By Frank Dalleres
Chelsea raised eyebrows today when they announced the signing of French defender Benoit Badiashile on a mammoth seven-and-a-half-year contract.
Players typically agree deals for three, four or five years but the contract handed to Badiashile, who joins from Monaco for a fee of £33m, runs into the next decade.
However, the length of the deal could help Chelsea to continue their extravagant spending without falling foul of financial fair play rules.
How will Badiashile’s long contract help with financial fair play?
Whether the Premier League’s or European governing body Uefa’s, financial fair play regulations are based on a football club’s accounts.
And the length of a new player’s contract has a direct impact on how the total cost of their signing is attributed in the accounts.
Say a player joins for a £10m fee and signs a five-year contract on a £2m salary. The total cost to the club is £20m (£10m + 5 x £2m) and is booked as a cost of £4m for each of those years.
If the player had only signed for three years the total cost would have been £16m (£10m + 3 x £2m) but the annual cost for accounting purposes, £5.3m, would have been greater.
Therefore, longer contracts like that given to Badiashile help clubs to spread the cost of signings over a greater number of years.
That helps them to stick within the limits of financial fair play rules, which limit the amount of money a club can lose over a fixed period of time.
Why is this especially important for Chelsea?
Chelsea have to take care not to breach financial fair play regulations, having embarked on a spending spree since Todd Boehly’s consortium bought the club in May.
In just over seven months since then they have spent around £300m on players including Raheem Sterling, Marc Cucurella, Wesley Fofana and Kalidou Koulibaly.
Fofana also signed a seven-year deal after joining from Leicester City for £70m, while Cucurella signed for six years on arrival from Brighton for £60m.
The Blues are believed to have more deals lined up, too, and remain in negotiations with Benfica over a potential Premier League record transfer for midfielder Enzo Fernandez.
Should the Argentina World Cup winner make the move for an anticipated fee in excess of £100m, it would be no surprise to see him sign a lengthy contract at Stamford Bridge.
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