Chelsea have been handed a suspended one-year ban from signing first-team players and given a £10million ($13.7m; €11.6m) fine from the Premier League relating to breaches of financial rules during Roman Abramovich’s time as owner.
The ban is suspended over two years, meaning that Chelsea will still be able to register senior players if they do not commit any further breaches. No sporting sanction, such as a points deduction, has been imposed.
The club have also been banned from registering academy players for a period of nine months. The restriction, which comes into immediate effect, only applies to youth players that have previously been registered with another Premier League or English Football League club’s academy, and not any current players, international players or players who are registering on professional terms. It also does not apply to players who are applying for their first registration at Under-9 or otherwise, the Premier League said.
The first-team charges relate to incomplete financial reporting and missed payments from 10 years ago and would not have impacted the club’s compliance with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR). Chelsea self-reported the information to the Premier League (as well as UEFA and the Football Association) themselves, with that and their “exceptional cooperation throughout the investigation” considered “significant mitigating factors” by the league.
A Chelsea statement read: “From the outset of this process, the club has treated these matters with the utmost seriousness, providing full cooperation to all relevant regulators.
“The club welcomes the recognition from the Premier League of its ‘exceptional cooperation’ and that ‘without those voluntary disclosures and the act of self-reporting, a number of the Premier League rule breaches may never have come to the attention of the league’.”
The fine levied on Chelsea is similar to the punishment they were given by UEFA in 2023. European football’s governing body said that the club “proactively reported to UEFA, instances of potentially incomplete financial reporting under the club’s previous ownership” relating to “historical transactions which took place between 2012 and 2019.”
Chelsea were fined €10m, which UEFA said settled the matter.
The academy charges are separate from the ones at senior level and relate to breaches of youth development rules between 2019 and 2022, prior to the takeover of the club by an American consortium led by Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly.
Chelsea were previously banned from signing any players for two windows between 2019 and 2020 after breaching FIFA’s regulations on the signing of players under 18 before it was reduced to one on appeal.
The punishments handed out by the Premier League are separate from the FA investigation that saw Chelsea charged with 74 alleged breaches of its rules governing payments to agents, intermediaries and third-party investment in players between 2009 and 2022, before Abramovich sold the club. That process remains ongoing, the Premier League said in their statement.