Fresh off the good news of their transfer ban being lifted for the January window (even if they did nothing during it), Chelsea appear to have been dealt a blow over the past week as FIFA proposed a restriction on the number of loans a team can make both in and out of the club.
At first, it would just be international loans for players aged 22 and over, and while the initial number is cut down to eight next season, that would then be reduced to six from the 2022-23 campaign onwards.
It might not seem like that big of a deal for most clubs, but with 28 Chelsea players currently out on temporary deals, 15 of which are aged 22 and over, it could become a problem.
A lot of those players could be sold off before then, but it will stop the Stamford Bridge side from hoarding players as they have done in the past, with a great example of this being Mario Pašalić, now 25, who has been at Chelsea since 2014 but yet to make a first team appearance.
While the Croatian is expected to be bought by Atalanta at the end of the season, this restriction would look to avoid this type of scenario, which hasn’t gone down well with some of the staff at the club.
France Football reached out to Christophe Lollichon, who looks after the goalkeepers at the London club.
He said: “A hard blow? More than that. For us, it’s a real preoccupation because unlike other clubs, Chelsea has an excessively professional view when it comes to loans. There’s eight of us working full-time in a team dedicated to that. Claude Makélélé, Tore André Flo, Paulo Ferreira… Every week, we have a file to fill out on each players loaned by Chelsea.
“We have two goalkeepers loaned out. I look at all their games, break down their performances and then they get the debrief. We don’t just tell them ‘See you in June’ when they leave”.
Admitting that Chelsea sometimes had up to 40 players on loan, Lollichon made it clear there’s a ‘human consideration’ behind it all, as they ‘talk to them before’ and even ‘go to their trainings at their club’.
In fact, he pointed out some players were ‘fed up with seeing us’.
While this has been proposed by FIFA, the regulation has yet to pass as it is ‘subject to the approval of the FIFA council’, and, until then, all Chelsea can do can continue as normal in hope nothing changes.
Lollichon concluded: “We wait for the text to be finalised, but, obviously, we’re thinking about it. We’re a victim of this reform. In our project, it’s a real problem”.
