LONDON — Former Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has called for Chelsea to be stripped of their 2016-17 Premier League title, arguing the honor should be retrospectively awarded to his former side. Pochettino, who led Tottenham to a second-place finish seven points behind Chelsea that season, contends that financial rule breaches committed by the Stamford Bridge club during the Roman Abramovich era fundamentally compromised the integrity of the competition.
Chelsea were fined £10m by the Football Association in July and £10.75m by the Premier League in March for multiple rule violations between 2009 and 2022, including the use of unlicensed agents and the obscuring of transfer business. "If that was true, then we deserve to be champions that year, for sure," Pochettino said. "They were punished, they admitted it? So that’s it. The title should be for the team that was second."
Pochettino, who managed Chelsea during the 2023-24 season and currently leads the United States national team, emphasized that his critique is not a dismissal of Chelsea's on-field performance under Antonio Conte, but a matter of competitive fairness. "It’s completely fair to say that we didn’t compete before the start of the season with the same card," he stated. "If you broke the rules then ciao – you need to give it to another team. What is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules."