Ex-Manager watch: Antonio Conte

[Oh Teddy Teddy]

This post is a good example of how you can character assassinate anyone if you try enough.

Maybe I want a manager who doesn't fall out with players and loan them out in January. Maybe I want a manager who can win the cl despite spending lots of cash. If you can't win the league this season with bloody man city you must be awful!

There we go, done it with pep.

Good points.

Pep.

 

[Stoof]

CHAT ABOUT ANY NEW MANAGER YOU'D LIKE SHOULD GO IN THE NEW MANAGER THREAD PLEASE. IT'S THE ONE COMPETING WITH TOP SPOT IN THE FORUM SO YOU CAN'T REALLY MISS IT.

 

[dontcallme]

CHAT ABOUT ANY NEW MANAGER YOU'D LIKE SHOULD GO IN THE NEW MANAGER THREAD PLEASE. IT'S THE ONE COMPETING WITH TOP SPOT IN THE FORUM SO YOU CAN'T REALLY MISS IT.

Is this a cryptic?

 

[Riandor]

… edited: sorry stoof, will move.

 

[Vwbottom]

Part 2

Some at the club were also unhappy with Conte’s habit of providing very little notice for when training sessions would take place, which made planning difficult for players and staff alike. Medical and sports science staff would often not know their schedules more than a few days beforehand. Clubs always prefer a manager who provides the schedules well in advance. Conte’s short-notice methods left the club unable to organise a warm-weather training camp during the World Cup break, because all the best venues had been booked by clubs who planned ahead.


Part of the issue was with Conte himself. There are some coaches with exceptional people skills who know how to get through to struggling players, to put an arm around their shoulders and lift their confidence at difficult times. Conte is not one of them. Even his greatest advocates would admit motivating players out of a slump is not one of his strengths.

But plenty of Spurs players have seen their confidence and form drop and look as if they needed precisely the sort of personal motivation that does not come easily to Conte.

We also have to remember this has been a uniquely difficult season for Conte on a personal level. The loss of Gian Piero Ventrone in October hit the whole club hard, but especially Conte and the members of staff who had worked with him for years. Ventrone, more than anyone, was the man who would give players a hug and try to lift them individually. Later in the season, two other close friends — Gianluca Vialli and Sinisa Mihajlovic — passed away, while Conte himself missed a lot of games in February as he recovered from gallbladder surgery in Italy.

Conte certainly cannot be solely blamed for how bad the mood became. He has suffered, too.

Hanging over this whole season — and in fact, the entire Conte era — has been Conte’s contractual situation.

When Spurs tied him to a short-term deal it was in the hope that a new long-term contract could be agreed, but that meant going into this season with the clock ticking. As time went on, questions were inevitable from inside and outside the club as to whether Conte would be sticking around.

Conte had his doubts. He enjoyed elements of the Tottenham job, especially the quality of the facilities. He loves the daily process of training, competing and winning, so much so that some people who know him well say he is “addicted” to it. But he still ultimately sees himself as a coach who competes for league titles rather than for fourth place. And during a difficult year, he missed life at home in Italy, where his family stayed.

Talks started before the World Cup and, back then, there was confidence at the club they could secure Conte’s future. Talks resumed again on December 12, but by this point, Conte’s mind was already close to being made up. He did not want to sign a new deal and tie himself to a long-term future at Spurs. He just wanted to end the season strongly enough to be able to paint his time at the club as a success.

But it put Spurs in a strange position, with the head coach running his contract down and the club unwilling to take control of the situation. That added to a sense of drift; of not knowing how to plan beyond the summer. And no one picks up on these feelings quicker than a dressing room.

Even if many of the players stopped enjoying playing for Conte long ago, they were broadly willing to go along with it as long as it was delivering results. They knew what Conte had achieved in his career and felt privileged to work with such a decorated coach. But as results faltered, the mood started to turn. And Conte never showed any interest in trying to repair it.

