Beautiful to follow this topic:
Lotto Dstny dreigt de grote verliezer van de transferperiode te worden. Goudhaantje Jarno Widar (18) heeft beslist dat hij weg wil en ook Maxim Van Gils (24) wil zijn topjaar beter verzilveren dan Lotto hem bood en kan bieden. Astana en Movistar zijn kandidaat. Eerder werd al bekend dat ook...
www.hln.be
Two days later the GM goes nuts and denies everything
Lotto Dstny boss definitely had his Weetabix this morning as he comes out fighting
dnlbenson.substack.com
And I repeat, if they want out they are out, valid contract or not, they are Belgian, they have a law that legally bails them out. Heulot needs to see a fricking Belgian lawyer that can explain that to him before opening his mouth probably, he has no leg to stand on. Putting his thrust in the UCI is also wild. It's the UCI ffs. In Football the FIFA does everything they can to stop this cause they realize how bad it is for their sport (they basically suspend players who do it), but the UCI will maybe understand that 10 years from now. Their rules do not protect Lotto against someone breaking their contract unilaterally when it's done legally, and the Belgian "law of '78" makes that possible. I assume there's other European countries with similar laws.
Also even if a court says that breaking the contract was illegal, the UCI would still only punish the rider by letting him pay a fee to the team similar to his remaining salary, which is literally the same as what the law of 78 in Belgium says you have to do when unilaterally breaking a contract. For Van Gils that will probably still be around 1.5M so it's something (but obviously nothing for ChinAstana), for young guys like Widar it's literally nothing. So yes rich teams can buy every Belgian whenever they want, also Evenepoel btw, Lefevere would have nothing to say if Remco really wants to leave and he just puts 6M on the table. It's especially bad for (smaller) teams who take in young Belgian. Great that you just took in a talented junior, but when he does good he'll just break his contract for not even 100k to go to a super team.
Other possible punishments when it's not done legally is a 3 month suspension (hardest sanction, UCI won't have the balls to do it), a fine for the team signing the rider (for Van Gils probably around 500k) and also for the manager (for Van Gils it would probably be around 100k but watch ChinAstana pay it). The manager (Carera in this case ofc) could risk his license getting taken away for a month and the team could risk not being able to register new riders for 12 month (but then again, what does that even do, they just can't transfer riders mid season). But, like I said, if I understand it correctly, the UCI first looks if the contract breaking is done illegaly, otherwise they won't do ***, and with the law of 78 it is legally as long as someone pays his remaining salary as a compensation.
In short, rules don't protect teams from rich teams poaching their riders mid contract, or at least not for Belgian riders. Uijtdebroecks also used this law last year btw (or threatened with it behind the scenes, also Carera of course), Van Aert was ordered by a court to use it. In general people who use this law are criticized heavily in football in Belgium. Fans hate it, teams (obviously) hate it, but it seems a bit different in cycling. The only way to prevent Van Gils from doing it is to break open his contract and give him way more money, which for Lotto is of course impossibe at this moment. For Widar it's definitely over, shouldn't even try to keep him honestly. Most of the time they don't actually use the law in the end, cause teams realize they have no leg to stand on so they just agree with a "low" transfer fee (but one that's higher than the compensation). If ChinAstana for example pays 2M to Lotto they might agree.