Win for Chelsea, own goal for the Premier League

Hitting rich football clubs with financial penalties is akin to heading into the gunfight at the O.K. Corral with a water-pistol. You’re not going to be taken seriously by those in the fight or those outside, looking in and hoping for order to be restored. Fines are meaningless, loose change to billionaires. Why do footballing authorities persist with them as primary forms of punishment? Just weakness?

The simple answer in the case of Chelsea’s laughably lenient punishment for historic illicit payments is that the new owners, BlueCo, self-reported issues from the Roman Abramovic era. Chelsea’s statement with the Premier League concluded that “between 2011 and 2018, undisclosed payments by third parties associated with the club were made to players, unregistered agents and other third parties”. These illicit payments amounted to £47.5m. This is a major deception. Forget the £10m fine that the Premier League trumpets as a record. That’s a year’s salary for a Chelsea star.