Chelsea FC have been issued a ban on all transfers between now and January 2011 after it was discovered that the club was "found guilty of inducing French teenager Gael Kakuta to breach his contract with Lens." Lens, so you know, is a French club team. Chelsea will not be permitted to make any transfers until after the January transfer window has closed. However, due to the lengthy process of the paperwork surrounding the ban, Chelsea will probably be able to purchase and sell players for the bulk of the January transfer window, so the ban is basically worthless to Chelsea.
Nevertheless, they are lodging an appeal to the ban, which is why they will most likely have no problem during the January transfer window. The club was also fined roughly $186,000 for wrongly recruiting the player.
Here's the thing that shocked me a little bit. Kakuta was "wrongly induced" back in 2007! It took FIFA a year and a half to issue this transfer ban from something that happened in 2007? Did they just find out about this now, or did the paperwork and investigation really take this long? Whatever the reason, I doubt Chelsea will have a problem recruiting players this winter. FIFA most definitely needs to tighten up their bans and policies so that loopholes like this can be avoided. Especially since it's Chelsea.
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