After being ordered to pay 14.7 Million Pound back to former club Chelsea over his Cocaine Scandal in 2004 by the Court of Arbitration of Sport in late July, Romanian International and Fiorentina forward Adrian Mutu has been nowhere near the player that scored 53 goals in 89 Serie A appearances.

Via Guardian 

It has been an horrendous few weeks for Mutu, the former Chelsea player who has been fighting his old club in the courts for five years. The dispute dates back to when Mutu – as one of Roman Abramovich’s first high-profile signings – let everyone at Stamford Bridge down with his infamous playboy attitude, which culminated in a positive drug test for cocaine use.

Chelsea sacked him immediately and sought compensation for the transfer fee they had paid Parma for his services.

The case has run through various appeals, and with each one the cost to the player has increased. The latest, a 37-page legal stamping given by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, has left Mutu completely bewildered. “Away from the pitch I’m not OK,” he admits. “How could I be? That fine is a very particular thing which affects me on a very personal level. I think I have amply paid for an error of youth which is light years away from the man and footballer I am now.”

He has participated for only a minimal part of this season so far, because the verdict has shocked him so deeply he is not considered in the right frame of mind to play.

While Chelsea might feel vindicated, it is hard to escape the feeling that this crime does not fit the punishment. No other player who has transgressed in the past has ended up in such scalding water. The bottom line is that Mutu cannot possibly be expected to get hold of the funds before a fast approaching deadline. And what then? As well as having an extra 5% interest on his debt to contend with, he may well end up suspended from playing football anywhere. That is one vicious circle.

“I can’t pay such a sum,” Mutu has pleaded. “It’s not a question of will but rather understanding of a rational and natural principle of not being capable.”

There is, perhaps, more to all this than meets the eye. When you consider how Chelsea effectively wrote off the transfer fees for failed signings who were far more expensive than Mutu – Hernán Crespo, Andriy Shevchenko and Juan Sebastián Verón for example – it is hard to reconcile why they would take such a hardline view on Mutu without there having been a terrible breakdown of the relationship between club and player behind the scenes.

The international players’ union, Fifpro, have pledged to support Mutu, alleging he was discriminated against on the grounds of his nationality. Had the same offence been committed by a player in possession of an English passport, no damages would have been payable on dismissal “since the FA Premier League rules do not provide this”, said a Fifpro statement. “It is extremely strange that a player who is dismissed by a club must pay damages based on the transfer amount previously paid for him, whilst he has had no control whatsoever on the amount of this fee.”

Juventus had given him the first lift, picking the player up for nothing after he served his seven-month drugs ban in 2004. In a way the Turin club are a part of this problem. They paid no fee, and then received €8m when he moved on to Florence. Chelsea are entitled to feel sore about that, although had they not been so hasty to sack Mutu in the first place they might have regained enough from a sale to have let the whole thing go before it spiralled out of control.

Image via Telegraph