Go with what you know.
Fabio Paratici’s first impulse as Tottenham Hotspur’s new managing director of football back in the summer was to call Antonio Conte.
Whatever might have later transpired in the transfer market, Conte would have been the big signing with which Paratici announced himself in the Premier League — a coup perhaps only he could have pulled off for Spurs.
After Nuno Espirito Santo’s dismissal on Monday having been in charge for only 10 Premier League games, it was entirely understandable that an operator as determined as Paratici, the man who surprised everyone in bringing Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus in 2018, would double down and go even harder for Conte.
This time, barring some very late drama, he looks to have succeeded, and the swiftness with which he has acted changes Tottenham’s prospects.
All of a sudden, they will have one of the best coaches in the world, fresh from winning another league title, his fifth in nine seasons of club management, and it shouldn’t be long until they are a force to be reckoned with again.
Why didn’t it happen in the summer?
When Conte became coach of Inter Milan in 2019, he said: “In the beginning I can accept not having much chance of winning, even if, as a limit, it’s just a one per cent chance. There just has to be a chance.”
It was therefore tempting to conclude that in the summer Conte felt Tottenham had no chance whatsoever of challenging for silverware. But that would be an exaggeration.
When Conte judges a project, he evaluates the credibility of the club who are expressing an interest in him. Spurs were not found lacking in this regard. They have the best facilities in the world — Italy used the Lodge at the Tottenham Hotspur training centre as their base before the European Championship final at Wembley in July — and with crowds back to 100 per cent capacity at their £1 billion new stadium following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions the projected uplift in revenue should provide significant monies for recruitment.
The presence of Paratici, with whom Conte worked at Juventus, strengthened Tottenham’s hand and offered the kind of reassurances that Beppe Marotta, another former colleague, provided him with at Inter. Marotta was Juventus’ CEO during Conte’s time in charge there and without him it is unlikely Inter would have been able to persuade the former Italy midfielder to accept their offer to cross one of Serie A’s fiercest divides.
Paratici has effectively played the same role for Spurs.
Conte was always his first choice to succeed the sacked Jose Mourinho and knowing as much mattered then as it does now. Still, one or two questions did arise from a very positive Zoom call when Conte’s charisma and sheer force of personality impressed the Spurs hierarchy.
Talks did not break down in the summer over personal terms. The reservations were instead about how much money could be raised through sales, particularly in a market impacted by COVID-19. The future of Harry Kane was still uncertain then, even though Tottenham were determined not to sell him to Manchester City.
Conte had just left Inter in their post-title afterglow, knowing cuts were coming and with the (accurate) feeling that the club’s financial problems would lead to the sales of his top goalscorer (Romelu Lukaku) and a leading assist provider (Achraf Hakimi). It would be incoherent to join another club where the future of their star striker was unclear. Paratici had only just arrived at Tottenham too.
Contrast that with Marotta, who spent six months getting to know the character of Inter’s squad from the inside before Conte’s appointment.
Leaving all that aside, everything seemed to be set… only for Conte to have a change of heart.
So, why is it happening now?
For a start, there are fewer unknowns. In the end, Tottenham didn’t lose Kane after all. Paratici was able to replace Toby Alderweireld with Cristian Romero and you might say it’s somewhat serendipitous Inter were looking at Emerson Royal as a successor to Hakimi at the time of his move from San Siro to Paris Saint-Germain. Players such as Serge Aurier are now gone and while Spurs still have some work to do in reshaping the squad, it’s undeniable they are further along than was the case in July.
As for Conte, he did not leave Inter with the intention of taking a sabbatical. He can’t switch off from football and has spent the last couple of months working as a pundit on Champions League nights for Sky Italia.
As Conte revealed towards the end of his two years coaching Italy from 2014-16, he misses the smell of freshly cut grass at the training ground and likened those months between European Championship qualifiers to being a car that’s been forgotten about in the garage. He needs to rev the engine.
In the summer, Conte could also be forgiven for keeping his options open and staying patient rather than leaping at the first opportunity to come along. The Real Madrid job became available and there were also doubts about whether Mauricio Pochettino would remain at PSG.
How eager Conte is to return to work is signalled by his willingness to forego something sacrosanct to him: a six-week pre-season and open transfer window. He was prepared to make such a compromise in the event the Manchester United job became available mid-season and knows the Premier League is the place to be, now more than ever. While the pandemic hit English football hard, it has come out of it far stronger than its rivals in Italy, Spain, France and Germany —leagues that were already trailing in its wake.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that, in time, United may come to regret not acting on Conte’s interest in taking over at Old Trafford.
