Mauricio Pochettino says Manchester City’s guilty verdict has damaged confidence in the Premier League after the club were found to have breached financial rules on a vast scale.
The USA manager coached Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League from 2014 to 2019, competing against City for the Champions League places in that time.
City were found guilty of the vast majority of 115 charges relating to alleged financial rule breaches between 2009 and 2018, but they have consistently denied the allegations and are expected to appeal against the verdict.
“Where were the controls?” Pochettino said, questioning the Premier League’s ability to ensure a fair and equal competition. “That’s what gets my attention. Where were the controls?”
When Pochettino was at Tottenham, the club went 18 months without signing a player while they dealt with the financial demands of building their new stadium. During that time, City inflated their budget to bring in expensive players.
“I remember being at Southampton, then Tottenham – I remember building [the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium] and not having the economic possibility of a transfer for 18 months,” Pochettino said. “I think we were the only team in the history of the Premier League with 18 months without [making a transfer].”
Pochettino said the restrictions had made it difficult for Tottenham to compete with clubs around them, despite reaching the Champions League semi-finals during his tenure and eventually the final in 2019.
“A team like us, Tottenham, was fighting for titles with those above us and every year in the top four, getting to the semi-finals of Champions League without being able to do a transfer for 18 months, all because we needed to get used to the [financial fair play rules],” he said.
“They were so strict with us but also so lenient with others. Because of that, that’s why I say: it’s all very strange.”
City’s case followed an investigation based on leaked documents published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel in 2018. The Premier League charged the club in 2023, with the allegations covering financial information, payments and other matters during the period under investigation.
Uefa had previously attempted to punish City over financial fair play breaches. The club were given a two-year ban from European competition in 2020 and fined €30m, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban after finding that some alleged breaches were time-barred and that others had not been sufficiently established.
Pochettino said the scale of the Premier League verdict made it difficult to identify a punishment that could compensate for the consequences of the alleged breaches.
“Whatever punishment [they choose], it’s impossible to turn back time,” he said. “It’s done a lot of damage, more than anything the guidelines. At the end of the day many clubs followed the rules and some didn’t.”
He added: “It’s sad. It is a huge sadness. At the end of the day we get into a situation where what got celebrated wasn’t that real, what seemed good maybe wasn’t so good, what didn’t look good maybe was good but couldn’t be good because of what happened.
“At the end of the day, we went through something where sporting fairness didn’t exist. So, how do you repair everything that was damaged because of that, if it’s true all of the 114 rules that were broken, we’ve lived through a period of deception.”
Pochettino has also questioned the consequences of Chelsea’s separate financial case. The club were found guilty of breaches involving undisclosed payments to players, coaches and other parties, with the Premier League imposing a substantial fine and a nine-month academy transfer ban.
Pochettino was Tottenham manager when Chelsea won the 2016-17 Premier League title, with Spurs finishing second.
“We should win one title, one Premier League,” Pochettino said last week. “They were punished, they admitted, so that’s it? The title should be for the team that was second.”
The former Tottenham and Chelsea manager said clubs competing for the title should have been operating under the same financial conditions.
“Maybe with the same rules, if we apply the same things, maybe we could’ve signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals,” he said. “It’s not me complaining. It’s the truth.”
