Colón fail to reach deal with Espínola, face FIFA ban from Monday | OneFootball

The club will not be able to sign players until the debt is settled.

The Colón club will be notified in the coming hours that it will be barred by FIFA from signing players. Yesterday, Friday, October 18, the deadline expired to settle the debt or agree on a payment plan with Alberto Espínola, but since it was not finalized, the club from Barrio Centenario will be listed as barred starting next Monday.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS by its French acronym) issued a ruling on September 3 against Colón, obligating the club to pay the Paraguayan full-back a sum of 345,000 dollars + 5% annual interest and 12,859,500 pesos + 5% annual interest from June 23, 2024.

The initial claim before FIFA's Dispute Resolution Chamber was for 719,908 dollars, but although the ruling was upheld by TAS, the debt was reduced by half. Between FIFA's ruling in September 2024 and the appeal against the award before TAS, a year passed.

After the TAS award, 40 days ago, the board of directors tried to agree with Espínola on a payment plan, but the Paraguayan did not accept.

Alberto Espínola arrived in July 2023 at the "sabalero" and according to what the player stated at the beginning of 2024 when he left the club, Colón never paid him. The experienced full-back came from Cerro Porteño of Paraguay in a market where Colón, struggling with staying in the league and after poor previous markets, brought in high-profile and experienced players like Rubén Botta, Germán Conti, Favio Álvarez, Ángel Cardozo Lucena, and Damián Batallini among others, for Pipo Gorosito's squad with the aim of staying in the first division.

After just two months at the club, in October 2023, Beto Espínola was called up to the Paraguay national team and suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in Asunción during the 1-0 victory over Bolivia in the 22nd minute of the second half.

When a player is injured in a national team match, FIFA has the Player Protection Program. If the inactivity with his club exceeds 28 days, FIFA commits to paying the club of that player an amount of 20,548 euros for each day that the footballer is out.

FIFA's insurance policy requires the club to present the player's last 3 pay slips for subsequent reimbursement. The problem was that, at the time of the injury, Colón had not paid any salary to Espínola, so they could not access that FIFA benefit. The player left Colón on January 23, 2024, claiming that the club never fulfilled its obligations, and at that time, they owed him 5 salaries: August, September, October, November, and December.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.