The Blues Have The Blues

Chelsea have been banned from signing any players for the next two transfer windows, after being found guilty of inducing a player to quit his contract, in this case Gael kakuta from Lens back in 2007.

Along with steep fines for the both the club and the player Fifa also banned Kakuta, 18, a skilful left-winger who had been named in Chelsea's Champions League squad, from taking part in official matches for four months

At first glance this does seem a harsh punishment, but when you look closer at the Chelsea policy of signing young players you see that something has to be done, This policy will save  many if not hundreds of millions of pounds in transfer fee’s for Chelsea in the years to come, by snapping up talent for peanuts at an early age  Chelsea look to produce a conveyor belt of talent in the future, and even if the player does not mature to a standard good enough for the Blues they would still have a future in football and would have a sell on value. just fining a club with Chelsea’s wealth would have zero effect but this will bite deep.

Gervais Martel, the Lens president, said “The player was under contract with us, and they came and stole him away, Chelsea think they are immune from  following the rules they contacted the player when he wasn't even 16 and while he was  contracted to our training group, he had been with us from the age of eight.

Kakuta is a fantastically gifted left winger, who was already at the tender age of 17 in the full Champions League squad for Chelsea this season, having just watched some clips of the lad in action http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2621362/Youre-a-bunch-of-thieves.html I can see why the Blues were so keen to secure his services, this is definitely a superstar for the future.

This type of punishment however  is not unprecedented recently Fifa punished Switzerland's FC Sion for a similar offence the club was told it could not sign players until the 2010 off-season. This was punishment for signing Egypt goalkeeper Essam El Hadary in 2008 before his deal with Al-Ahly had expired.

My own team Manchester Utd could have similar problems in the very near future over their actions in recruiting French under 16 Captain Pogba from Le Havre in France last month. Utd stand accused of giving large sums of money to the youngster’s parents to get them to persuade their son to sign for the League Champions.

United  deny the accusations but could face the same charges as Chelsea did over Kakuta. The Champions claimed they were within their rights to sign the player, as he had not signed any legally binding Le Havre contract. A United spokesman “ We have nothing to fear everything has been done within the UEFA guidelines.

The case is still to be heard.

DurdensView Tags: Kakuta, Chelsea, Fifa, Ban, Utd, Pogba