The intervention of Peru's players' union SAFAP allowed footballer Keyly Peralta to recover the full salary owed by her club, in a case that directly illustrates the principles the ILO Guidelines for Professional Athletes were designed.
Footballer Keyly Lizbeth Peralta Gonzales, who played for Club Defensores del Ilucán in the Women’s League of the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF), recovered the full salary owed to her by the club, thanks to direct representation by the Professional Footballers' Association of Peru (SAFAP).
The club had labelled the arrangement a "Sporting Agreement" rather than a standard contract of employment. After months of unpaid wages, SAFAP pursued an expedited claim before the FPF's Conciliation and Dispute Resolution Chamber (CCRD). The tribunal ordered full payment plus interest and costs, threatening sporting sanctions for further non-compliance — and the club paid within the deadline.
Notably, this is the first time the CCRD has resolved a claim of this kind in women's football — applying the same dispute resolution mechanism used for male players. It's a concrete sign of the "effective, accessible and equitable" standard the ILO Guidelines set for all athletes, regardless of gender.
This outcome is the practical application of a principle set out clearly in the ILO Guidelines for the Promotion of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work for Professional Athletes: labour protection applies regardless of the specific form of an athlete's contractual arrangement. The Guidelines make clear that the nature of a working relationship does not depend on what the parties choose to call it, but on the reality of what actually takes place between club and player. The Keyly Peralta case shows, with a name and a concrete result, what it means to enforce that principle in practice.
The Guidelines also highlight the central role player associations play in organising, representing and collectively defending athletes. SAFAP's action — from legal representation to the procedural strategy that enabled a fast, enforceable resolution — is precisely the kind of role the international framework recognises and seeks to strengthen across the sport sector.
For World Players, this case confirms that the ILO Guidelines offer a robust framework, but it is organised union action — like SAFAP's in this case — that turns that framework into wages actually paid and precedents other players across the region can invoke.
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