A former shareholder in Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem has made allegations about the club's relationship with Chelsea which have resulted in the partnership between the two being investigated by the Dutch FA (KNVB).
Chelsea currently have four players on loan at the Eredivise club, Lucas Piazon, Bertrand Traore, Patrick van Aanholt and Christian Atsu.
Merab Jordania, in comments made to De Telegraaf newspaper, claimed that Chelsea did not want Vitesse qualifying for the Champions League as the competition does not allow teams with shared ownership to participate.
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 Fred Rutten left. He knew that he wasn't allowed to win the title with Vitesse.
In the winter he brought the team to the top. We had the feeling we needed one more player to win the title, Kelvin Leerdam. The transfer seemed to be a done deal when all of a sudden 'London' intervened. We were not allowed to be too strong. I couldn't explain that to Fred. I had to cover the club and 'London', but it caused a lot of tension and chaos.
Vitesse, which is now owned by a friend of Roman Abramovich named Alexander Chigirinsky, has had an uncertain ownership structure since Chigirinsky took over and the Dutch FA want this situation clarified.
The club are currently in third place in the Eeredivise, nine points off first placed Ajax but just one point of Feyenoord in second.
[Guardian]
