Training Compensation and Solidarity Payments Explained: How FIFA Rewards Training Clubs, and How RubiScore Career Data Helps Trace a Player's Path

Training compensation and solidarity payments are FIFA's two training rewards: money owed to the clubs that developed a player between the ages of 12 and 23 when he turns professional or is transferred. Player pages on RubiScore list a footballer's clubs season by season, which is a practical first step in tracing who those training clubs were.

This explainer covers what each payment is, where the rules came from, how amounts are calculated and how FIFA records a player's pathway. It then shows how to use the club-by-season career history on RubiScore player pages, available at https://rubiscore.com, as a starting point for reconstructing that pathway, and where public data stops. It describes the rules in general terms and is not legal advice.

What Are Training Rewards?

FIFA's Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) group two mechanisms under the label "training rewards". Both pay clubs for the years they spent developing young players, but they are triggered by different events and calculated in different ways.

• Training compensation (Article 20 and Annexe 4) reflects the cost of training. It is due when a player is registered as a professional for the first time, and each time a professional is transferred between associations until the end of the calendar year of his 23rd birthday.
• Solidarity contribution (Article 21 and Annexe 5) is a 5% share of any transfer fee paid while a player is under contract. It can arise at any point in a career, but only the clubs that trained him up to the calendar year of his 23rd birthday share in it.

The distinction matters when reading a career on RubiScore. A move at the end of a contract, with no fee, can still generate training compensation, while a fee paid for a 30-year-old can still send money back to the clubs he played for as a teenager.

FIFA's rules govern cases with an international element. Transfers within one country fall under the national association's own regulations, which the RSTP says should also reward clubs that invest in training young players.

Where Did the System Come From?

The current model grew out of the reforms that followed the 1995 Bosman ruling. Once fees for out-of-contract players moving within the European Union had gone, training clubs needed another way to recover part of their investment.

On 5 March 2001, the European Commission concluded discussions with FIFA and UEFA on international transfers. FIFA's Executive Committee adopted new regulations on 5 July 2001, and they came into effect on 1 September 2001. The agreed principles included training compensation for players under 23, to encourage and reward the training effort of clubs, in particular small clubs, and a solidarity mechanism to redistribute income to clubs involved in a player's training, including amateur clubs.

How Does Training Compensation Work?

Training compensation is built on a notional cost of producing a professional player. Each national association divides its clubs into up to four categories according to their investment in training, and FIFA publishes a yearly training cost for each category in each confederation. In FIFA's recent published tables, UEFA figures run from EUR 90,000 a year for category I to EUR 10,000 for category IV, and CONMEBOL figures from USD 50,000 to USD 2,000.

The calculation follows four steps:

1. Count the years of training, in principle from the calendar year of the player's 12th birthday to that of his 21st, unless it is evident that his training ended earlier.
2. Apply the training cost of the new club's category, because the aim is to reflect what the new club would have spent had it trained the player itself.
3. Value the four calendar years of the 12th to 15th birthdays at category IV rates, so that compensation for very young players is not set unreasonably high.
4. On a first professional registration, split the total pro rata between every club that trained the player; on a later transfer, pay only the former club for the time it trained him.

FIFA's Dispute Resolution Chamber can adjust the amount if it is clearly disproportionate.

When Is Training Compensation Not Due?

• Termination without just cause. The former club ended the player's contract without just cause, although earlier clubs keep their rights.
• A move to a category IV club. No training compensation is payable.
• A return to amateur status. A professional reacquires amateur status on being transferred.
• No contract offer inside the EU/EEA. The former club must offer a new contract in writing at least 60 days before the current one expires, of at least equivalent value. Without it, compensation is payable only if the club can justify its entitlement. Earlier training clubs are unaffected.
• Women's football. The RSTP states that the principles of training compensation do not apply.

Inside the EU/EEA, amounts are also moderated: a move up a category uses the average of the two clubs' training costs, and a move down uses the lower club's costs.

How Does the Solidarity Mechanism Work?

