Pochettino Calls For Chelsea To Be Stripped Of 2016-17 Premier League Title

Mauricio Pochettino has called for Chelsea to be stripped of their 2016-17 Premier League title and the trophy retrospectively awarded to Tottenham following the club’s financial rule breaches.

Naija News reports that Chelsea were fined £10 million by the Football Association in July and handed a suspended two-window transfer ban after multiple violations linked to their transfer dealings during the Roman Abramovich era.

The Premier League had also fined the club £10.75 million in March over breaches involving unlicensed agents and attempts to conceal the nature of some transfers between 2009 and 2022.

Several deals involving Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic were among those found to have breached the rules.

The players played key roles in Chelsea’s title-winning campaign under Antonio Conte, while Pochettino’s Tottenham finished second, seven points behind the champions.

Pochettino, who later managed Chelsea, believes Tottenham should have been awarded the title because Chelsea gained an advantage from their rule breaches.

“We should win one Premier League; we should have been awarded it,” Pochettino said. “If that [Chelsea’s rule-breaking] 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 second team.”

Pochettino argued that Tottenham did not compete with the same advantages as Chelsea when building their squad and suggested Spurs might have strengthened their team if they had operated under the same circumstances.

“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 said.

Chelsea’s new owners, BlueCo, reported the historical breaches after taking over from Abramovich in 2022. The club avoided a points deduction, but Pochettino believes the punishment should have gone further.

He also stressed that his criticism was not intended to diminish Chelsea’s performances or Conte’s achievement that season.

“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,” he said.

Pochettino also pointed to the importance of Hazard, who scored 16 Premier League goals during Chelsea’s title-winning campaign, but maintained that the central issue was the equal application of football’s 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,” he said.