Mauricio Pochettino boldly challenges Premier League champ in surprising interview
Mauricio Pochettino recently spoke out with a surprising claim that his old club Chelsea should lose a Premier League title.
Pochettino was Chelsea’s manager for just one season in 2023/24 and left after they finished sixth by mutual agreement. But his best work in England was with Spurs, who finished second in back-to-back seasons (2015/16 and 2016/17). In 2016/17, Spurs got 86 points but still missed out to Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, who won the title by seven points after a tough start.
Now, almost ten years later, Pochettino says he deserves to be a Premier League winner and thinks Chelsea should be punished more. In March, Chelsea was fined £10.75 million by the Premier League for breaking competition rules. The fine was originally £20 million but was halved because the club’s owners voluntarily reported 74 rule breaches when they bought Chelsea in 2022.
Chelsea avoided a six-point deduction after admitting to secret payments totaling £47 million to unregistered agents and third parties related to transfers from 2011 to 2018. Transfers involving players like Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto’o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle, and Nemanja Matic were part of the investigation—these players all played in Chelsea’s title-winning team. None of the players themselves were accused of any wrongdoing.
Talking to the BBC and other media, Pochettino said, “We should have won one Premier League title. They broke the rules and were punished, but that’s not enough. The title should go to the team that finished second. We didn’t play with the same rules from the start. Maybe if the rules were fair, we could have signed players to improve our team.”
He added, “I’m not afraid to speak the truth. Chelsea fans might be upset, but if Tottenham had broken rules, I would say the same.”
Besides the fine, Chelsea got two transfer bans: a one-year ban suspended for two years and a nine-month ban on signing academy players. There was also a £750,000 fine connected to registering academy players between 2019 and 2022. The Premier League praised Chelsea’s “exceptional cooperation” and “pro-active self-reporting.”
Now, Pochettino manages the United States national team and led them at the World Cup on home soil this summer.