When a professional moves during a contract and transfer compensation is paid, 5% of that amount, excluding any training compensation, is deducted and distributed by the new club to the clubs involved in his training. Each club's share depends on the calendar years in which it held his registration:

• Calendar years of the 12th to 15th birthdays: 0.25% of the fee per year (5% of the 5%), or 1% in total.
• Calendar years of the 16th to 23rd birthdays: 0.5% of the fee per year (10% of the 5%), or 4% in total.

Partial years count pro rata, and earlier RSTP editions counted seasons rather than calendar years, which matters when reading older decisions.

On a hypothetical fee of EUR 10 million, the solidarity share is EUR 500,000. A club that held the player's registration through all four calendar years of his 12th to 15th birthdays would receive EUR 100,000, and each later year up to his 23rd birthday would be worth EUR 50,000 to whichever club held him.

Since 1 July 2020, the mechanism has also reached some domestic moves. Under the current text, it applies to permanent and loan transfers between clubs of different associations, and to transfers within one association when the training club belongs to a different association. A chain in which every club sits in the same country is left to national rules.

The Data Signature: Player Passports and the Clearing House

Every training reward depends on one record: where the player was registered, and when. The RSTP requires the registering association to provide a player passport showing the clubs a player has been registered with since his 12th birthday.

The FIFA Clearing House went live on 16 November 2022, and for the cases within its scope that record is now electronic. When a trigger is identified, FIFA generates an electronic player passport (EPP) in its Transfer Matching System. The EPP consolidates the player's registration history: each association, his status as amateur or professional, whether each registration was permanent or a loan, and the clubs involved, including their training category. A provisional EPP is open for inspection for ten days, followed by a review period in which clubs and associations can ask for corrections, and the final version sets out who is owed what. Payments then pass through the Clearing House entity, a regulated payment institution based in Paris, so training clubs no longer have to file their own claims.

In January 2025, FIFA reported that more than 37,000 EPPs had been generated since launch, with over USD 350 million sent to the Clearing House entity.

What Are the Trade-Offs?

For small and amateur clubs, the mechanisms can deliver money years after a player has left. The design also has weaknesses:

• Modest sums overall. An earlier KEA and CDES study of European transfers estimated that training compensation and solidarity together accounted for only 1.84% of agreed transfer fees.
• Exemptions. Moves to category IV clubs carry no training compensation, and the EU/EEA contract-offer rule can remove it altogether.
• A cost on young signings. Training compensation falls on the signing club, so it forms part of the price of a young professional from abroad even when no transfer fee is agreed.
• Dependence on records. Entitlements are only as accurate as the registration data behind them.

A new RSTP edition, approved in June 2026 and due to take effect on 1 January 2027, adds a separate 5% payment to certain lower-paid players on permanent international transfers. It goes to the player and sits alongside the solidarity contribution rather than replacing it, so the edition in force, and the date of the player's contract, both matter.

How to Read a Player's Pathway From Career Data

A RubiScore player page lists clubs season by season. That makes it a useful map of potential training clubs, provided its limits are clear:

1. Note the player's date of birth and mark the calendar years of his 12th, 15th, 21st and 23rd birthdays.
2. List every club in the career history that falls inside those windows, and flag any move between countries.
3. Mark loans separately, because a loan is a registration of its own and loan fees can also attract solidarity.
4. Check lineups and match statistics for each spell to see whether the player actually featured.

Then apply the caveats:

• Registration is not appearances. Training rewards follow registration, so a spell with few or no recorded appearances can still count.
• Youth and amateur clubs are often missing. Public data often starts at senior level, so the clubs behind the early years may not appear.
• Seasons and calendar years differ. A club-by-season list cannot settle pro rata shares on its own.
• The official record is elsewhere. The player passport held by national associations, and the EPP built from it, decide entitlements.

Read this way, a career history on RubiScore turns abstract percentages into a concrete list of clubs, while the binding answer stays with the registration records that FIFA and national associations keep.