FIFA has temporarily banned the Union from registering new players

As the Union took off for the start of their preseason camp in Spain on Monday, the clouds they were under weren’t just the ones over Philadelphia.

The team confirmed it has been banned by FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, from registering new players for the next three transfer windows — the twice-a-year signing periods used to regulate player movement across the sport.

A source with knowledge of the matter told The Inquirer that the ban stemmed from an issue with José Riasco, a Venezuelan striker who is on the Union’s reserve squad.

When the Union signed him from Venezuelan club Deportivo La Guaira in March 2022, there wasn’t just a transfer fee. FIFA has long had a rule that a small percentage of the payment goes to the youth club that first developed the player, as a reward for the club’s work. (The Union profit from this every time one of their academy products changes clubs abroad.)

In this case, the club in question was Mineros de Guayana, in Riasco’s hometown of Guayana, Venezuela. The amount of money was a mere $700. It took a long time for the Union to track down a way to pay Mineros, so long that a lawyer contracted by the club spotted the delay and flagged it to FIFA.

By the time the Union got the payment through, it was too late to avoid landing on FIFA’s ban list on Dec. 4.

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The Union have been working since November to clear all this up with FIFA’s clearinghouse. But given the nature of the sport, they aren’t the only club in line at a soccer equivalent of PennDot. FIFA’s global database of current bans has more than 1,000 entries. Casual fans might have heard of some of the clubs on the list, such as Mexico’s Veracruz, Italy’s Chievo Verona, and Spain’s Rayo Vallecano and Mallorca.

For comparison’s sake, the two Spanish clubs just went on the list this month. They claimed they had no advance notice from FIFA that the bans — for three transfer windows, same as the Union — were coming. Media reports in Spain said that as soon as they showed FIFA they had cleaned up whatever the problems were, the bans would be lifted immediately.

The Union should be treated the same way.

Other MLS teams have landed on the list in recent years, including the Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati, and those bans usually haven’t lasted long.

A Union spokesperson confirmed The Inquirer’s reporting Monday afternoon.

A FIFA spokesperson said in a statement: “We can confirm that Philadelphia Union is currently prevented from registering new players in connection with the payment of an outstanding debt. The ban will be lifted once the payment has been confirmed by the creditor concerned.”

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Even if the Union weren’t under a FIFA ban, they still wouldn’t be able to register a signing from abroad at this moment, because MLS’s first transfer window of the year doesn’t open until Jan. 31. As long as the ban is solved by then, there won’t be much of an impact.

On top of that, the ban really doesn’t hit until it’s time to play official games, because that’s what registration affects. The Union’s season opener is Feb. 22.

Andrew Visnovsky, a Los Angeles-based sports lawyer with roots in Philadelphia (including Villanova’s law school), has seen this happen with MLS teams before. He told The Inquirer that it usually ends up being not that big of a deal.

“I don’t think there’s much for Union fans to be worried about,” he said. “The time by which someone should be worried is probably if it gets closer to the start of the season and the start of games, and there are players that are signed that need to be registered.”

Visnovsky noted that the Union can still buy and sell players while the ban is in place, and incoming players can take part in preseason practices and friendlies. They just can’t play in official games.

“I have a feeling this will get resolved long before that happens, and won’t necessarily affect any of their business,” he said. “But it is a bit of a frustration given the situation, and what they’re waiting on is kind of out of their control.”

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Coincidentally, this isn’t the first time Riasco has been in the news for an unusual reason. The Union wanted to promote him to their first team in 2023, but couldn’t do so because the New York Red Bulls held his MLS discovery rights — an internal league rule allowing teams to effectively claim first dibs on foreign players. It only applies to the top tier, not the reserve league, because reserve-league contracts are separate things.

The Red Bulls put a high enough ransom fee on Riasco’s rights that the Union didn’t want to pay it, and the Red Bulls sat on the rights for a long time.

(The discovery rule is widely loathed, but it’s liked by just enough people around the league that it hasn’t been thrown out yet. The separation of contracts is also increasingly disliked, and why we don’t see the kind of frequent player movement between the levels that happens in baseball and hockey.)

Stuck in that jam, the Union decided to loan Riasco out to Uruguayan first-division team Boston River in September 2023 so he could play at a higher level than the MLS Next Pro league.

While he was away, the Red Bulls finally yielded on his discovery rights. The loan expired in August, and Riasco returned to Chester. He played six games for Union II, helping them reach the MLS Next Pro championship game.

It remains to be seen what his role will be this year. The Union believed he was a serious prospect when they signed him, and that transfer fee to Deportivo La Guaira was around $1 million. He’s still just 20 years old, so there’s plenty of time for the bet to pay off.

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