FIFA have today announced that the club will be fined €780,000 and a further €130,000 paid directly to the players former club (Lens) for 'inducing the player to breach contract'.
The serious addition to this punishment, however, is the inclusion of a ban on player registrations for the entirety of the next two registration periods (January 2010 and July-September 2010) both domestically and internationally. Simply put this means not being able to sign anyone until the January transfer window year 2011.
The implications of this ban are heavy - with a squad including several 30+ yr olds and having adopted less of a scatter gun approach to transfers in the last two seasons, the club will face a very difficult period of attempting to challenge on all fronts whilst unable to refresh an ageing squad or replace injured players.
There is a potential loop-hole in the form of the current trend of loan-with-fee arrangements, most recently utilised by West Bromwich Albion and Fulham when completing the Greening transfer - a season long loan with a mandatory fee at the end, completing the deal and becoming a permanent move. This is currently done for tax reasons however the method may well be utilised by the club as a short-term means of circumnavigating the punishment, which stipulates no registrations. During a loan period a players registration is retained by their parent club, so this could be one way round things. How the club reacts though, we wait with baited breath.
The expectation of course is that the club will appeal. Roma are the most recent big club to be hit with such a punishment, in relation to the transfer of Phillipe Mexes. An appeal to the CAS resulted in their ban being reduced to the January period only, something you would expect to occur with this case also.
Whatever the outcome, the point to draw from this is once again a French club is involved in losing a player and heavy sanctions towards the other party. In our case Kakuta is alleged to have reneged on a contract with Lens in order to join Chelsea, and for our part we 'induced' him to do so - in what manner we so enticed him there is no speculation, but the assumption has to be it was financially, as opposed to the Wenger Stratagem of plying player with sweets and parents with DVD box-sets (used).
Considering Michel Platini's position in world football, and the recent and very vocal protestations towards transfer morality, the movement of young players internationally, and perhaps more worryingly the proposition that football follow the French model (you know, the country where Lyon won 6 or 7 titles on the trot - quality) it is somewhat of a coincidence that an English club is chosen to be the scapegoat for a practice that has led to Macheda playing for Man Utd and Cesc Fabregas playing for Arsenal, not to mention the countless Spanish clubs who all but traffic in young Iberian players.
Whatever the outcome, I would ignore the wider media on this one - we are undoubtedly in the wrong, but we are being made an example of. At some point the placid PR and legal response from this club to such issues must finally turn and fight, mustn't it?