Dismissal of a Coach in Dutch Professional Football: Insights of the case Oliseh/Fortuna Sittard

It is common practice that coaches of Dutch professional football clubs have a fixed-term employment contract that cannot be prematurely terminated by one party. In practice the consequence is that clubs that want to dismiss a coach before his contract expires - due to bad results - are often obliged to pay a relatively high compensation to the coach. In principle, this compensation should be equal to the amount of salary that would have been due until the expiry date of the original contract term.

The court or arbitration panel may, however, reduce such compensation, depending on the circumstances of the case. With regard there to, the recent decision of the Arbitration Tribunal of the Royal Dutch Football Association (the KNVB Arbitration Tribunal) of 5 April 2018 in the case of the First Division club Fortuna Sittard and (former) head coach Sunday Oliseh is highly relevant. This article reports on this case.