Former Tottenham manager, Mauricio Pochettino, has called for Tottenham Hotspur to be recognised as the winners of the 2016-17 Premier League title following Chelsea’s admission of financial breaches.
Chelsea were fined £10m by the Football Association and handed a suspended transfer ban after admitting to 74 financial rule breaches dating from 2011 to 2018 under former owner Roman Abramovich.
The breaches involved payments to unregistered agents and were uncovered after the club’s current owners reported the irregularities following their 2022 takeover.
Several players linked to the breaches, including Eden Hazard, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic, were part of the Chelsea side that won the Premier League under Antonio Conte in the 2016-17 season.
Tottenham finished second that campaign, seven points behind Chelsea.
Spurs had the league’s best attack and defence and suffered the fewest defeats, but Pochettino believes the financial breaches meant the two clubs were not competing under the same conditions.
“I’ve said that we should win one title, one Premier League,” Pochettino told reporters. “We should have been awarded it. If that was true, and that happened, for sure we deserve to be champions for that year. Because we were the second best.”
The Argentine added, “They were punished, they admitted (it), so that’s it? The title should be for the team that was second. We didn’t compete with the same rules. OK, now we can say that they scored goals, they won games. But it’s completely fair to say that we didn’t compete before the start of the season with the same card.”
Pochettino, who managed Chelsea during the 2023-24 season, said he would make the same argument if Tottenham had been found guilty of similar breaches.
“The Chelsea fans will be upset with me because I’m saying this,” he said. “But if we were at Tottenham and broke the rules, I would admit the same and say, ‘Look, we don’t deserve the title because we broke the rules’. It’s impossible if only some clubs play with offside and another plays with no offside. Or one plays with VAR and another plays with no VAR. No. For everyone, it needs to be the same rules, and the capacity to create the best team.”
He also stressed that his comments were not intended to undermine Conte or Chelsea’s performances that season.
“I don’t say that they did not play well. Conte, the coach, was great. I don’t want this message twisted. But if you broke the rules, in the moment, then ‘ciao’. You need to give it to another team.”
Pochettino further argued that stronger sporting sanctions were necessary to discourage clubs from breaking financial regulations, adding, “What is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules. If you don’t punish the way that you need to punish, I say ‘yes, but I lost my job because we didn’t win the title’.”
