After the increasing recourse from members of the football community to the State courts and national arbitral tribunals or dispute resolution chambers, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), in its recent jurisprudence, was faced with the issue of res judicata in numerous cases.
When appearing as an arbitral tribunal in a dispute, where a final decision of a national arbitral tribunal or a State court exists, the CAS is
obliged to examine, ex officio, the existence of res judicata - a general principle, which precludes adjudicating disputes that have already
been decided.

Starting from 1 April 2015, agents were left out of the dispute resolution system of international football governor FIFA, and from most national football federations, including the Football Union of Russia (FUR). Right after cancellation of Players Agents Regulations, i.e. 1 April 2015, the FUR refused for its jurisdictional bodies to be competent for any claim submitted by players’ agents. However, some of such claims were pending at the FUR, some of which were submitted in order to oblige the clubs and players to fulfill the decisions on merit. All of sudden, FUR’s internal bodies rejected most of the claims based on the fact that players’ agents were no longer subjects of football at the time of hearing for cases that took place after 1 April 2015. The question was therefore to know who was responsible for the execution of FUR decisions on agents’ cases.