Far from being the overlooked judgment of the CJEU’s sporting trilogy of 21 December 2023, Royal Antwerp FC may prove to be the most structurally significant. In this contribution, Melchior Wathelet, Ministre d’Etat and Professor of European Law, Fabrice Picod, Professor of European Law at University Paris II Panthéon-Assas, and Oliver Budzinski, Full Professor of Economic Theory at Ilmenau University of Technology, show why its consequences may extend well beyond the legality of home-grown player rules, reaching the very foundations of football governance under EU Law.