MAURICIO Pochettino believes Chelsea should be stripped of their 2017 Prem crown – and the title handed to Spurs.
Former Blues boss Poch feels Antonio Conte’s team deserve to be “punished” for the club’s admitted rule-breaking.
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Chelsea escaped with a £10m fine and no sporting sanction despite admitting to 74 breaches of FA rules including making £47m in illegal secret payments to unregistered agents between 2011 and 2018, when the club was owned by Roman Abramovich.
Players whose transfers were greased by the payments included Eden Hazard, Willian and David Luiz, all of whom were key players in Conte’s side, with the Belgian scoring 16 goals.
Now Poch, sacked by Daniel Levy in 2019, has demanded a rethink by Prem and FA chiefs.
Argentine Poch, 54, who has agreed a new four-year deal to stay in charge of the US national side, said: “I have no doubt and I’m not scared to say the truth.
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“The Chelsea fans will be upset with me because I’m saying this.
“It’s not me complaining. It’s the truth.
“If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second best team.
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“Otherwise, what is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules. They admitted, so that’s it. The title should be for the team that was second.”
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Spurs finished seven points behind Chelsea, becoming the only team in Prem history to score the most goals and concede the fewest in the same season and not win the title.
Looking back, Poch and his long-term assistant, Jesus Perez, remain convinced Chelsea were guilty of what Arsene Wenger famously described as “financial doping”.
Pochettino, who lasted 12 months at Chelsea before a fall-out with the top brass insisted: “If we were at Tottenham and broke the rules I’d admit the same and say ‘look, we don’t deserve the title because we broke the rules’.
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“You don’t have some clubs playing with the offside Laws and VAR and another side without them. That’s impossible.
“No. For everyone it needs to be the same rules and the same capacity to create the best team.
“I’m not saying they didn’t play well. That was Conte, the coach was great, and everything.
“So I’m not saying that and I don’t want this message to be twisted.
“But if you broke the rules, in the moment, then ‘ciao’ – you need to give it to another team.”