Pochettino: Chelsea breached rules, 2016-17 title should go to Tottenham

Mauricio Pochettino believes his Tottenham Hotspur team should have been awarded the 2016-17 Premier League title because Chelsea committed 74 financial rule breaches.

Chelsea were fined £10 million by the Football Association this summer and given a suspended transfer ban after the club admitted breaching agent regulations during the Roman Abramovich era, specifically relating to player signings between 2011 and 2018.

No sporting punishment

However, Chelsea did not receive sporting sanctions. Pochettino guided Tottenham to second place in the league during the 2016-17 season, behind Chelsea. He believes the title should have been taken away from Chelsea and awarded to Tottenham.

"I said we should have won a title, a Premier League title," Pochettino told reporters. "We should have been awarded it. If that is true, and it happened, we of course deserve to be champions that year. Because we were second."

At the end of the 2016-17 season, Tottenham were the Premier League team with the fewest defeats, the most goals scored and the fewest goals conceded, but they still finished seven points behind Chelsea, managed by Antonio Conte.

Chelsea's new owners discovered accounting irregularities when they bought the club in 2022 and self-reported them to the authorities, later admitting 74 breaches of FA Rule E1.2. But Pochettino believes Chelsea and Tottenham were fundamentally competing under different rules during those affected years.

"We were not competing under the same rules"

"They were punished, they admitted it, that's it," Pochettino said. "The title should belong to the team that finished second. We were not competing under the same rules. OK, now we can say they scored goals, they won games. But to be completely fair, before the season started we were not holding the same cards to compete. Maybe under the same rules, if the same things applied to us, maybe we could have signed some players, made the team better, or scored more goals. This is not me complaining. This is a fact."

The core of the FA case involved millions of pounds in payments to unregistered agents, linked to signings including Eden Hazard, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic, all members of Chelsea's 2016-17 title-winning squad. Pochettino believes Hazard could have made a difference that season.

"Chelsea fans will be angry with me for saying this," said Pochettino, who managed Chelsea in the 2023-24 season. "But if we had broken the rules at Tottenham, I would have admitted the same thing and said, 'Look, we don't deserve to win the title because we broke the rules.' It is impossible for some clubs to play with an offside advantage while another does not. Or for one team to have VAR and another team not to have VAR. No. The rules must be the same for everyone, and everyone must have the ability to build the best team."

Pochettino made clear that his issue was not with the players or the coach. "I am not saying they did not play well. Conte, the coach, was excellent. I do not want this message to be misinterpreted. But if you broke the rules at that time, then 'goodbye'. You need to give it to another team."