Pochettino wants Chelsea stripped of the 2016-17 title: 'Give it to the team that was second'
After two fines this year over breaches during the Abramovich era, the former Spurs manager argues the punishment missed the point — and that his Tottenham side should have the trophy.
Mauricio Pochettino has said Chelsea should lose the 2016-17 Premier League title and that it should be handed to Tottenham, the side he managed to second place that season, seven points behind Antonio Conte's champions.
His argument is not that Chelsea played badly. It is that they were not competing under the same rules — and that the punishments handed down this year were too light to matter.
"The title should be for the team that was second," Pochettino said in a wide-ranging interview.
What Chelsea were punished for
The Football Association fined Chelsea £10m in July and imposed a suspended two-window transfer ban for multiple rule violations during Roman Abramovich's ownership. In March the Premier League fined the club a further £10.75m.
The findings covered 2009 to 2022. Chelsea were held to have used unlicensed agents and to have sought to obscure the nature of their transfer business. The deals that brought Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic to Stamford Bridge were among those examined.
The club's BlueCo ownership self-reported the breaches on taking over in 2022, hoping to mitigate whatever followed. Chelsea avoided a points deduction.
Across that period the club won three league titles, two Champions Leagues, two Europa Leagues, four FA Cups and a League Cup.
The argument he is making
Pochettino's case rests on what happens before a season starts rather than during it.
"We didn't compete before the start of the season with the same card," he said, arguing that under equal rules his Tottenham side might have signed players who would have made the team better.
He reached for an analogy from the pitch: it is impossible, he said, if some clubs play with offside and another plays without it, or one has VAR and another does not. The rules have to be identical before anyone can claim to have built the best team.
It was put to him that Hazard in particular shaped that title race — the winger scored 16 league goals in the campaign.
"Maybe yes," Pochettino replied, before saying he was not scared to say what he thought, and acknowledging that Chelsea supporters would be unhappy with him.
He was careful to separate the football from the governance. He does not claim Chelsea played poorly or that Conte was anything other than excellent. His objection is to what happens when a breach is admitted and the trophy stays where it is.
Why he thinks it matters beyond one trophy
The sharpest part of his argument is about incentives. What is being promoted, he suggested, is rule-breaking — because if the punishment does not match the offence, breaking the rules remains worth it.
He also made the personal cost explicit, noting that he lost his job at Tottenham because the team did not win a title.
The reality
No governing body has proposed reallocating the 2016-17 title, or any of the other honours won in that period. There is no process under way, and retrospective reallocation of a Premier League title has no precedent.
Pochettino, who went on to manage Chelsea himself in 2023-24 and is now in charge of the United States, was expressing a view rather than describing something that is going to happen. It is a view that will be put to the Premier League repeatedly for as long as the fines remain the only consequence.
