RESULTS OF 2024
Dear colleagues, clients, and partners!
We are delighted to summarise the results of our work for 2024, which became a year of significant achievements and rapid development for our company.
First of all, we would like to note that our geographical reach has once again expanded – this year a new SILA office was opened in Uzbekistan under the leadership of Sergey Lysenko.
The year will also be remembered for the transfers of Anton Miranchuk to FC Sion, Alexey Miranchuk and Stian Gregersen to Atlanta United FC, Matvey Safonov to Paris Saint-Germain FC, Fyodor Chalov to PAOK FC, and other high-profile football transfers that were facilitated by SILA lawyers.
We have provided legal support for important appointments of football coaches – Andrey Tikhonov at FC Yenisei, Tomislav Stipic at PFC CSKA Sofia, as well as contract extensions for Rashid Rakhimov with FC Rubin and Valery Karpin with the Russian Football Union.
Throughout the year, we completed over a hundred projects, a significant part of which involved representing clients in international disputes before FIFA bodies and CAS. We particularly highlight our success in the case CAS 2023/A/9443 Anatoliy Tymoshchuk v. Ukrainian Association of Football, which drew significant attention from the legal community to the exploration of freedom of speech and the boundaries of sporting regulations. In its award, the panel emphasized the importance of establishing a balance between institutional authority and individual rights. This allows us to describe this project as key for the company and precedent-setting for legal practice.
SILA International Lawyers was once again shortlisted by the Pravo.ru-300 and Kommersant ratings and the individual achievements of our lawyers were recognized by the RG.RU. Partners of the Moscow office, Mikhail Prokopets and Yury Zaytsev, moved up four positions in the ranking of the “30 most influential people in Russian football” published by Sport-Express.
In 2024, SILA continued to focus on educational projects. At the World Football Summit Asia, we presented a new master’s program for sports lawyers at SILA Academy, to be launched in 2025.
The Moscow and Bulgarian offices conducted two cycles of the Football Agent School, which enabled our students to successfully pass the FIFA Football Agent Exam and become licensed football agents.
Partner of the Bulgarian office Georgi Gradev and partner of the Spanish office Ivan Bykovskiy were guest speakers at one of leading universities in Spain – ISDE. Together with Yury Zaytsev and Mikhail Prokopets, they also participated in the ISDE Sports Convention 2024.
As lecturers, our lawyers shared their knowledge with students from the Higher School of Economics, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the Moscow International Academy, and the RMA Business School, and acted as arbitrators in the National Center for Sports Arbitration and the Court of Arbitration for Sport Moot Courts.
SILA co-sponsored the International Sports Arbitration Section of the Congress on Private International Law organised by the Kutafin Moscow State Law University.
In collaboration with the Sports” media portal, we continued to talk about sport through the eyes of lawyers in the SILA Prava podcast, and introduced a spin-off of the podcast – the Protest Motorsport project, in which Ilya Chicherov and Daria Lukienko discuss the intricacies of legal work in motorsport.
Finally, we congratulate our clients on achieving outstanding sports results: WFC CSKA for winning the Winline Supercup of Russia among women’s teams, FC Akron for being promoted to the Russian Premier League, racing team YADRO Motorsport for securing 2nd place overall in the Hankook 24H DUBAI 2024, 3rd place overall in the Lenovo Gulf 12 Hours, and a successful start to the season in the Asian Le Mans Series. We also congratulate the team’s driver Sergey Stolyarov on his personal achievement of winning the RAF GT4 (AM) Cup of the SMP Russian Series of Circuit Races.
SILA International Lawyers expresses its sincere gratitude to our clients and partners for their trust and cooperation, as well as to each member of our team for their professionalism and productive work.