Former Chelsea chairman blasts transfer trading

Former Chelsea chairman Ken Bates has welcomed FIFA’s transfer ban for the Blues over their controversial capture of teenager Gael Kakuta, saying top clubs have been riding for a fall in trading youngsters “like horsemeat.”

Carlo Ancelotti’s side were rocked this week by a FIFA ban on signing any players during the next two transfer windows after snatching Kakuta and the English Premiership side have appealed the decision.

But Bates, now chairman of third tier fallen giants Leeds, says such practices are widespread and a crackdown is needed.

Leeds and Bates themselves successfully won a reported 5 million pound (seven million euro) compensation package from Chelsea three years ago after the Londoners signed up Leeds teenagers Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo.

Bates, currently Leeds chairman, told Saturday’s Daily Mail: “The problem here is that the big clubs are stripping the small clubs of their youngsters.

“They are like Japanese fishing trawlers, just sweeping up everything in their nets.

“Right now some of these boys are just being traded like horsemeat.”

The FIFA transfer ban on Chelsea will see the club banned from making signings until January 2011 follows a decision by the world governing body’s Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC).

The DRC found Kakuta guilty of breach of contract and also found Chelsea guilty of inducing the player to break his contract with the French club, which had lodged a claim with FIFA seeking compensation and demanding sporting sanctions both on the player and Chelsea.

A statement from FIFA said the DRC “found that the player had indeed breached a contract signed with the French club”.

“Equally, the DRC deemed it to be established that the English club induced the player to such a breach.”

As well as paying 780,000 euros in compensation to Lens, for which Chelsea are jointly liable, Kakuta has been sanctioned in accordance with article 17, paragraph 3 and 4 of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players while the Blues must also pay Lens 130,000 euros compensation.

Kakuta was just 15 when he signed a contract with Chelsea, owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.