Pochettino believes Chelsea should be stripped of their 16/17 PL title. Does he have a point?

Former Tottenham Hotspur and current USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino believes that the Premier League title won by Chelsea in 2016/17 should be stripped off them and handed over to his Spurs side who finished second behind them that season.

For context, Chelsea were fined £10m by the Football Association and £10.75 by the Premier League earlier this year for breaking financial rules. They were also handed a suspended transfer ban of two windows. The charge was that the club took help of agents who were unlicensed and tried to hide the nature of their transfer dealings from 2009 to 2022, when the club was owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovic. 

BlueCo, the current owners of the club, chose to self-report these wrongdoings, and that helped them avoid a points deduction. But they were not able to avoid punishment, and were fined and banned subsequently.

The dealings for players like Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz, and Nemanja Matic were all under the scanner, and these were the very players who were the crucial cogs in the wheel to Chelsea’s title win in 16/17 under Antonio Conte. It was also the last time they won the Premier League.

Pochettino that year was managing Spurs, and they finished 7 points behind their London rivals. The Argentine claims that with Chelsea themselves admitting that they breached the rules, it should be a no-brainer that they (Spurs) should be handed the title as a direct result of it.

However, the question arises: Does he actually have a valid ground to make this claim?

Firstly, his claim is based on pretty sound reasoning about the fact that if the concerned party has admitted its guilt, and that those actions have resulted in the team winning the title, then the title should be stripped. It is just like the notion of a criminal admitting his guilt and then being sentenced to the punishment he receives.

A team has gained unfair advantage by circumventing the rules and Pochettino believes that they should be punished more severely than they have, and stripping them off their League title would go some way to set an example.

However, when it comes to reality, Pochettino might have to stay content with the second place he finished in because there is no precedent anywhere of teams being stripped off their titles after offences like the one Chelsea committed, with the biggest case being their direct rivals Manchester City, who have yet to find out the ruling on their alleged 115 charges on multiple allegations of financial doping and circumvention.

Add to the fact that it was Chelsea itself that brought these wrongdoings to the notice of the authorities, that definitely played a part in the soft nature of the punishment that was handed. Had it come out from any other source, then there would have been a massive hue and cry and Chelsea would have had to worry about further repercussions.

While teams have been stripped off their respective titles due to match-fixing (Juventus in the infamous Calciopoli scandal of 2005 and 2006) and bribing opposition players to throw a match (Marseille in 1993), financial doping has yet to see such punishment being meted out.

So while it was a pretty good and determined try from Pochettino to get some shrift in the matter, it eventually will come down to naught because of lack of previous precedent, and the fact that the punishment for the wrongdoing has already been delivered. So Pochettino does have a point, but it is on loose ground, so it won’t really hold much sway.