Article 19 of FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players blocks international transfers of players under 18, except in five limited circumstances. One of those is exception (c), which allows the transfer if (1) the player lives within 50 km of a national border, (2) the new club is located within 50 km of the same border, (3) the player resides less than 100 km from the new club’s headquarters, and (4) both associations consent. Recently, clubs in fortuitous locations have signed young players through exception (c). These moves demonstrate how clubs can use the exception to expand their talent pools and players can use it to expand their opportunities.
Exception (c) arises less frequently than (a) or (b)
The most used and debated exceptions are the first two. Exception (a) clears the transfer if the player’s parents move to the new club’s country for reasons “not linked to football.” Exception (b) authorizes a move if the player is 16 or older and the transfer is within the EU or between two associations in the same country. Almost exclusively, litigation over Article 19 has stemmed from these two exceptions. And while FIFA does not keep detailed statistics, my research finds that, of the many players granted an exception, most rely on (a) or (b).
Exception (c), on the other hand, applies less often. From its text, this is not surprising. Only so many players and clubs reside near international borders.
The unspoken requirements push exception (c) further into obscurity. A young player must be good enough for the foreign club’s academy and vice versa – the club’s academy must be good enough for a (most likely) talented young player. The border also must be one a person would want to cross. It is hard to imagine, for example, a 14-year-old Turkish player accepting a scholarship from a Syrian club, or a young Indian player joining an academy in Pakistan. All told, exception (c) is a path too narrow for most potential transactions.
Nonetheless, exception (c) is real, and, in the right situations, it can help clubs and players.
Clubs near borders can gain an advantage from exception (c)
FC Copenhagen and Roony Bardghji: A case study
Clubs with a favorable location can use exception (c) to create a competitive advantage. Consider Denmark’s FC Copenhagen (or “FCK”), and their now 18-year-old Swedish winger Roony Bardghji.
When he was only 14, Bardghji jumped from one of Sweden’s premier clubs, Malmo, to Copenhagen. The move fit comfortably within exception (c). That is, the Baltic Sea cities of Malmo and Copenhagen stare at each other across the 15 km-wide Oresund strait. The Denmark-Sweden border cuts a path about halfway between them. FCK’s home stadium and training center are each less than 30 km from the border, while on the other side, Malmo is even closer, about 15 km from the line. This means that if Bardghji lived in Malmo or its vicinity, he would be well within 100 km of Denmark’s capital city. These distances satisfy all the objective requirements of exception (c).
Since arriving in Copenhagen, Bardghji has progressed rapidly. FCK started him on their U19 team, where he only lasted a year, before making his first team debut only five days past his 16th birthday.
After two solid seasons, Bardghji made a leap in 2023/24. Despite a serious knee injury in one of FCK’s final games, he appeared 23 times in the Danish Superliga (regular and championship rounds), 16 as a starter, and scored 7 goals. He also earned four appearances and 144 minutes in the Champions League – helping take FCK beyond the group stage for only the second time in club history.
Unfortunately, the late-season knee injury may devour much of his 2024/25 season. Still, going forward, Bardghji’s performances as a teenager suggest his ceiling is high.
The advantage Copenhagen gained from using exception (c)
Let’s start with the end product: Copenhagen acquired a first team regular, who is still only a teenager, with little-to-no acquisition cost. In the immediate term, Bardghji may continue to be a significant contributor to FCK’s push for domestic titles and European success. In the long term, he may have high sell-on value.
But the larger question is whether FCK needed to sign Bardghji at 14. Could they have waited until he turned 16 (only 15 months later), when exception (b) would have applied because the transfer was within the EU?
Yes, Copenhagen could have waited. But when a highly rated player turns 16, the pool of clubs chasing him becomes a sea. And this sea can include some of the biggest fish in Europe outside of the UK (Brexit!). Prying Bardghji away from Malmo is one thing. Prying him away from while subduing Bayern Munich or PSG is another, more difficult, thing.
All told, by moving for Bardghji early, Copenhagen ensured the competition for him would be much less intense. In turn, this increased their chances of adding a talented player to the club. Moreover, once he joined FCK, the club could convince him to stay by showing him, each day, that their development path would lead to his professional success.
That said, the impact of this one signing is not the point. Most 14-year-olds a club acquires will not become first team players – even exceptional foreign talents the club may target.
The point is that exception (c) offers some clubs an opportunity to expand their talent pool that most of their competitors lack. And while minor in isolation, small boosts like these can add up. So using this one, and finding others, can bring a club closer to maximizing their potential.
