boateng was free to sign for Lustenau, and the Panel separately rejected Santa Clara's €4,000,000 penalty claim outright: it calculated the sum as roughly 10.5 times the total value of the underlying contract, calling it "draconian" and holding that a penalty of that scale violated the principle of players' freedom of movement. The club was ordered to pay both the player and Lustenau CHF 5,000 each.