Did they really get away with everything?

There’s no doubt that football can only be managed well in a stable environment over the long term. Constant changes in competition formats don’t help, nor do club failures. In Slovakia, we’ve witnessed several one-off breakdowns—Podbrezová, Borčice, and Myjava all abruptly withdrew from the leagues. At least in the last case, the League Union and the disciplinary bodies of the federation made some noise afterward.

This summer, FC VSS Košice and FK Dukla Banská Bystrica finally put an end to their struggles. The scenario was the same every year: push debts forward, gently suggest that the players sign payment schedules, and follow it up with the obligatory public narrative about how cruel life (investors, local governments) can be. The chronically non-paying Košice even tried to block Bukata’s transfer to Poland two years ago despite owing him five months’ salary. They failed. In Dukla’s case, most players were also left with over three months of unpaid wages. Who cares about personal lives, mortgages? “Businesses go bankrupt all the time,” they say. “Tough luck, you should have picked better contractual partners.” This summer, after another licensing debacle, VSS Košice withdrew from the competitions. Case closed. But where was the loud reaction from those in charge?

In Banská Bystrica, they came up with a more creative solution. The football club Dukla suddenly became "Municipal Football Club Dukla." The new club hasn’t compensated players who transferred over from the old one. “We said, if you want to come, you have to accept our terms,” a manager of the new club told Sport Daily last Wednesday. The players were informed they’d receive nothing for past debts. A sympathetic journalist wrote about a hopeful new beginning and a promising entry into the third league. It seems someone cleverly outwitted the creditors again. But did they really?

Professional football isn’t just ordinary business. It’s governed by sporting rules, many of them international. To summarize: in late June, the Executive Committee of the Slovak Football Association (SFZ) approved a legal-organizational change concerning MFK Dukla Banská Bystrica. According to SFZ regulations, however, all liabilities of the original club must still be settled. Furthermore, according to case law from FIFA's Dispute Resolution Chamber and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), a “new” club is considered a legal successor even if it’s not one de iure as long as it shares similar logos, name, colours or personnel with its predecessor. All of these criteria were met in this case.

Foreign players can pursue their claims with FIFA against the “new” MFK Dukla BB. Slovak players can do the same with the SFZ.

The new club surely knows it must pay the old club’s debts. But will it do so voluntarily, when it hasn’t been institutionally compelled by a firm condition from the federation or publicly called out by the media? Will we at least get a public statement from SFZ after the fact? Why does the silence around all this feel so unpleasant?

From the side of regulators - the SFZ and the League Union - active prevention is absolutely necessary. It’s not enough to have modern statutes and well-written regulations. Problems that have been festering for years needed to be addressed continually, not just ticked off during licensing procedures. Surely we’ve had enough surprise withdrawals and bankruptcies from clubs that everyone with eyes open knew were bound to collapse one day.