{"id":479154,"date":"2026-03-16T20:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T20:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479154\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T20:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T20:32:08","slug":"how-chelsea-signed-a-star-team-on-hidden-payments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479154\/","title":{"rendered":"How Chelsea signed a star team on hidden payments"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Chelsea<\/a> enjoying so much success after signing star players through secret payments, did they get off lightly?<\/p>\n

If the club had not been so co-operative they faced a much tougher financial penalty and potentially a points deduction.<\/p>\n

The starting point was the aggravating factors – length of time of the wrongdoing, the size of payments, that they were made with the knowledge of senior figures and the seriousness of the breaches.<\/p>\n

The Premier League Board concluded Chelsea<\/a> should be fined \u00a320m with a transfer ban for two complete and consecutive windows.<\/p>\n

But there were mitigating factors to take into account.<\/p>\n

BlueCo, which bought Chelsea<\/a> out of Abramovich’s ownership, self-reported the breaches once it had looked through the club’s books. <\/p>\n

Added to that, BlueCo made voluntary disclosures and showed “exceptional co-operation”. <\/p>\n

This saw the fine halved to \u00a310m and the two-window transfer ban suspended. <\/p>\n

The suspension will be activated if they commit a similar breach in the next two years. <\/p>\n

The Board also reserved the right to be able to trigger the suspension at any time in the future if the club makes intentionally untrue declarations. <\/p>\n

Chelsea<\/a> were, however, ordered to pay an unpaid transfer levy of \u00a3771,288 in connection to Willian and Eto’o. <\/p>\n

Importantly, there was no breach of profit and sustainability rules.<\/p>\n

When the payments were added to Chelsea<\/a>‘s accounts they were not in excess of the \u00a3105m, three-season spending limit.<\/p>\n

If they had been then the prospect of a points deduction would have been real.<\/p>\n

They were, however, banned from signing academy players for nine months. This was related to separate charges involving impermissible contact to register academy players between 2019 and 2022. <\/p>\n

The Blues had already been fined 10m euros (\u00a38.6m) by Uefa<\/a> over the payment offences between 2011 and 2018. <\/p>\n

And Chelsea<\/a> still have to face a hearing over 74 Football Association charges<\/a>, which is likely to be another hefty fine.<\/p>\n

So this is not quite over yet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Chelsea enjoying so much success after signing star players through secret payments, did they get off lightly?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-479154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}