For players, exception (c) is less flexible in practice than it looks on paper
With some creativity, exception (c)’s text could be interpreted as offering players a small advantage.
A domestic move to a location that satisfies exception (c)
On paper, exception (c) would seem to open a small loophole, which players can use to reach foreign clubs. Consider the following: Exception (a) only allows a player under age 18 to join a foreign club if his family moves to the new club’s country for a reason not linked to football. This bars the family of a player in, say, Chicago, from moving to, say, Madrid, for no other reason than signing with Real Madrid. But the rule does not prevent the same player’s family from moving to San Diego, where the player can use exception (c) to play for Tijuana.
Nothing about the latter scenario would fall outside exception (c)’s requirements. San Diego and Tijuana are both within 50 km of the US-Mexico border and less than 100 km from each other. The player’s family would have established a new home in San Diego, allowing the player to commute from there to the Hot Stadium1 each day for training. Notably, unlike exception (a), exception (c) does not depend on the reason the player’s family moved. So it could be explicitly linked to football without jeopardizing the transfer.
This scenario sounds plausible, as it hews relatively close to Article 19’s purpose and the reason for exception (c).
An international move to a location that satisfies exception (c)
While unlikely to succeed more than once, exception (c)’s text appears to permit even more audacious boundary pushing. Rather than San Diego, assume our hypothetical player moved to – picking a city at random – Malmo. Once there, he could use exception (c) to play for, maybe, FC Copenhagen. Admittedly, this sort of maneuvering would smell funny – i.e., it would feel like it was against the rules. But technically, exception (c) does not question how the parents arrived at their current home. So whether the move is across the street or across the world – or the family does not move at all – this exception can apply.
Using exception (c) after an international move would not be for everyone. Baked into such a plan would be sacrifices on issues like cost, football development, family dynamics, and education. For example, while FIFA was considering whether to approve the transfer, the player would likely have to stay out of competitive matches. As such, the move could deprive the player of crucial development time. And this is even if the plan succeeds.
But there are reasons the plan could, and in most cases, would, fail.
First, exception (c) does not activate unless both associations approve the transfer. Here, some countries may not mind becoming portals for creative trips around the rules. But others might. A player and family would not want to drag their lives to a far-off place only to discover their new club’s association stands in the latter category.
Second, on a related note, it is not entirely clear which associations would need to approve. Obviously, the association for the club receiving the player would need to be involved. But would the other association be the one where the player is registered or where he now resides?
Third, FIFA or the Court of Arbitration for Sport may conclude that allowing plots like this would promote form over substance. So while technically acceptable, either body might deem the exception inapplicable.
Lastly, if one player succeeds in using exception (c) this way, FIFA may eliminate exception (c) or at least close the loophole. It happened before when FIFA banned bridge transfers.
Conclusion
Exception (c) will not turn the sport on its head. But it can be useful in the right circumstances. Clubs and players would benefit by staying alert for those opportunities.
Random Thoughts Unleashed
- In the last year, a different Danish club, FC Nordsjaelland, has poached two 15-year-old players from Malmo: defender Dante Figueroa Ndziba and midfielder Leonel Eklund. Nordsjaelland is in Farum, a suburb just north of Copenhagen. They sit about 45 km from their country’s border with Sweden and only about 15 more km from Malmo. So while they have few meters to spare, the club also falls within exception (c)’s green zone.
- As of Summer 2024, Ndziba plays for Nordsjaelland’s U19’s and recently signed a new contract. Eklund only left Malmo around June 2024. He plays in Nordsjaelland’s U17 team.
- When moving across national boundaries, the specific countries’ immigration laws may also become a factor. While this may not present many obstacles when the transfer is within the EU, transfers in other locations may not be so lucky. I cannot claim to know each law that could create a problem. But before finalizing a transfer under exception (c), all relevant parties should be aware of those that may apply.
- Child labor laws could also affect the viability of these transfers. Denmark, for example, does not allow full time employment until a person turns 15. This could explain why Bardghji, who was 14 when he transferred to Copenhagen, did not begin playing for the club’s U19 team until the first game after his 15th birthday.
- While UK clubs cannot sign foreign minors until they turn 18, some clubs can circumvent that restriction by using their satellite clubs in other countries. For example, City Football Group can sign 16-year-old foreigners to Lommel, their branch office in Belgium. In fact, Lommel sit almost directly on a portion of the border between Belgium and the Netherlands. It is also well less than 100 km from Eindhoven, a relatively populous city in the Netherlands. So SK Lommel can give CFG access to exception (c).
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- Tijuana’s home stadium is Estadio Caliente. ↩︎
Terry Brennan Law 