Perhaps their hesitation also gave him cause for reflection. If Real Madrid decided to go with what they know by reappointing Carlo Ancelotti, PSG and Pochettino stayed together and United were not courageous enough to break with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, it puts Spurs in a new light. More incentive to take these opportunities when they come.
Conte has also had four more months to study European football and will know the strengths and weaknesses of this Tottenham squad and their competition better than he did when he first spoke to the club in the summer, when his focus was exclusively on Inter. He has also had a chance to see how they operated in the ensuing transfer window and what they’re willing to spend. It’s hard to imagine the acquisition of Romero from Atalanta not meeting with his approval.
Coming back to London already had an appeal in the summer.
It’s a city Conte’s family knows and have come back to in the three years since he left Chelsea.
What kind of football can Tottenham fans expect?
Conte is often mischaracterised as a defensive coach. He’s nothing of the sort. Balance is what matters to him and yet his response to Inter losing the 2019-20 Europa League final 3-2 to Sevilla was to make the team even more top-heavy.
Go back to the start of last season and he played two strikers, a No 10 to get Spurs old boy Christian Eriksen (below) into the team and a couple of wingers disguised as wing-backs in Hakimi and Ivan Perisic. At left centre-back was an attacking full-back by the name of Aleksandar Kolarov.
By the October, he’d reined that in a little, developing a then 21-year-old Alessandro Bastoni over Kolarov, who turns 36 next week, and leaving Eriksen and Hakimi out, only to reintegrate them in the second half of the season when they had been coached into playing exactly the way he wanted.
Conte’s style is not counter-attacking. He bristled when Fabio Capello made that assertion, for the simple reason it overlooked the meticulously choreographed passing patterns he designed to help lure opponents onto Inter. His players were then taught to neatly play through the pressure and release Lukaku, Hakimi and Lautaro Martinez into wide open spaces where, frankly, they were devastating.
As Juventus and Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini has noted, Conte is a master at getting the best out of strikers, syncing up Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente, Graziano Pelle and Eder as well as Lu-La — as Lukaku and Martinez were known in Serie A. Only Atalanta did better than Inter’s 170 top-flight goals in Conte’s two seasons and the difference between them last year was a single goal.
Prepare to see Kane dovetail with a partner as well as he ever has in a Tottenham shirt and for Conte to work on mining the midfield for goals.
Claudio Marchisio, Arturo Vidal, Paul Pogba and Nicolo Barella have all made breakthroughs in the fulfilment of their true potential under Conte, regularly popping up and making the difference in the opponents’ penalty area. Watching what Conte coaxes out of Tanguy Ndombele promises to be fascinating.
Lost causes may also rediscover their best under him, providing they have the right work ethic and are functional to the system Conte implements.
Andrea Ranocchia had to give up the captain’s armband at Inter years before Conte arrived. He spent time on loan at Sampdoria and Hull City. But Conte made him a valued back-up and the 33-year-old defender rewarded his trust with dependable stand-in performances. The same was true to a greater degree with former Manchester United pair Matteo Darmian and Alexis Sanchez (the latter, incidentally, has been involved in 21 goals in his last 23 Serie A starts for Inter).
While it may not conform exactly to the “Tottenham DNA” that Daniel Levy insisted the club would return to at the end of last season, appointing Conte gets them closer to it than you might imagine and is a compromise worth making.
His football is certainly easier on the eye than anything Nuno could offer and Conte DNA is winning DNA.
What about his man-management?
At Inter, Conte was proud of how he included and engaged every single player. “I coach everyone,” he said.
When the fixture list got congested, as it did during the pandemic, and the injuries pile up, Conte appreciated just how important it was to improve all the 23 players at his disposal. He told those not in the team their time would come and when it did, they would need to care, be prepared and feel involved.
While Lukaku and Martinez grabbed the headlines as the most prolific match-winners on the team, Inter had 17 different goalscorers last season and 18 in Conte’s first season. He blended experience with youth. Age doesn’t matter to Conte as long as you work hard, play hard and perform. Some of the stars of his Inter team — Bastoni, Barella, Martinez and Hakimi were 20, 22 and 21 respectively at the time of his appointment or their acquisition.
(Photo: Fabrizio Carabelli/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Conte will strive to create the “sense of belonging” Italian coaches obsess over. He wants the personal and professional to overlap, so players spend their free time going out for sushi together and forming relationships that go beyond the pitch.
The spirit he imbued at Inter was unbreakable. When wages were deferred during the pandemic and the club experienced financial problems, it was never allowed to affect the team on the pitch. Conte and the players were committed to the cause and each other. When Conte and Martinez had a heated exchange after the Argentinian was substituted against Roma in May, the players organised a comedy boxing match between the pair at the training ground with Lukaku playing the role of MC Michael Buffer.
