Suddenly the Lübeck Cougars found themselves without a quarterback: On July 21, 2022, they announced on their homepage that Jadrian Clark would be moving to the European League of Football (ELF) and to Rhein Fire with immediate effect. The American said that to those responsible the evening before. “Despite this disappointing and very short-term decision for the club, the Lübeck Cougars wish Clark every success,” the team from the second division of the German Football League (GFL) wrote at the time.
Spontaneous changes like this are a point of contention between GFL and ELF. Since the European league does not belong to any association, it is not bound to any change deadlines, and there does not have to be any compensation to the club that is relinquishing it.
But that should now be over, as Fuad Merdanovic, President of the American Football Association of Germany (AFVD), said in an interview with the “Märkische Allgemeine”: “The most important thing for us was to find a regulation for player changes. This should take effect from the coming season and give the clubs security. Before it was wild.”
Merdanovic is part of a new AFVD leadership that seeks dialogue with the ELF instead of confrontation: “Certainly a lot of things were broken when the ELF was founded. But we knew that ignoring each other wouldn’t help anyone. Therefore, there was a meeting and discussion to explore how both leagues could coexist,” he said.
Among other things, it was about changing players from the GFL to the ELF. “It happened that a player simply didn’t show up for training with a GFL team and then played for the ELF the next day,” explained Merdanovic. Just like with Clark, he at least communicated his change openly, no matter how short it was. The AFVD president also said how things should work from 2024: “In the future, the transferring club must confirm a change to the franchise, both sides must agree that it fits.”
The GFL teams and the ELF franchise will then have to decide between themselves what exactly that means. But at least there is now this room for negotiation, which should help the two leagues come closer and coexist peacefully.
2023-10-10 18:09:46
#regulation #GFL #Shortterm #Clark #Rhein #Fire #longer
