Pochettino votes to strip Chelsea of 2016/17 title and hand it to Tottenham

Mauricio Pochettino believes Chelsea should be stripped of their 2016/17 Premier League title for breaching financial rules and the gong retrospectively awarded to Tottenham.

Chelsea were fined £10m and £10.75m by the FA and Premier League respectively and handed a suspended two-window transfer ban for multiple violations in the Roman Abramovich era.

The BlueCo owners self-reported the breaches when they took over in the hope of avoiding more serious punishment, including a points deduction, and indeed being stripped of titles.

The Blues were found to have used unlicensed agents and obscure the nature of their transfer business between 2009 and 2022, including the deals to bring Eden Hazard, Willian and other players to the club who were key to their triumph under Antonio Conte in the 2016/17 season.

Pochettino, who later went on to manage Chelsea in the 2023/24 season, led Spurs to second that season – seven points behind the Blues – and believes the authorities failed to hand down an appropriate punishment.

“We should win one Premier League, we should have been awarded it,” Pochettino said. “If that [Chelsea’s rule-break] was true, then we deserve to be champions that year, for sure. They were punished, they admitted it? So that’s it. The title should be for the team that was second.

“We can say that they scored goals, they won games. OK. But it’s completely fair to say that we didn’t compete before the start of the season with the same card. Maybe with the same rules, we could’ve signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals.”

‘If you broke the rules then ciao’

It was put to Pochettino that Hazard was particularly pivotal to the 2016/17 title win as he scored 16 goals that season.

“Maybe yes,” Pochettino replied. “I have no doubt and I’m not scared to say the truth. The Chelsea fans will be upset with me. But if we were at Tottenham and broke the rules, I’d admit the same: ‘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. For everyone it needs to be the same rules. And then you have the capacity to create the best team.

“I don’t say that Chelsea didn’t play well, that Conte was not great. I don’t say that. I don’t want the message to be twisted. But if you broke the rules then ciao – you need to give it to another team. I don’t know why that didn’t happen. What is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules. If you don’t punish in the way that you need to punish, I say: ‘Yeah … I lost my job [at Spurs] because we didn’t win a title.’”