Chelsea chair blasts African Nations Cup

[Tilla]

Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck has called on FIFA to deal with the 'craziness' of the international calendar as the club prepare to lose four players to the African Nations Cup in January.

The Blues go into their opening game of 2008 with eight players on the treatment table, including Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba, but with Mikel John Obi, Salomon Kalou and Michael Essien all fit.

These four, assuming Drogba recovers from his knee surgery in time, will head off to Ghana to play in the finals and leave Chelsea's squad even more depleted.

Captain John Terry, goalkeepers Petr Cech and Carlo Cudicini, plus Claude Makelele, Andriy Shevchenko, Florent Malouda, Frank Lampard and Drogba are all sidelined and none are likely to return against Fulham tomorrow.

The African Nations Cup will increase the pressure on Grant to make swift moves into the transfer market during the January window, but Buck hopes that FIFA can solve the problem in the future.

Buck said: 'We will lose several players to the African Nations Cup. This is unfortunate because it is a very difficult time of the season and we will need all of our players to help.

'We do recognise, however, that a player's greatest honour is to play for his country and we have to respect that.

'We can only hope that FIFA will stop some of this craziness in the years ahead and adjust the calendar so that club football is not continually interrupted and disrupted for international events when a better thought-out calendar could solve these anomalies.'

[Jangle]

Well stop buying/exploiting so many African players. Simple as that.

[Tilla]

When you think of it, African players want the chance to make some of the money being tossed around too.

The problem is that FIFA will need to establish a time when these regional competitions should be held. I am not sure why the African conference holds their competition in January, but some adjustment has to be made.

[Shatta]

Now as predicted all eyes will turn to Jamaica and the caribbean.

Dem a say that they can get cheaper and just as talented players with more speed who aren't going off to a competition every 2 years so why not?

Dem look and dem see Jones and Fuller and dem say hey!
Look at Claude Davis and Damion Stewart and now the secret buss when JJ and Shelton rise pon dem.

It was all written so why we a act so surprised

the last shall be the first
a far we a come from. Lowe used to walk go training inna snow and our top ballers fresh from off the world cup were deemed only good enough for Div3 and we believed

Now what has changed?

Our international fortunes and local leagues along with youth football has fallen to a new low and yet we see more players being transferred overseas.

One time a man have fi go pon at least 3 to 4 trials and even then we hold our breath and hope for the best.

Now we hear bout Sheffield United transferring 3 players one time and Stoke seem to have Fuller as their Jamaican agent, now we are shocked if we don't make it

What has changed?

Our mind, we started believing. It all starts in the mind