Livescore
Todd Boehly’s Chelsea have spent 425 million euros since the start of the 2022/23 season, but in London they have a plan to ensure that the spending doesn’t have an immediate impact on the Premier League club’s coffers.
It has not gone unnoticed that the new trend at Stamford Bridge is to attach very long contracts to new signings so that the amortization of transfers is kind to Chelsea and they can circumvent the Financial Fair Play regulations.
The signing of Mykhaylo Mudryk is the latest example. Chelsea paid Shakhtar 100 million euros for the winger, split between 70m euros in the fixed part and about 30m euros in add-ons, and he signed a contract for eight and a half seasons until 2031.
As Calcio e Finanza points out, in Italy there is a limit of five seasons for a player’s contract, but this is not the case in the Premier League.
Making the most of this rule, Chelsea, as you can see below, have put most of their recent young signings on long contracts.
- Mykhailo Mudryk – June 30, 2031
- Benoit Badiashile – June 30, 2029
- Wesley Fofana – June 30, 2029
- Detro Fofana – June 30, 2029
- Cesare Casadei – June 30, 2028
- Carney Chukwuemeka – June 30, 2028
- Marc Cucurella – June 30, 2028
- Gabriel Slonina – June 30, 2028
Why are Chelsea giving out long contracts?
This is all about bridging the Financial Fair Play restrictions.
“What Chelsea have decided to do is to spread the cost of players by signing them on very long contracts,” explained Kieran Maguire, a sports finance expert, on Sky Sports News.
“So, by signing Mudryk on an eight-and-a-half-year contract, the way it is dealt with for accounting and FFP purposes is you take that 88m pound cost and you divide that over eight and a half years, and it works out as just over 10m pounds per yer.”
The new Financial Fair Play rules will cap the cost of the squad to a maximum of 70 percent within the 2025/26 season. But, by spreading the expenditure over different seasons, the room for manoeuvre grows.
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