The kneejerk response is to denounce Frank Arnesen as the man who was poached quickly reinventing himself as a poacher.
The smooth-talking Dane could find himself in hot water at Chelsea if embarrassing details of his courtship of Ga?l Kakuta leak out and Fifa’s remarkable transfer ban is upheld, but given the manner in which Arnesen pitched up at Stamford Bridge, does Roman Abramovich really have grounds to complain?
Those pictures of Abramovich wining and dining Arnesen on his yacht four years ago were brazen in the extreme, leading to the mother of all rows with Tottenham Hotspur, which was only settled by the Russian reluctantly agreeing to pay £5million in compensation. Part of Abramovich must be regretting his own recruitment policy, though he has no right to.
Arnesen’s arrival is not even the most high-profile example of a transfer strategy at Chelsea that has scant regard for the rulebook, with mal-practice appearing to be endemic.
The names of Ashley Cole, Michael Woods, Tom Taiwo and Nathan Porritt all trip off the tongue as examples of Chelsea making illegal approaches to players under contracts at other clubs, having been found guilty in the first three instances. The case of Kakuta is the most serious as Fifa has concluded that, in addition to tapping up the 18-year-old, they bribed him. In his role as the club’s director of scouting and youth development, Arnesen stands accused of offering a 15-year-old boy dizzying inducements to break his contract with Lens.
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Before condemning Chelsea too readily, however, it should be noted that rather than the cases of Cole or Arnesen, this latest controversy most closely resembles that of John Obi Mikel, in which, after a lengthy Fifa investigation, the club were cleared of any wrongdoing. As with the wrangle with Manchester United over Mikel, the Kakuta case rests on a dispute over a teenager’s signature on a contract. Mikel was shown to have signed for Lyn Oslo, and later United, under duress, while in this instance Chelsea are claiming that Kakuta had not signed any contract with Lens and was available as a free agent.
Chelsea’s defence in previous tapping-up cases has been that every other big club is guilty and they have been unfairly singled out, though they are attempting to mount a more persuasive defence this time around. Arnesen has accepted responsibility for the situation internally, but is adamant that he did nothing wrong, claiming that rather than the huge sums alleged in France, he offered a one-year scholarship with the promise of a three-year professional contract to Kakuta shortly after his 16th birthday in June 2007. Chelsea’s interest in the player had been relatively longstanding after he was spotted by the club’s France scout, Guy Hillion, playing for France Under-16 in September 2006.
Arnesen’s claims that he was treated precisely the same as the 20 other youngsters he has signed for Chelsea are supported by the fact that Kakuta was billeted with a local family near the club’s training ground in Surrey.
The version of events offered by Lens is rather different, but there is at least some agreement regarding the discussions that followed Kakuta’s declaration that he wanted to go to Chelsea the next summer. Lens demanded a £4.3million transfer fee shortly after he made his debut at the Champions Youth Cup in August 2007, but as they argued that Kakuta was a free agent, Chelsea were only prepared to pay £870,000 in compensation.
Ironically, Fifa appears to have given Kakuta a similar value with the combined £795,000 fines that have been levied, increasing the club’s sense of outrage at the transfer ban. Further discussions took place at Stamford Bridge between Peter Kenyon and officials from Lens at the start of 2008, but no agreement was reached and a formal complaint was made to Fifa.
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Francis Collado, a former administrative director of Lens, was present at those negotiations and told The Times yesterday that he warned Kenyon that they risked being subject to a transfer ban. “Chelsea didn’t have the right to take him,” Collado said. “He wasn’t free to go. At 14 we proposed a contract. In effect this was a pre-contract because in France you can’t pay a player until he’s 16. The contract was registered with the French FA and the French league.
“At a certain point last year I went to see Peter Kenyon and Frank Arnesen in London. I said to them: ‘We cannot just let this player leave. We have a youth development centre to run. That costs money. We invest in it. This boy is a phenomenon.’
“I took the contract to them. I gave them the figures and then they proposed a ridiculous figure. They said they thought they had the right to take him. I told them that I would go to Fifa, that they could be fined and banned from making transfers, but they thought they could get away with this. What has happened is a shame for Chelsea, but they were warned.”
Collado claimed that “it’s an English speciality to take players, much more than the German, Italian or Spanish clubs”, which ironically may form part of Chelsea’s appeal. Poaching has been a sport in this country for centuries, but it seems to be only Chelsea who hunt their game in public.