Why Mauricio Pochettino insists Chelsea title must be STRIPPED and handed to Tottenham

Sensational claim refers to 2016/17 Premier League season, when Spurs were runners-up to London rivals

Mauricio Pochettino has sensationally claimed that Chelsea should be stripped of their 2016/17 Premier League title, which he says should be awarded to Tottenham instead.

Chelsea were in July fined £10million by the Football Association (FA) and handed a suspended two-window transfer ban as punishment for 74 breaches of financial regulations between 2009-22, when Roman Abramovich owned the club.

In March, they were also fined £10.75m by the Premier League and hit with a nine-month academy transfer ban. In 2023, they were fined £8.6m by UEFA for "submitting incomplete financial information" between 2012 and 2019.

The charges related to agent regulations, regulations on working with intermediaries, and third-party investment in players regulations.

Chelsea’s BlueCo consortium self-reported the breaches when they replaced Abramovich as the club’s new owners in 2022.

Pochettino, however, believes the punishments were too lenient. Tottenham finished second in the Premier League during the 2016/17 season, seven points behind Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, and their former boss believes the title should be retrospectively awarded to Spurs.

“We should win one Premier League, we should have been awarded it,” said Pochettino, who now manages the United States Men’s National Team (USMNT).

Sensational claim: Mauricio Pochettino previously managed both Tottenham and Chelsea

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“If that [Chelsea’s breaches] 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.”

Pochettino, who went on to manage Chelsea between 2023 and 2024, said: “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.’”