Mauricio Pochettino, who coached Tottenham during the 2016-17 season, has said the club should have been awarded the Premier League title after Chelsea admitted to breaching English Football Association regulations involving agents and player transfers.
Chelsea were fined £10 million ($13.4 million) in July and handed a suspended two window transfer ban after appealing sanctions over breaches of FA regulations concerning agents and intermediaries. The London club admitted to 74 breaches covering agents, working with intermediaries and third party investment in players.
Pochettino believes the punishment should have gone further and argued that Tottenham deserved to be declared champions retrospectively. “We should have been awarded it,” Pochettino said in published interviews on Thursday. “If that 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.”
Chelsea won the 2016-17 Premier League title by seven points, finishing ahead of Tottenham, who ended the campaign in second place. Chelsea were initially given a suspended six point deduction alongside the fine, but the points penalty was later replaced by the suspended transfer ban.
Pochettino left Tottenham in 2019 and later took charge of Chelsea for the 2023-24 season. His time at Stamford Bridge ended by mutual consent after a difficult campaign in which Chelsea failed to qualify for the Champions League. He is now coaching the United States men’s national team.
Pochettino’s comments are likely to reignite debate over whether clubs found guilty of historical regulatory breaches should face sporting sanctions that could change the results of competitions already completed.
