Barcelona on Tuesday lost its appeal to the European Union’s Court of Arbitration for Sport over the transfer ban imposed by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, which rules the Spanishgiant out of participating in the next two transfer windows. As a result, Barca will not be able to sign any new players in 2015.
FIFA punished the Catalan club for breaching its rules regardingthe protection of under-age players and the registration of under-age players attending soccer academies. After losing its appeal with FIFA, Barca took its case to CAS, which upheld FIFA’sdecision.
In response, Barca said “it totally disagrees” with the CAS ruling, claiming that whatever errors it committed were due to “administrative” issues“caused by the existing conflict between the FIFA regulations and Spanish legislation, along with the club’s conviction that it was acting correctly.” Therefore, the transfer window ban istoo harsh, the club claims.