Former Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino stated that Chelsea should be stripped of the 2016-2017 Premier League title due to breaches of financial regulations. He also noted that the team he managed finished in second place.
In July, Chelsea was fined £10 million ($13.4 million) and received a two-week deferred transfer ban for Premier League rule violations that occurred during Roman Abramovich's ownership. The club admitted to 74 FA rule breaches concerning agents, intermediaries, and third-party investment in players.
Owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital self-reported these violations to football authorities in 2022 while they were in the process of buying the club from Russian billionaire Abramovich. The violations related to deals for players such as Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz, and Nemanja Matić, who were key figures in Chelsea's triumph in the 2016-2017 season under Antonio Conte.
Pochettino, whose Tottenham team trailed Conte's Chelsea by seven points, believes that the relevant authorities did not take sufficient action. He told reporters: 'We should have won one Premier League, we should have gotten it.' He added that if this were the case, they would certainly deserve the championship title that year.
Pochettino continued: 'They were punished, they admitted it? That's it. The title should go to the team that was second. We can say they scored goals, they won matches. Fine. But it is completely fair to say that we did not compete at the start of the season under equal conditions. Perhaps with the same rules we could have signed some players who would have made the team better or scored more goals.'
Pochettino currently manages the US national team, but he previously worked at Chelsea during the 2023-2024 season. He emphasized that he is not afraid to speak the truth, even if Chelsea fans are unhappy. He stated that if Tottenham had violated the rules, he would admit that the team did not deserve the title due to the violations.
He insisted on the need for uniform rules, comparing the situation to how you cannot play with different offside rules or use VAR in some matches and not in others. Pochettino concluded that if rules are broken, the title must be transferred to another team, and he does not understand why this did not happen. He also noted that rule-breaking is encouraged.
