Mauricio Pochettino believes the 2016-17 Premier League trophy should be sitting in Tottenham’s cabinet.
Speaking to Miguel Delaney of The Independent, the United States men’s national team head coach argued that Chelsea’s admission of financial breaches during the Roman Abramovich era leaves only one fair outcome for a title he lost by seven points.
“I’ve said that, that we should win one title, one Premier League. We should have been awarded it,” Pochettino said.
“They were punished, they admitted, so that’s it? The title should be for the team that was second.”
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His argument turns on the Premier League’s ruling in March. Chelsea accepted a £10.75m fine, together with an immediate nine-month academy transfer ban and a further one-year first-team ban suspended for two years.
The breaches concerned undisclosed third-party payments made to players, unregistered agents and other parties between 2011 and 2018, first uncovered after Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital bought the club in 2022. The league said the payments in question totalled more than £47m.
‘We didn’t compete with the same rules’
Pochettino, who managed Chelsea himself between 2023 and 2024, framed the issue as a level-playing-field question.
“We didn’t compete with the same rules,” he told the paper. “Maybe with the same rules … we could’ve signed some players.”
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“It’s impossible if only some clubs play with offside and another plays with no offside. For everyone it needs to be the same rules.”
He insisted the same standard would apply to his own former club.
“If we were at Tottenham and broke the rules I’d admit the same,” he said.
“But if you broke the rules, in the moment, then ‘ciao’, you need to give it to another team.”
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What the ruling actually said
The Premier League has given no indication it will revisit the title. Its own statement on the sanctions noted that “in no scenario would the club have breached the League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules during the relevant periods, had the relevant payments been properly included”. The offence was one of disclosure, not the underlying money.
Chelsea’s fine was halved from a potential £20m in recognition of what the league described as the club’s “proactive self-reporting, admissions of breach and exceptional cooperation”. No points deduction was imposed for 2016-17 or any other season.
Pochettino’s Spurs finished that campaign on a club-record 86 points, seven adrift of Antonio Conte’s champions. Chelsea remain the recorded champions of 2016-17.
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