Fulham must wait a further week to find out whether they will be able to sign Daniel Cousin from Rangers after Fifa delayed a ruling on the eligibility of the Gabon striker.
The transfer was agreed between the clubs last month, with Rangers due to receive a fee of £3 million, but the deal will go through only if the player is given clearance to play for Fulham this season. Cousin made two appearances for Lens early in the campaign before moving to Ibrox and Fifa rules stipulate that a player may not play for more than two clubs in the same season, although dispensations have been granted in the past.
Cousin started the French club’s Intertoto Cup third-round match away to FC Chornomorets in Russia on July 21 and appeared as a substitute for the final 20 minutes of Lens’s opening league match of the season, a 1-0 defeat away to Bordeaux, on August 4. It is understood that Fulham’s grounds for requesting a dispensation are based on the relatively low status of the Intertoto Cup and the fact that he appeared only briefly in the league match.
Fulham and Rangers had expected a ruling yesterday, but world football’s governing body has asked for further information from the Barclays Premier League club and informed them that there will be no decision before next week. Cousin, 31, has made 18 domestic and European starts for Rangers since joining the Clydesdale Bank Premier League club on August 9 last year, scoring nine goals.
Although the delay will not mean that Cousin will miss an extra match for his intended new employers, with Fulham having a blank weekend thanks to their elimination from the FA Cup, he remains available to Rangers in the meantime, which has left Walter Smith, their manager, in a quandary. Smith was reluctant to risk the player suffering an injury if he played him in matches until the deal was either completed or called off, but he has become increasingly concerned about Cousin’s deteriorating fitness, especially if he remains at Ibrox.
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Cousin’s most recent appearance in a first-team match was on January 20, a 1-0 win over Inverness Caledonian Thistle, two days before the deal with Fulham was done. The fact that Cousin has been put in limbo for a period that will stretch into next week means that he will be without match practice for a month. He had missed five matches before last night’s Uefa Cup round of 32, first leg at home to Panathinaikos in which he was eligible to play.
Some may wonder how Cousin can play in the Uefa Cup for Rangers, having taken part in the Intertoto Cup for Lens. Alan Hutton, on the other hand, is ineligible for Tottenham Hotspur in the Uefa Cup as he played in the Champions League for Rangers. They finished third in their group and dropped into the Uefa Cup, although Hutton did not play for them in that competition.
Uefa offered the following explanation yesterday. “He [Cousin] is allowed to play the remaining Uefa Cup season with Rangers as, according to article 17.18 of the Uefa Cup regulations, he is not a player who has been fielded during the season for another club playing in the same competition or which currently is. Indeed, as article 17.07 of the same regulations states, the Uefa Intertoto Cup is to be considered as another competition than the Uefa Cup. This explains why Daniel Cousin is entitled to play for Rangers, whereas Alan Hutton is not for Tottenham.”