By the second half of this season, the mood inside the camp, according to multiple training-ground sources granted anonymity to protect relationships, was “toxic” or even “rotten”. The tension Conte had brought to the club had finally proved too much. Players were physically and mentally worn out, fed up and bored. Staff were frustrated by Conte’s public criticisms of the medical team and transfer policy, his abrasive manner, his repeated insistence that Spurs were not set up to compete.

Training-ground sources have also pointed to the fact that even if players do not consciously stop playing for a manager, their incentives change as soon as they know he will be gone by the end of the season. Naturally, they would lose some of their motivational edge.

There was even a feeling from some who remembered the last few months of Mourinho’s tenure that the last few months of Conte were worse than the dismal spring of 2021. There was a widespread feeling in the camp by the end that Conte simply did not want to be there any more. He cut an increasingly isolated figure, with only one ally left at the club in Paratici, and no other close relationships he could fall back on. Players felt that the energy and passion from his first season, which they had responded so well to, had gone. The way Conte confronted Thomas Tuchel in August, which they loved, now felt like a distant memory.

In Conte’s first season, the players also appreciated how willing Conte had been to defend them all in public. But when Conte hammered his players at Southampton for being “selfish” and only playing “for themselves”, it brought into the open how broken the relationship was between manager and squad, even if some fans and pundits agreed with the sentiment. Conte knew he was going, but wanted to make sure he got his retaliation in before he was sacked. Most Spurs managers eventually lose the dressing room. Conte ensured that this time the dressing room had lost him first.


It was telling that the best league run of the season — and this is a low bar — was four wins out of five in February, achieved when Conte was largely absent. Spurs even beat Manchester City and Chelsea at home, the only times this season they have beaten another big club. The pressing question was what effect Conte’s return would have. And at this point it felt like an open question: some gloomily predicted that the relatively upbeat mood would soon darken once Conte was back. But some players were still backing Conte at this point, and hoped his return would give the squad a lift. Ultimately the pessimists were proved right, with Conte’s return only hastening his departure.

And even the uptick in form while Conte was in Italy — like Mourinho’s five straight wins in February and March 2021 — was not enough to halt the dramatic slide of the head coach’s standing in the eyes of the fans. During Conte’s first season, his name was often sung by the crowd, and during the 3-0 battering of Arsenal there seemed to be a genuine connection between him and the supporters. But this season they lost patience, not only with the football but with the sense that Conte was not fully committed to the job. It was telling how even when Spurs beat Chelsea, with Conte recovering at home from surgery, his name was never chanted by the crowd.

His reputation has not recovered from the FA Cup exit to Sheffield United, when Kane and Romero were rested and Spurs lost 1-0 to a much-changed Championship side. It showed how little Conte cared about the cups and it was a point of no return for Conte with his public. The next week, Spurs limped out of the Champions League, losing 1-0 on aggregate to an average AC Milan side, barely putting them under any pressure. When Conte replaced Kulusevski with Davinson Sanchez, with Spurs chasing a goal to stay in the competition, the decision was booed. Everyone remembered the reaction to Nuno replacing Moura with Steven Bergwijn in his last game, the moment that effectively ushered in the Conte era at Spurs. Some fans left the stadium that night singing the name of Mauricio Pochettino.

The serial winner had failed to deliver a trophy to Tottenham.

So how do we reflect on the Conte era?

At first glance, we see some spinnable positives. Conte came in and made the team better, the first job of any manager. He fulfilled the initial promises made to Levy, providing energy and direction and impetus to a club that hadn’t seen much of those over the past few years. He got them playing better than they had done since Pochettino and got them back into the Champions League.

It should not be forgotten that Spurs finished sixth and seventh the two seasons before Conte showed up and would likely have done the same last season had they stuck with Nuno. And if Spurs finish fourth this year — which is where they are now — and play in the Champions League next season under a new manager, then some of that would be down to the solid foundation Conte put in place. But then do you pay a manager £15million per year just to keep coming fourth?

No one would look back on the last 16 months as a positive or even worthwhile experience for either party. It is impossible to ignore how bad the mood is now and how relieved so many people will be to see him go. The downside of this season surely outweighs the upside of the last one. The friction between Conte and the squad, Conte and the club, Conte and large sections of the fanbase, has left a sour taste that nobody has liked. And the football itself has been awful all season, ugly and boring, enjoyed by nobody playing it or watching it. The only moment that fans will remember from this season was Harry Kane breaking the all-time Spurs goalscoring record in February, which Conte sadly missed.

