David Datro Fofana’s former club Abidjan City has claimed that the new Chelsea signing was “stolen” from them by Molde and urged Fifa to ban the Norwegian club from future transfer dealings.
Fofana, the Ivory Coast international who joined Chelsea this month for about €13m, moved to Molde in February 2021 on a free transfer despite being registered with Abidjan City, it is claimed. Abidjan City filed a case against Molde with the court of arbitration for sport on 30 December after Fifa’s dispute resolution chamber ruled against them.
“We have requested that Molde be suspended for two years from recruiting and we have also asked that the agent who was involved be suspended for two years,” Marco Taddei Né, the president of Abidjan City, told the Guardian this week.
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On Thursday the Norwegian website Josimar published details of the case, which dates back to 2016 when Fofana was 16. Abidjan City say Fofana should not have been allowed to leave on a free because he was under contract but the player’s mother, Valérie Datro, has disputed that she signed a consent form for her son to sign a five-year contract, alleging that her signature had been forged. Né alleges that Atta Aneke, a Norwegian agent, persuaded Fofana’s mother to sign an agreement on behalf of the player to sign with his Players Management Group agency after Fofana trained with Molde in March 2019.
Despite Abidjan City receiving offers potentially worth up to €1m from the French clubs Strasbourg and Angers, Fofana was allowed to join Molde on a free after the Ivorian Football Association’s player status committee ruled the original training contract void the day after Fofana turned 18. Abidjan City appealed against the decision immediately and obtained the right to employ a graphologist from the Ivorian judiciary to analyse the signatures. The graphologist concluded that the signatures were authentic. Abidjan City took the matter to a civil court in Abidjan, which ruled in favour of the club, before the appeals panel of the Ivorian FA also concluded last November that the contracts were legal and should be honoured.
Weeks later Fofana joined Chelsea on a contract until 2029 for a record fee for a transfer from a Norwegian club. Fifa has yet to indicate whether it will reopen its investigation and did not respond to questions from the Guardian.
“Molde stole our player,” said Né, a former Ivory Coast international who played in Belgium, Greece and Turkey, to Josimar. “I’m not doing this only for us. How can we have quality in our work when this keeps happening?”
In July 2021 Fifa ordered Molde to pay Abidjan City €70,520.53 as training compensation, which the club did a few days later. But, according to Abidjan City’s lawyer François-Luc Ponthieu, they are now seeking damages of up to €3m through Cas and expect a decision in the next few weeks.
“At the time Molde contacted the player and his mother directly, totally ignoring our existence, we were in negotiations with other clubs,” he told Josimar. “We had offers from these clubs. We consider that our damages are equal to those proposals.”
Molde did not respond to questions from the Guardian but the managing director Ole Erik Stavrum told Josimar: “Molde and the player have full confidence in their position, and have no further comments until the matter is resolved. We can confirm that the dispute is of no concern to Chelsea, and will not affect the transfer of Datro Fofana from Molde FK to Chelsea.”
Fofana made his first appearance for Chelsea last week as a second-half substitute in the 4-0 FA Cup defeat at Manchester City. Chelsea and Aneke have not commented on the case, with Aneke telling Josimar he did not want to because the case will be reviewed by Cas. Fofana’s mother told Josimar that she had never signed a contract with Abidjan City and that the Ivorian FA appeals panel’s decision to reverse the forgery decision had been wrong.
