Avoiding the Drop

Back in June, we told you about the transfer of Egyptian keeper Essam El Hadary from Al Ahly to FC Sion. The transfer, you may recall, involved El Hadary leaving Al Ahly and signing a contract with FC Sion without first terminating his contract with Al Ahly. That’s not quite kosher, and FIFA came down hard on FC Sion; after a year or so later, they were banned from participating in two full transfer windows.

Fast forward three months, and another club is in hot water over how they handled a player transfer. The only difference this time is that it isn’t some mid-table Swiss side in trouble; it’s Chelsea.

Yes, that Chelsea. According to The Guardian, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has prohibited Chelsea from dealing in the transfer window until January of 2011. That’s two full windows where Roman Abramovich can’t write a check to cover the fact that the Chelsea youth academy’s output this decase has pretty much been limited to John Terry.

The punishment stems from their signing of Gaël Kakuta way back in 2007. Kukuta is a French teenager who formerly played for France’s RC Lens; back in 2007, Chelsea “tapped up” the teenager, inducing him to breaking his contract so that he could sign with them.

That is, of course, illegal; RC Lens submitted the transfer to the CAS for judgement, and the Dispute Resolution Center’s ruling came down today. The DRC found that the Kukuta “had indeed breached a contract signed with the French club. Equally, the DRC deemed it to be established that the English club induced the player to such a breach.”

After a resolution was reached, a punishment was meted out. There are three parts to the punishment, as follows:

1. Kukuta was fined €780,000; he also will not be allowed to play in any official matches for four months. That includes the Champions League; Kukuta had just been named to that roster last week, meaning that Chelsea’s got one less player for the group stages.
2. Chelsea has to repay €130,000 in training fees to RC Lens.
3. Chelsea is banned from registering any new players “for the two next entire and consecutive registration periods following the notification of the present decision”. They’re effectively off the market until 2011.

Chelsea is expected to appeal the decision; based on the earlier FC Sion appeal, the ban will likely be frozen while the appeal process is sorted out. Still, that’s kind of delaying the inevitable; even if Chelsea gets that same stay of execution, it’ll only apply until the CAS revisits the issue. In FC Sion’s case, that’s expected later this year; if the same timetable applies, Chelsea would still probably not be able to trade next summer, and stocking up in the winter window is nowhere near as effective.

The immediate effect of this ruling is that every player currently at Chelsea is much more valuable to the club. A player who might’ve been expendable – like Deco or Bosingwa – is now valuable cover; no signings in means very limited signings out. Since Chelsea only bought Yuri Zhirkov this summer, they may be without much cover as their aging squad gets older.

If I’m Carlo Ancelotti, this news pisses me off. A new manager likes to bring in his own players, and Ancelotti didn’t really get a chance to do that. Even if he wasn’t planning wholesale changes, there’s a good chance he’d have his eye on someone for the next window; pretty much every option is now off the table.