Blues found guilty of inducing breach of contract

Chelsea won’t be able to register any new players in the next two transfer windows as UEFA have found them guilty of inducing French teenager Gael Kakuta to breach his contract with Lens.

The 18-year-old winger joined Chelsea in 2007, and was the youth team top scorer and academy player of the year in 2007/08. He has been held “jointly and severally liable” in this case.

A statement on the FIFA website reads:

The French club had lodged a claim with FIFA seeking compensation for breach of contract from the player and requesting also sporting sanctions to be imposed on the player and the English club for breach of contract and inducement to breach of contract respectively.

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.

The north/ further north divide in France has never been more apparent

Everyone in the UK has been getting their knickers in a twist about the lack of respect shown by fans and officials in football, but we are not the only country dealing with controversy in the game.

Paris Saint-Germain fans kicked up a storm by unfurling a huge banner reading ‘Paedophiles, Unemployed, Inbreeding, Welcome to the North’, during a cup game with Lens on Saturday. The message mimics the name of a film currently out in France, and the Parisians were deemed to have gone too far in insulting their friends from the north (slightly further north than them, that is).

French football chief Frederic Thiriez has promised to lay the smackdown on the ‘imbeciles’ who marred the Coupe de la Ligue final, and much like Gordon Brown wading into the respect debate in today’s papers (”Footballers have a greater responsibility than anyone else to set the right example for young people,” he says - that should do the trick), French President Nicolas Sarkozy - who