In February 2019, FIFA ruled that Chelsea had breached rules relating to the registration
of players under 18. Consequently, their only summer acquisition involving a fee was Mateo
Kovačić, who completd his transfer from Madrid a year after agreeing an initial loan
deal.
The ban has genuine ramifications for a team who, according to Transfermarkt, have an annual
player expenditure in the region of £100m and who have always relied upon the short
pulses of improvement that player trading can provide.
But they’ll now have to do without until the summer of 2020. Chelsea have been judged
to have breached FIFA’s Article 19, which prohibits the transfer of players under the
age of 18, but with three key exceptions.
A minor is allowed to move clubs if:
a) A player’s parents move to a new country for reasons unconnected to football.
b) The player lives no further than 50km from a national border and wishes to be registered
in the neighbouring association.
Or, c) A transfer takes place between two clubs within the EEA, the player is aged between
16 and 18, and the club fulfils the minimum requirements of football training, academic
education and acceptable living accommodation and welfare.
Chelsea were found to have committed 29 breaches of article 19 and stand accused of serious
and systemic failings in their dealings with minors. The authorities are reported to have
been prompted to act after the signing of Bertrand Traoré, the Burkina Faso forward,
who signed professional terms on January 1st 2014.
Although he had turned 18, photos later emerged of Traoré, now at Lyon, playing for Chelsea
in in a non-competitive game against Arsenal in October, 2011, aged 16. It is claimed that
the club paid Traoré’s mother more than £150,000 to secure a first refusal option
on the player, in addition to an extra £13,000 to the club AJE Bobo-Dioulasso,.
The investigation into Chelsea drew comparisons to a similar ruling in Spain, which saw Barcelona
receive a two-window ban in 2014. The Catalan side were sanctioned after FIFA had been alerted
to, among nine other cases, the signing of 13-year-old Lee Seung-woo. At the time, Lee
was considered one of the finest prospects for his age, a future Lionel Messi, but he
would eventually be sold to Italian side Verona for less than €2m and, today, has a very
different sort of legacy.
In such cases, FIFA’s digital Transfer Matching System (TMS) is fundamental to identifying
troubling cases.
TMS is an online platform for FIFA member associations to record player transfers between
clubs. Its use was made mandatory in 2010 and it now monitors minors from the age of
10 and upwards. It requires buying and selling clubs to enter details of the player and the
transfer before gaining approval and, in cross-border cases, before an international transfer certificate
is dispensed. It’s a key tool in indentifying disparities and red flags.
In Chelsea’s case, the Traore case spawned an investigation into 92 other transfers,
within which 29 infractions were found.
The transfer of Andreas Christensen from Brondby in 2012, for instance, also raised concern
and was reportedly facilitated by a payment of £600,000 to his father.
According to Football Leaks, Sten Christensen was employed as a talent scout for four years,
while remaining goalkeeping coach at Brondby and carrying out no such work on behalf of
Chelsea. When questioned by Danish newspaper Politiken, he suggested reporters contact
Chelsea, commenting: “It sounds like a story you have got from someone in Ukraine or something
like that. I have no comment whatsoever.”
It is understood that the London team avoided any form of censure over the signing of Christensen
after the Premier League announced an amnesty in November, 2015, in order to inform their
new policies on the transfers of academy players.
But similar cases continue to blight the game. Manchester City are alleged to have given
a scouting contract to Jadon Sancho’s agent, Emeka Obasi, worth £200,000 when the player,
now at Borussia Dortmund, was 14 and playing for Watford.
Liverpool were banned from signing academy players from other English clubs for two years
in 2017, after reportedly tapping-up an unnamed 12-year-old from Stoke City.
And Everton’s academy remains under a transfer embargo until November 2020, after they were
found guilty of both offering inducements to family members of a Cardiff City player
and of providing false information to the Premier League. Having admitted the charge,
the club suspended their Head of Academy and launched their own internal investigation.
Chelsea are the most high profile case and FIFA’s ruling has certainly made an example
out of them, but they are unique only in the sense that the charges against them were proven
and then upheld on appeal. The practices of which they were found guilty, however, have
been worryingly common for some time.