Chelsea have been fined £10 million ($13.4m) and given a suspended transfer ban following an investigation into 74 alleged breaches of the English Football Association’s regulations.
The club were also initially hit with a suspended six-point deduction by an independent regulatory commission, which handed out the punishments, before this was overturned on appeal. Chelsea were instead given a two-window transfer ban, which is suspended until June 30, 2027. The FA can apply to activate that ban if any Chelsea are deemed to have potentially committed any similar breaches.
The breaches relate to a period of time between 2009 and 2022 and “primarily events that occurred between the 2010-11 to 2015-16 playing seasons” — when Roman Abramovich was still owner of Chelsea — the FA said.
The latest decision brings the amount of money Chelsea have been fined to more than £18m, after UEFA imposed a €10 million (£8.6m, $11m at the time) sanction in July 2023 concerning the same offences.
Chelsea said last year their current owners — the investor consortium BlueCo, led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital — self-reported the issue when a “due diligence” process revealed “potentially incomplete financial reporting concerning historical transactions and other potential breaches of FA rules”. The club called their cooperation “unprecedented transparency”.
The _New York Times_ argues: 'That is what is known, in old-fashioned parlance, as a “result”. No court in the land would ever be so lenient as to lop off almost two-thirds of a punishment this way. Inside the football bubble, however, the rules are different. The FA, as such, has let Chelsea off by almost £15m.'
So, all in all, Chelsea can reflect that it hasn’t turned out too badly. Their owners have endured a lot of scrutiny for not being able to sustain the success of the Abramovich era. In this case, however, they are entitled to claim the moral high ground. More relevantly, the fine is not going to hurt them to any real degree.