Back to the Southampton Newsfeed

Chelsea frozen, Roman Abramovich sanctioned: Can teams still play? How does it impact transfers, spending?

Roman Abramovich has been an untouchable billionaire free to bankroll Chelsea's unprecedented success for almost two decades, but that changed on Thursday morning. The U.K government announced sanctions against seven Russian oligarchs with what it believes are close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin's murderous regime, with the move following two weeks of intense pressure to act amid the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Abramovich -- along with Igor Sechin, Oleg Deripaska, Dmitri Lebedev, Alexei Miller, Andrei Kostin and Nikolai Tokarev -- has had his assets frozen and faces a ban on all transactions with U.