Despite all of that, this still feels like a wasted opportunity. Conte is a brilliant coach but may not even complete one full season at Spurs. He never signed the contract that would have allowed him to build on his strong start. He never won a trophy or even came close to one. He never got the same grip on this that he had on Juventus, Chelsea or Inter. He has never left less of an impression on a club in his senior career than he has on Spurs.

Perhaps this sense of a wasted moment was why Conte has clung on so long, even after losing the players and the crowd. It has looked this month as if Levy was still hoping that an appointment he felt so proud of could still somehow work out in the end.

Conte may well argue that Spurs have failed to make the most of his talents by failing to provide him with the tools he needed to win. Maybe that is true, although Tottenham did more for him than they have done for any of his predecessors in the transfer market. They were repeatedly willing to change up years of transfer policy to try to keep Conte happy. And it was never enough.

Ultimately, the gap between what Conte wanted and what Tottenham actually are proved too big to bridge. He needs to be at a club who can compete to win the league. Tottenham are not there yet. This was the fundamental misalignment at the heart of the Conte appointment. And the sense that Conte was stepping down a level or punching below his weight by working for Spurs has proved far more corrosive than anyone expected.

It would have taken a different Conte, or a different Tottenham, for this to work.

Hmmmm feel this article could have been longer

 

[IfiHadTheWings]

CHAT ABOUT ANY NEW MANAGER YOU'D LIKE SHOULD GO IN THE NEW MANAGER THREAD PLEASE. IT'S THE ONE COMPETING WITH TOP SPOT IN THE FORUM SO YOU CAN'T REALLY MISS IT.

Not really surprising that we are failing to find it considering we're Spurs and we don't typically do top spot.

 

[beats1]

I don’t even know why we have a new manager thread, we haven’t sacked our current one yet

 

[bat-chain]

I don’t even know why we have a new manager thread, we haven’t sacked our current one yet

He does seem to have stopped turning up though.

 

[CheeseGromit]

He does seem to have stopped turning up though.

Does he ?
What arrangement does e have with the club He has just undergone major surgery.
I know there are rumours abound but is AWOL one of them ?

 

[Dougal]

I don’t even know why we have a new manager thread, we haven’t sacked our current one yet

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Unless your preparation is shit. In which case it makes very little difference, it’ll be in the hands of the gods.

 

[Tucker]

Can’t believe he’s still here.

 

[dontcallme]

Can’t believe he’s still here.

Yep, Dougal is here for life.

 

[-Afri-Coy-]

CHAT ABOUT ANY NEW MANAGER YOU'D LIKE SHOULD GO IN THE NEW MANAGER THREAD PLEASE. IT'S THE ONE COMPETING WITH TOP SPOT IN THE FORUM SO YOU CAN'T REALLY MISS IT.

Sorry guys this text is too small for me to read can anyone summarise? Anyone?

 

[Trent Crimm]

SSN using “should Conte leave” instead of the sacking narrative earlier in the week.

 

[Ginola+Tonic]

Sky Sports news reporting Conte could still yet stay?!?!

I hope this is one of their pulled it from their arses reports.

 

[Bluto Blutarsky]

Sky Sports news reporting Conte could still yet stay?!?!

I hope this is one of their pulled it from their arses reports.

Levy is paralyzed by indecision...

 

[rabbikeane]

If he leads us for the rest of the season, then I hope it is from Italy with Stellini and Mason hands on over here.

 

[thecook]

If he leads us for the rest of the season, then I hope it is from Italy with Stellini and Mason hands on over here.

Spurs. The first club to let their manager work from home...

'Manager's Office Turned Into Cheese Room'

 

[Harrier]

Hmmmm feel this article could have been longer

Must be paid per word!

 

[Trent Crimm]

Spurs. The first club to let their manager work from home...

Leading the way with a hybrid model.