Reuters/Blake Dahlin
Will Mauricio Pochettino return to coach the United States soccer team?
Mauricio Pochettino has apparently decided enough time has passed to reopen one of the more painful chapters in Tottenham history. The former Spurs manager says Chelsea should be stripped of its 2016-17 Premier League championship over historical rule breaches and, conveniently, hand the trophy to the team that finished second.
That team was Pochettino’s Tottenham, which posted a club-record 86 points but still finished seven behind Antonio Conte’s 93-point Chelsea side. In a wide-ranging Guardian interview, Pochettino argued that teams cannot be considered to have competed under equal conditions when one club broke financial and agent-related rules.
Pochettino Would Like His Premier League Trophy 10 Years Late
His position is not particularly complicated.
Chelsea admitted to historical violations connected to undisclosed payments involving players, unregistered agents and other third parties during the Roman Abramovich era. The Premier League sanctions issued in March included £10.75 million in total fines, a suspended one-year first-team transfer ban and an immediate nine-month academy registration ban.
The FA later added another £10 million fine and a suspended two-window transfer ban for separate agent-rule breaches.
Pochettino’s argument is basically: You admitted you broke rules during an era that included the 2017 championship, so why do you still get to keep the championship?
“We should win one Premier League, we should have been awarded it,” he said.
There is one fairly important complication.
The Premier League specifically said that after recalculating Chelsea’s historical financial submissions to include the undisclosed payments, the club still would not have violated Profitability and Sustainability Rules in any scenario.
So this is not a case where the league determined Chelsea illegally spent £100 million beyond an allowed limit to construct the 2016-17 roster and then simply ignored it.
The violations were real.
The connection between those violations and the actual title is considerably murkier.
Tottenham’s 86 Points Suddenly Have A New Life
That will not stop Spurs fans from enjoying the hypothetical.
Tottenham went 26-8-4 in 2016-17, scored 86 goals, allowed a league-low 26 and did not lose a single home match. The final table remains one of the crueler artifacts in club history: 86 points, a plus-60 goal difference and still no trophy.
Chelsea won 30 games and finished on 93.
Pochettino has also pointed toward players involved in Chelsea’s title-winning squad whose transfers were connected to improper agent payments, including Eden Hazard and David Luiz. Hazard was especially important that season, scoring 16 Premier League goals.
None of this means the Premier League is about to knock on Tottenham’s door carrying a trophy with a new engraving.
Chelsea accepted the financial and transfer sanctions, and no authority has announced plans to revisit the 2016-17 standings.
But Pochettino has now provided Tottenham supporters with something arguably more durable than an actual championship.
A decade-long argument about why they technically should have one.