Chelsea fury over leaked Mikel letter

CHELSEA have reacted furiously to a leaked letter in which Manchester United accuse them of acting outside the laws of the game in their attempts to sign Nigerian teenager John Obi Mikel.

In a nine-page letter to FIFA seen by BBC Radio Five Live, United claim they had a deal with the 18-year-old and that evidence suggests agents working for Chelsea caused Mikel to disappear days after signing a contract.

Within days, Mikel’s agent claimed the teenager had signed under duress and the contract should be ruled null and void. FIFA have yet to make any decision but Chelsea have said should that case be confirmed, they would have an interest in signing Mikel.

In the letter, United and Mikel’s Norwegian club Lyn Oslo called for sanctions against Chelsea, including a transfer ban.

Chelsea are angry that the letter has made it into the public domain, given that the case is ongoing.

Five Live reported last night that David Gill confronted his Chelsea counterpart Peter Kenyon and Blues chairman Bruce Buck over the matter at Old Trafford following Chelsea’s 3-1 win over United in May last year.

Gill is reported to have handed a letter to the pair outlining his grievances.

Kenyon and Buck read the letter in Gill’s presence but refused to comment on the allegations.

A week later, Five Live reported, Chelsea faxed United to say they had acted appropriately in the matter.

Signed by Gill and Lyn Oslo sporting director Morgan Andersen, the letter says: “If the involvement of Chelsea is established, then the complainants would seek the imposition of the sanction as set out in Article 23.2(a) of the FIFA Regulations namely a ban on Chelsea ‘registering any new player, either nationally or internationally’ for the duration of two registration periods.

“In addition, given the welfare issues that this case raises, including the disappearance of the player from Lyn, it is submitted by the complainants that this is a case which warrants the imposition of severe sanctions under Article 23.2(d) including exclusion from competitions.”

Mikel and three other Nigerians had been taken to Norway when they enrolled in the NTG sports school. Mikel had already caught the eye of several top clubs and had trained with Chelsea and at Manchester United’s training ground with a Nigerian youth team before, on his 18th birthday, he signed a professional contract with Lyn Oslo.

Just one week later he signed for United but without any personal representative present. The letter to FIFA admits “as he is entitled to do so, the player confirmed that he did not wish to utilise the services of a FIFA-licensed agent in the negotiations.”

According to the BBC, the only people in the room when Mikel signed were Lyn’s sporting director Andersen, United academy director Jimmy Ryan, a lawyer for United and a lawyer from the firm which works for Lyn.

The deal was worth several million pounds to Lyn but there is a serious moral question in a player, days after his 18th birthday, signing a new contract without an agent or member of his family present. As it turned out, within days Mikel’s agent John Shittu travelled to Oslo and persuaded the player to leave and since then he has been on the move.

Mikel is currently with Nigeria playing in the African Nations Cup, and he told Five Live he wants to go to Chelsea and likes Jose Mourinho.