One week ago, Ashley Cole was playing for England against Colombia at Giants Stadium. \Widely considered the best left back in England, he had a solid game, nothing to set the world on fire. Yet the following day, when Cole returned home, he became banner headline material as the central figure in a scandal that could indeed set the English soccer world on fire.

Cole, 24 years old and in the middle of a five-year contract with Arsenal, wants more money. Dissatisfied with a new Arsenal offer, he had discussed matters with a rival club, Chelsea. Under the rules of the English Premier League, that is strictly forbidden without the permission of the contract-holding club. Arsenal, which had given no such permission, lodged a complaint with the EPL, alleging that there had been a secret meeting.

Having investigated the matter, the EPL’s Disciplinary Committee, under the chairmanship of ex high-court judge Sir Philip Otton, handed down its verdicts last Wednesday. It pronounced Cole guilty and fined him $180,000 – a hefty sum, but believed to be no more than one month’s salary for the player.

Chelsea was mauled as well – its coach, Jose Mourinho, who had attended the meeting, was fined $360,000, while the club was fined $540,000. The EPL added a Damoclean threat to Chelsea: Any more of this behavior, and the club would have points deducted in future EPL championship standings.

In English soccer parlance, Chelsea was guilty of “tapping up” a contracted player. It also exhibited a breathtaking economy with the truth. When Arsenal vice chairman David Dein first got wind of the January meeting, he called Chelsea’s CEO Peter Kenyon to protest. Kenyon flatly denied there had ever been a meeting, while Mourinho claimed to have been in Italy at the time.

But the EPL soon came up with evidence that there had been a secret meeting, at which point Chelsea’s faulty memory readjusted (“Oh, that meeting” was their attitude). Yes, Mourinho and Kenyon had gone to a London hotel to meet with Cole and his agent, John Barnett, but only listened as Cole explained how unhappy he was at Arsenal. As for Barnett and Cole, they claimed not to know that a meeting had been arranged, were “astonished” when Mourinho and Kenyon showed up, and felt so uncomfortable with the situation that the meeting only lasted about six minutes.

Right. In his report, Otton expresses “grave difficulty in giving credence” to that version; he repeats that phrase when dealing with Chelsea’s “we only went to listen” claim.

Otton believes that “every individual was fully aware that a pre-arranged meeting was to take place and that its purpose was to discuss with Ashley Cole his future.”

But who arranged the meeting? Neither Cole nor Chelsea, but agents acting on their behalf – Barnett for Cole, and Pinhas Zahavi (also present at the meeting) for Chelsea. Their role in the affair was clearly crucial, but the EPL acknowledged that it had no jurisdiction over them. Soccer agents are licensed by FIFA, under agreements that include a pledge not to indulge in tapping up. It is now up to FIFA to decide whether Barnett and Zahavi broke that pledge.

Case closed, then? Far from it. The new Chelsea, enriched and emboldened and – many would say – made arrogant by Roman Abramovich’s billions, does not go quietly. It will appeal. It is already hinting that Arsenal, by taking the case to the EPL, is really the guilty party.

“We’re disappointed that Arsenal chose to pursue this course of action,” said Bruce Buck, the American lawyer who is Chelsea’s chairman. “It will be very difficult for us to forget this.”

So Chelsea, which flagrantly broke the rules and then denied they had done so, is “disappointed” in Arsenal. While treating that attitude with the scorn it deserves, some legitimate issues nevertheless arise.

First, Arsenal’s own record in the matter of poaching players is not exactly lily-white; operating in France and Spain, the club has exploited loopholes in local rules to whisk away promising youngsters. Second, it is generally conceded that the tapping up of players is a widespread, but never reported, practice.

Most important, Chelsea raises a serious point: The EPL’s rule that bans tapping up – is it legal? Is it not a restraint of trade?

During the EPL hearings, Chelsea produced the Trinidadian Shaka Hislop as a witness. Hislop, a graduate of Howard University, is now a 36-year-old goalkeeper coming to the end of his contract with EPL club Portsmouth. Under the EPL rule, Hislop cannot begin to talk with any club other than Portsmouth until the final five weeks of his current contract – pitifully little time in which to arrange his future employment.

In his report, Otton admitted that the EPL rules do represent a restraint a trade, but defended them as being in everyone’s interest – making the vital point that they had not been imposed unilaterally by the EPL, but had been drawn up with the full agreement of the players’ union.

“If the restraint were removed,” Otton wrote in his decision, “the number of transfers would increase and the balance between players’ agents and the Premiership clubs would tilt significantly in favor of the agents (and their incomes).”

Alongside the agents, come the lawyers (and their incomes). There is evidently the scent of a landmark case in the air, with the suggestion that the EPL rules contravene the labor laws of the European Union; certainly, the rest of Europe’s top soccer countries get by without such restrictions.

While it’s too early to predict how the legal implications will play themselves out, a rather suspect righteous indignation is the current attitude of the Cole and Chelsea lawyers. From Graham Sheer, representing Cole, came the opinion that the EPL regulation “seems to grab hold of the master-servant relationship they had a century ago.”

The “servant,” in this case Ashley Cole, is earning between $45,000-$54,000 a week. He claims that he is vastly underpaid when compared with Arsenal’s other stars – the team’s French captain, Patrick Vieira, reportedly makes $125,000 a week – and his request is for a raise to $108,000 a week. The vast majority of Cole’s fans would be giddy to make in a year what Cole wants to make in a week.

Cole is obviously aware that his position does not kindle sympathy. In Sunday’s News of the World, he portrayed himself as a martyr to his undying devotion to Arsenal, the club he joined as a teenager. “I feel betrayed, confused and badly let down,” he complained, adding that Dein “didn’t show me any respect and treated me like a little kid … It’s not about money.”

But most people will see the whole affair as being very much about money. Cole wants a lot more of it, while Chelsea seems to think that its riches permit it to behave as it likes.

Further evidence of the club’s indifference to both the rules and public opinion came on Saturday, when Tottenham Hotspur alleged that Chelsea had made an approach to its sporting director, Frank Arnesen – “in direct breach of [EPL] rules.”

As yet, Tottenham has not reported the matter officially to the EPL.