Chelsea accused of fixing Dutch League by asking feeder club Vitesse to lose

Links between Chelsea and feeder club Vitesse Arnheim are being investigated by the Dutch Football Federation after former owner of the club Merab Jordania alleged that Chelsea did not want Vitesse to qualify for the Champions League so that their loaned players don’t get cup-tied.

Chelsea’s owner Roman Abramovich and Vitesse’s current owner Alexander Chigirinsky are good friends and it seems Merab made the allegations after a bitter dispute with Chigirinsky.

Bertrand Traoré, Lucas Piazon, Patrick van Aanholt and Christian Atsu are all on loan from Chelsea to Vitesse.

Former Georgian footballer Jordania was quoted in a Guardian report as saying: “I want to tell the Vitesse supporters the real story. I wanted to reach for the title, but ‘London’ didn’t want that in the end. Ambition is fine, but Vitesse is not allowed to reach the Champions League… I will tell you now why [the manager> Fred Rutten left [last June>. He knew that he wasn’t allowed to win the title with Vitesse.”

Jordania goes on to say that Wilfried Bony was sold to Swansea because of the same reason and he also couldn’t finish the purchase of Kelvin Leerdam after London intervened.

“I was in touch with Michael Laudrup, the Swansea manager at the time. I told him it was better that he took Bony in the winter, for Vitesse to start strong in the season, but Bony had to be sold,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

Click here to read the full Guardian article.