Why has Sporting Lokeren been fighting FIFA for years?

A Brussels

Place

Brussels

Location of the interim-relief court that suspended Lokeren’s registration ban.

Why it matters

Location of the interim-relief court that suspended Lokeren’s registration ban.

About

The City of Brussels is the largest municipality and historical centre of the Brussels-Capital Region, as well as the capital of the French Community of Belgium, the Flemish Region, and Belgium. The City of Brussels is also the administrative centre of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions in its European Quarter.

Official site ↗View source record ↗

The practical effect in Lokeren is significant. CEO Thomas Bernaert told Het Nieuwsblad that the club could finally operate with the same recruitment possibilities as its competitors. Five players who had already trained with the squad — Jassim Mazouz, Luan Simnica, Modeste Jr Duku, Robin Denuit and Aboubacar Dindane — were awaiting registration. For supporters at Daknam, an argument about jurisdiction and institutional authority therefore translates directly into who can appear on the team sheet.

The dispute began after the original KSC Lokeren Oost-Vlaanderen, registration number 282, went bankrupt in April 2020. The present club emerged through KSV Temse and retained Temse’s registration number, but adopted the Lokeren name, colours and stadium. FIFA

Organisation

FIFA

World football governing body that treats Sporting Lokeren as KSC Lokeren’s sporting successor and links it to the disputed player debt.

Why it matters

World football governing body that treats Sporting Lokeren as KSC Lokeren’s sporting successor and links it to the disputed player debt.

About

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is an international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, its membership now comprises 211 national associations.

Official site ↗View source record ↗

Lokeren’s position is that legal continuity cannot simply be inferred from shared sporting identity. The current organisation says it is a different legal entity, built on another registration number, and should not inherit the former club’s liabilities. Club chairman Hans Van Duysen told VRT NWS that repeated bans had damaged recruitment because prospective players were deterred by uncertainty. Lokeren ultimately settled the former player’s claim, but that did not end the disciplinary conflict.

FIFA approaches the case from the opposite direction. Its rules permit sanctions against a sporting successor so that football debts cannot disappear when an insolvent club re-emerges under a closely related identity. FIFA also maintains that football disputes should pass through its own bodies and, on appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. CAS dismissed Lokeren’s appeal on 17 July 2026 and upheld a ban covering two consecutive registration periods, according to the published case digest. The arbitrator concluded that relying on an interim order from a national court did not excuse registrations made in breach of a FIFA decision.

That clash explains why the RBFA is central even though it did not originate the sanction. FIFA cannot be compelled directly by a Belgian interim-relief judge in the same way as a Belgian association, but the RBFA implements FIFA registration restrictions domestically. The latest order therefore runs through the Belgian federation. Neither FIFA nor the RBFA had issued a detailed public response to the new ruling in the reports available at publication time.

The broader European context makes this more than a procedural curiosity. In the RFC Seraing case, the EU Court of Justice ruled in August 2025 that courts in EU member states must be able to review CAS awards thoroughly where fundamental EU-law rules are engaged. The Luxembourg court stressed that sports arbitration is often imposed by governing bodies rather than freely negotiated. That judgment does not automatically decide Lokeren’s case: the CAS arbitrator found that Lokeren had not properly substantiated an EU public-policy argument. It nevertheless reinforces the principle that FIFA’s private regulatory system cannot exclude meaningful judicial scrutiny inside the European Union.

For Belgian football, the unresolved question is how sporting continuity should be balanced against corporate separation after bankruptcy. A strict successor rule protects players and other creditors; an overly broad one may burden a genuinely new club with debts it never incurred. Lokeren now has temporary sporting relief, not definitive legal closure. Van Duysen has said the club hopes to reach an agreement with FIFA but may turn to Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court if another ban follows. The next tests are whether the RBFA or FIFA appeals the Brussels order, whether all pending players are registered, and whether a later court finally reconciles Belgian judicial protection with FIFA’s demand for uniform global rules.