Chelsea given 18 months to ‘cut loan army from 39 to eight’

Joe Williams

New FIFA loan regulations mean that Chelsea and other top clubs will reportedly have just one more season to trim their squads accordingly.

The Times claims that FIFA will introduce a new limit on the amount of players clubs are allowed to send out on loan with the reduction applying from the start of the 2020-21 campaign.

The number of players a club can send out on loan will be ‘strictly limited to between six and eight’ with clubs like Chelsea – who currently have 39 players out on loan – facing a race against time to overhaul their squad and youth development.

Nemanja Matic, Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne, Ryan Bertrand and Nathan Ake are a few examples of how the Blues have used the loan system in the past to develop players before selling them on for vast sums of money.

The report in The Times continues by saying that the new regulations will be there to prevent stockpiling like this after Chelsea generated £139 million by selling those five players.

There will also be a ‘smaller limit on the number of players that can be loaned to any one club’ with some Premier League teams currently sending multiple players to one outfit.

Having said that, twelve of the current top-flight clubs have fewer than ten players out on loan and should have little problem complying with the rule changes.

The loan cap numbers haven’t been rubber-stamped, according to The Times, but they will be finalised at an event in February when the football stakeholders committee meet.

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