The Chelsea, Lens, Kakuta case must be a fix « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Gf60

The recent finding by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that Chel$ki were not guilty of inducing a breach of contract by Kakuta was a surprise.

More of a surprise was the noting that the original contract between Kakuta and Lens was invalid. This raises more questions than it answers.

A few hours before this finding was released, Tony and I had this correspondence…

Gf60 to Sir T. “Surprising thing about this January transfer list is Chel$ki not taking advantage of the suspension until the court hearing on their transfer shenanigans. I was expecting 50 mill spend or so. Times must be tough! And they’re all getting older.  There’s a complete review of all the transfers at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/football-transfers/5487742/Premier-League-Transfers-January-2010.html

Sir T to Gf60 “Yes I was surprised too.  It begins to look as if Abramovich has said to the organisation at Chel$ki , me buying out the debt as shares is the end.  You have had £700m, that’s it.  Now make it work.”

I think we both agree that Chel$ki won’t stay out of the transfer market for ever, and that means they must have known the transfer ban would be lifted is the only one that stands up to examination.

Now far be it for me to cast nasturtiums but can we believe that

* FIFA is so totally incompetent that they cannot recognise a valid/invalid contract? (Given some other FIFA decisions, OK it’s just possible)

* Lens and Chel$ki ‘discovered’ information not available to FIFA at the time of the ban?

* Lens and Chel$ki are now bosom buddies?

Let’s try this step by step.

Lens made the original complaint, and while it is true that some companies do start legal proceedings just for show or just to slow things down (Robert Maxwell was a great one at doing this, and in his day Henry Norris at Arsenal would claim black was white and go to court and bully the other side into submission) it is difficult if not impossible to see what benefit Lens would have from deliberately running a legal case like this, if they knew their contract was invalid.

There was nothing to be gained over time, there was no chance of simply frightening Chel$ki  into giving the player back – so what on earth was the point?

The conclusion has to be that Lens believed they had a case, and that they thought the contract valid.

Now we come to FIFA who investigated the original complaint by Lens.  The first thing they would have done is called for the paperwork.   If you have ever been to court over any business matter you will know that the first thing called for are the contracts etc and the first thing the judges would have looked at would have been the contract.

We must remember this is not the usual bunch of crooks and thieves that run FIFA, this would be their legal team and we will take it for the moment that they acted properly and were not already bought off by one of the parties.

They would have looked at the contract thoroughly and either side,

This is a valid contract so Chel$ki  are guilty

This is not a valid contract, Lens have no case.

Given the way the final decision came out this is not a matter of fine legal judgment and technical points of law.  It is a case of “is there a simple contract between player and club which does not fall down on an obvious point of law?”

To give a simple example – if the law in a country says, “a person cannot sign an employment contract before the age of 18 which ties that person to the employer beyond the age of 18” and the contract did say that, it is totally obvious, and that’s that.

So I think we can take it that Lens thought they had a legal contract, and FIFA agreed.

How on earth could both parties be so wrong and lose the appeal?  The possible answers can only be

1.  The legal team at FIFA are so utterly inept and pathetically stupid that they need to be shot.

2.  The contract was real and valid, and during the build up to the appeal Lens said to Chel$ki , we’ll slip in a fake contract which is full of holes and you give us 30 million Euros.

3.  The contract was real and valid, and during the build up to the appeal Chel$ki  said to the Court of Arbitration in Sport, if you find against us, we will, within one day, start legal proceedings against the court which will tie you up in knots for the next 20 years.

4.  The contract was not real and valid, and Lens bribed FIFA to accept it as a valid document in the vague hope that Chel$ki  would not appeal.

5.  The contract was real and valid and Chel$ki  went to Lens, offering them money to change the contract.

6.  Any combination of the above involving corruption at three of the four players (Chel$ki , Lens, Court of Arbitration in Sport, FIFA).

I have no idea what happened, and obviously can’t allege that any particular was responsible, but it doesn’t look right.

More on the case http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/Chel$ki -win-kakuta-case-to-overturn-transfer-ban-1889990.html

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