Conte will make Tottenham a family again.
Who will be coming with him?
Conte is renowned for having a large backroom staff, which underlines his attention to detail.
Don’t expect it to swell to the size it reached at Inter. Antonio Pintus, the renowned fitness trainer who worked with Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid, is back at the Spanish giants. Matteo Pincella, the nutritionist credited with transforming Lukaku’s diet, stayed on at Inter after Conte left and also continues to work with the Italian national team. Other assistants from his time at Chelsea, such as Angelo Alessio, have struck out on their own.
Conte will be flanked by Cristian Stellini, who stands in for him when he’s serving a touchline ban and sees his role as making the boss understand the club he joins, and making the players understand him. Conte’s brother Gianluca will collaborate with the match analysts in preparing film to study opponents. Long video analysis sessions with the two-hours-plus running time of a Dune and No Time To Die are a trademark of Conte and were the subject of the thesis he submitted for his coaching badges. “Players can’t make excuses in front of the (video)tape”, is one of Conte’s sayings.
In Pintus’ place, you can expect Stefano Bruno and Costantino Coratti to be licking the players into prime shape. Tottenham will not be bottom of the league table in distance covered for very long. On the contrary, they’ll be back to Pochettino-era fitness levels in no time, if not fitter.
Bruno began working with Conte when he was starting in management at Arezzo in the mid-2000s and places particular emphasis on recovery and prevention. “How you eat and sleep are also important aspects when it comes to getting results,” he said during his time at Inter.
As for Hugo Lloris and Pierluigi Gollini, it might be the case that Conte promotes a goalkeeping coach from within, as was the case in his last job. Wakeboard enthusiast Gianluca Spinelli, a colleague with Italy and at Chelsea, is now at PSG and has been ever since Gianluigi Buffon spent 2018-19 at the Parc des Princes.
How long does it take him to get his teams looking good?
Typically, no time at all.
Conte’s teams tend to come out of the blocks like peak Usain Bolt in the Olympic 100m final. They actually make a marathon look like a sprint, so hard do his sides run.
Juventus became only the third Italian team of all time to go undefeated in his 2011-12 debut season. Chelsea won their opening three Premier League games with Conte in the dugout. Inter also made a statement from the get-go, blowing away Lecce, their new manager’s hometown club, 4-0 at San Siro in August 2019 and taking maximum points from their first six Serie A matches.
That said, the circumstances are different at Tottenham.
This is the first time Conte has taken a job in-season since 2007-08 when he stepped in for Marco Materazzi’s Giuseppe at second-division Bari just after Christmas. He comfortably saved them from relegation, then took them up as Serie B champions a year later.
A more recent comparison can be made with how he prepared Italy for the European Championship in France. Conte spent the year building up to the finals dabbling with 4-3-3, aware that the squad’s most talented players at the time were wingers.
“In those 50 days (of preparation between training camp starting and the Euros ending), Antonio completed a masterpiece,” defender Chiellini explained. “At international level, you only see your manager and team-mates in the autumn, then you say, ‘Cheerio’, and meet up again in March. If you miss a call-up in the spring because of a slight injury it means you’re not around the national team for six months. The match calendar is extremely unbalanced in that regard.
“Conte was then forced into a change too. He had built his system around Claudio Marchisio and Marco Verratti and then lost both of them — Claudio did his ACL, Marco needed an operation on his groin. Antonio had to start from scratch and redesign everything. We worked every single minute in France.”
It showed.
Conte made a national team play like a finely-tuned club side in no time at all, compressing his ideas and articulating them so well that the most underwhelming squad Italy has sent to a major tournament since the 1950 World Cup looked like they might actually win Euro 2016 before then-world champions Germany beat them on penalties in the quarter-finals.
Make no mistake, time will be at an even greater premium at Tottenham with a mix of Premier League, Carabao Cup, Europa Conference League, the November internationals and the relentless Christmas to New Year programme on the horizon. At least with Italy, Conte was able to call on players such as Chiellini, Andrea Barzagli and Leonardo Bonucci, who were so well-versed in his system from their time under him at Juventus they could fast-track the system change. He does not have the same know-how in the Tottenham squad so will need time.
Don’t be surprised to hear him initially call for patience then.
Expectation management is tough when you are instantly welcomed as a guarantee of trophies.
While it may take a little longer than usual for Conte to start racking up win after win at Spurs, it’ll be worth it in the end.
Ray Black » 21 авг 2021, 19:45 
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