107As regards the outcome which the rules at issue in the main proceedings objectively seek to attain, vis-à-vis competition, it is apparent from the statements of the referring court relating to the content of those rules that they limit or control one of the essential parameters of the competition in which professional football clubs may engage, namely the recruitment of talented players, whatever the club or place where they were trained, which could enable their team to win in the encounter with the opposing team. From that point of view, the Belgian government rightly added that that limitation is likely to have an impact on the competition in which the clubs may engage, not only in the ‘upstream or supply market’, which, from an economic point of view, is constituted by the recruitment of players, but also in the ‘downstream market’, which, from the same point of view, is constituted by interclub football competitions.
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