Despite managing Chelsea during the 2023-24 season, Pochettino did not shy away from confronting his former employers. “The Chelsea fans will be upset with me because I’m saying this,” he conceded. “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.”
While praising his coaching counterpart, Pochettino insisted sporting integrity must come first. “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.”
He warned that a lack of severe sporting sanctions sets a dangerous precedent. “What is being promoted and incentivised is to break the rules,” he argued. “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’.” Reflecting on his own Spurs exit in 2019, he concluded: “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.”
