Chelsea could face a two-year transfer ban as FIFA responds to the “Football Leaks” malfeasance. The question is not what, when or if, but “why now?”
A nearly ironclad rule of football governance is that, if FIFA is playing disciplinarian, they are either orchestrating a shakedown or hurriedly covering up their own questionable actions. Neither Chelsea FC nor Roman Abramovich have much for FIFA to covet, so the latter explanation is a near certainty.
Whereas America does the right thing only after exhausting every other option, FIFA – like most national and international sports governing bodies – does the right thing only after their own very wrong things have been exposed. The stream of “Football Leaks” over the past weeks have revealed a few new things about FIFA, but for the most part simply confirmed the public secrets about their corruption. Anyone who thought FIFA had been scrupulously auditing Paris Saint-Germain’s compliance with Financial Fair Play without any interference from the Qatar government is the sort of person who bought Tottenham season tickets because the new White Hart Lane would be the only place in London for Champions League football.
Chelsea’s infraction involves their signing Bertrand Traore before he was 18 years old. Under FIFA’s rules, a European club can only sign a U18 player from outside the European Economic Area or European Union if his parents moved to the club’s country for non-football purposes. Traore’s parents did not, but Chelsea did. Hence the prospect of the two-year ban.
A key piece of evidence against Chelsea is a photo of Traore in a Blue kit playing in a U18 game against Arsenal before his 18th birthday. He was 16 at the time, in fact.
This photo was not shot surreptitiously from a grassy knoll overlooking Cobham. No drones made surveillance runs over the pitches at Aldershot. Teams of digital sleuths have not Zaprudered the photo to come to a firm conclusion that it was Traore.
You can see it for yourself in The Telegraph. It’s appropriately credited to the Press Association and everything.
The game in question was no secret. Traore’s date of birth, date of signing and entire appearance history for Chelsea are easily accessible at TransferMarket and probably a few other sites. A few hundred supporters (we’re talking about people who go to games here, so supporters, not fans) may even testify under oath to having seen Traore play for the Blues before September 6, 2013.
Which all brings us back to the original question: Why now? Football Leaks is why now. To whatever extent FIFA had been investigating it before, their case would have died some form of quiet death. Perhaps a slap on the wrist for the club, a suspended sentence or double-secret probation.
But now that everyone knows what Chelsea did, that FIFA knows what Chelsea did and that FIFA have an obvious responsibility to enforce their own laws, FIFA has to do the right thing. Maybe a little bit more than the right thing. Nothing against Bertrand Traore, but he’s hardly worth a two-year transfer ban.
And that’s the crux of all these FIFA-related matters. No one is denying that these things happened. No one is even bothering to say “Well the other guys did it and they didn’t get in trouble.” FIFA’s enforcement of any of these rules varies from deadbeat to corrupt. They seemed OK with not enforcing their own rules and with clubs brazenly breaking these rules. They were even OK with the world knowing that the clubs were breaking these rules.
What they can’t abide is being seen as deadbeat corruptocrats. When called to account, they put on their disciplinarian pantsuit and start handing out sanctions like Antoine Griezmann hands out L’s. Once everyone moves on to the next set of leaks (my money’s on doping), they’ll quietly put these sanctions into abeyance or allow the appeal process to drag out to mitigate their effect.
Compared to most other global football rulebreaking, Chelsea are petty juveniles. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t do it. Of course they did. It would probably be too much to ask and would certainly make them even less popular for FIFA to enforce their rules at all times, in real time upon all clubs under their jurisdiction.
Failing that, FIFA should at least own their negligence and say “No, really, we don’t care” instead of pantomiming their way through the fundamentals of their job.