Fifa treated us differently to City, say Chelsea as transfer ban ends
The Blues see red as manager looks to bolster ranks with new recruits. By Martyn Ziegler and Ian Winrow.
Chelsea launched a stinging attack on Fifa yesterday after the the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) halved the two-window transfer ban imposed for breaches of transfer rules involving young players, accusing the governing body of treating the club differently to Manchester City.
The decision leaves Frank Lampard, the head coach, free to add to his squad next month and the manager indicated he would look to bring in new recruits. Yet while the club acknowledged it was grateful its appeal against the initial punishment had been upheld by CAS, in a statement released yesterday, Chelsea questioned the consistency of Fifa’s approach.
‘‘The approach taken by Fifa to this case has been deeply unsatisfactory, not least as Fifa chose to treat Chelsea entirely differently to Manchester City for reasons that make absolutely no sense to Chelsea,’’ said the statement, which pointed out that Chelsea have not yet received written reasons for the CAS decision.
The statement contests specific details of the charges before concluding with strong criticism of Fifa: ‘‘Chelsea respects the importance of the work undertaken by Fifa in relation to the protection of minors and has fully co-operated with Fifa throughout its investigation.
‘‘However, if Fifa continues to impose inconsistent and unequal sanctions on clubs then it will not only undermine the very purpose of the regulations, but it will also bring into doubt the game’s confidence in Fifa being able to appropriately regulate this important area.’’
Fifa banned Chelsea for two windows in March for having breached rules in 150 cases involving 71 young players. The court has now ruled that Chelsea committed about a third of the violations sanctioned by Fifa, and that the violations of other registration rules were ‘‘found to be less serious than those attributed to Chelsea FC by Fifa’’.
CAS said in a statement: ‘‘Accordingly, the sole arbitrator reduced the sanction to one single transfer ban [which Chelsea FC already served during the 2019 summer registration period], and halved the monetary sanction.’’ It means that Chelsea will pay a fine of 300,000 Swiss francs (about $462,000) instead of SF600,000.
As well as challenging Fifa’s decision on many of the rule breaches, Chelsea are also believed to have argued that they should have been given the same opportunity as Manchester City, who took advantage of Fifa’s new disciplinary code to accept a £315,000 fine in August for breaching rules on the transfer of young players.
That code only came in to force in July, and allows clubs and individuals to suggest a sanction if they admit the charges – that approach was not open to Chelsea when they were sanctioned in March.
Under the original Fifa ruling,
Chelsea were sanctioned for failing to register dozens of young players, many from overseas, and some of whom played as many as 75 matches for the club’s youth teams while unregistered. There were also two breaches of regulations on third-party influence, which aim to stop clubs being able to influence the activities of other clubs.
The embargo meant Lampard was unable to bring in new players when he was appointed in July. The manager responded by promoting a number of the club’s youth players and the outstanding form of Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Reece James has helped the club establish itself in the top four during the opening months of the season.
Lampard was at pains to point out that the lifting of the ban would not mean a shift away from promoting youth.
‘‘When you come into the club or when you want to go a certain way, sometimes the players you bring in and the attributes they have are key to that,’’ he said. ‘‘I couldn’t make those changes to bring in the players that I felt would help the way I wanted us to play. That is something that I will put to the club.’’
Lampard will work with the director Marina Granovskaia, and owner Roman Abramovich to help pinpoint players and do the deals. He added: ‘‘I have ideas of players in my mind. But at the same time with this it’s so fluid because my first problem is the players now, how they train daily and how they perform at the weekend. And then review the squad as a whole. So of course every manager in the Premier League will lie if they say they aren’t thinking about anything else. But your thing has to be that.
‘‘And the other thing is if you think there are improvements that can be made then who is it and what do they look like.’’
– The Times