Mauricio Pochettino believes Tottenham Hotspur should have been retrospectively crowned Premier League champions for the 2016-17 season following Chelsea’s admission of historical breaches of Football Association regulations.
Chelsea were fined £10 million by the FA in July and handed a suspended two-window registration ban after admitting 74 breaches of FA Rule E1.2 relating to football agents, intermediaries and third-party investment in players.
The breaches occurred during the Roman Abramovich era, with the case involving historical transfer activity and undisclosed payments.
The matter came to light after Chelsea’s current ownership discovered irregularities during the 2022 takeover and self-reported them to the relevant authorities.Although Chelsea avoided a sporting punishment that would affect their historical title, Pochettino believes the circumstances surrounding the breaches raise a much bigger question about competitive fairness.
The Argentine was Tottenham manager when Spurs finished second behind Antonio Conte’s Chelsea in 2016-17. Tottenham ended the campaign seven points behind the champions, but produced an impressive statistical season, suffering the fewest defeats while scoring the most goals and conceding the fewest in the league.
For Pochettino, the fact that Chelsea admitted wrongdoing means Tottenham’s achievement deserves to be viewed differently.
“I’ve said that we should win one title, one Premier League,” Pochettino told reporters via The Atheletic.
“We should have been awarded it. If that was true, and that happened, for sure we deserve to be champions for that year. Because we were the second best.”‘We didn’t compete with the same rules’.
Pochettino’s argument is built around the principle that every club should operate under the same regulations.
Chelsea’s historical breaches covered a number of transfer dealings during Abramovich’s ownership. Transfers involving players such as Eden Hazard, David Luiz and Nemanja Matic have particular relevance to the debate because they were members of Chelsea’s title-winning squad in 2016-17.
There has been no suggestion that those players themselves were responsible for wrongdoing.
Pochettino believes, however, that the availability of players of that quality could have influenced the outcome of the title race.“They were punished, they admitted (it), so that’s it,” Pochettino said.
“The title should be for the team that was second. We didn’t compete with the same rules. OK, now we can say that they scored goals, they won games. 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, if we apply the same things, maybe we could have signed some players that would have made the team better, or scored more goals. It’s not me complaining. It’s the truth.”
The former Tottenham manager insists his argument is not intended as an attack on Chelsea’s players or Conte, who guided the club to the title in his first season in English football.Instead, Pochettino believes the focus should be on whether clubs are competing within the same framework.“The Chelsea fans will be upset with me because I’m saying this,” said Pochettino, who managed Chelsea during the 2023-24 season.
“But if we were at Tottenham and broke the rules, I would admit the same and say, ‘Look, we don’t deserve the title because we broke the 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. No. For everyone, it needs to be the same rules, and the capacity to create the best team.”
Respect for Conte and Chelsea’s players
Pochettino was also careful to separate his criticism of the circumstances from the football produced by Chelsea during that campaign.
Chelsea won the title with 93 points, seven clear of Tottenham, and Conte’s side enjoyed an outstanding season after switching to a 3-4-3 formation.Pochettino acknowledged that achievement while maintaining that any breach of regulations should have consequences for the sporting outcome.“I don’t say that they did not play well. Conte, the coach, was great. I don’t want this message twisted. But if you broke the rules, in the moment, then ‘ciao’. You need to give it to another team.”
For Poch, failing to impose meaningful sporting consequences could create an uncomfortable incentive for clubs to disregard regulations.“What is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules,” he said. “If you don’t punish the way that you need to punish, I say ‘yes, but I lost my job because we didn’t win the title.”
Tottenham’s missed opportunity
The argument also reflects Pochettino’s belief that his Tottenham side achieved more than the eventual league position suggested.
Spurs were unbeaten at White Hart Lane throughout that Premier League campaign and finished with the fewest defeats in the division.
They also scored more goals and conceded fewer than Chelsea, but a slow start to the season and several draws ultimately left them chasing Conte’s side.
Pochettino believes that, had Tottenham and Chelsea been operating under identical circumstances, the outcome could have been different.“We were fighting with clubs (who worked) in a completely different way to us. I think we deserve more. We operated in a different way.”
Chelsea’s current owners uncovered the historical irregularities while carrying out due diligence during their purchase of the club in 2022. The club subsequently cooperated with the investigation and admitted the 74 FA breaches.
The FA’s final punishment, however, did not strip Chelsea of the title. The club’s original suspended six-point deduction was overturned on appeal and replaced by a suspended two-window registration ban.
With the Premier League trophy going to Chelsea, it meant that Pochettino went on without winning any trophy in his more than 5 year spell in the North London base club.
Pochettino’s new chapter with the United States
The 54-year-old Pochettino is now looking ahead to a new phase of his career with the United States men’s national team.He was appointed USMNT head coach in September 2024 and guided the team through the 2026 FIFA World Cup on home soil.
The United States won its group and defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 before suffering a 4-1 defeat to Belgium in the last 16, exiting at this stage in the World Cup for a consecutive campaign.
Despite the disappointing World Cup exit, Pochettino has been retained by U.S. Soccer, with a new contract keeping him in charge through 2030.
His focus has therefore shifted towards building the next generation of the USMNT, but his reflections on Tottenham’s 2016-17 campaign show that the memories of the Premier League title that slipped away remain strong.
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