As the Antonio Conte period seemingly involves an finish at Tottenham Hotspur, it’s pure to mirror on how a regime that promised a lot ought to finish in such disappointment.
Over the previous few days, ever since Conte successfully made the state of affairs untenable by torching his relationship with your entire membership, the controversy has raged about who comes out of this wanting worst.
Is it Conte himself? The supposed serial winner, who has in the end did not encourage his gamers and now fallen out with them to such a spectacular diploma.
Or chairman Daniel Levy? The man who, in ignoring the warnings that Conte would behave precisely as he has, now oversees a membership about to be in the identical place they have been two years in the past after sacking Jose Mourinho.
Maybe it’s the gamers who’re the topic of your ire. After all, they’ve been the fixed within the churn of 4 head coaches (as soon as Conte goes) shedding their jobs in lower than 4 years.
And then there’s the status of the membership itself, which finds itself in circus mode as soon as once more, its title dragged by the mud by its supervisor.
Many of us within the media may even be feeling a bit of sheepish when Conte’s departure is confirmed, given how taken in we have been on the time of his appointment and on the finish of final season when these “serial winner” credentials appeared stronger than ever.
The actuality is that nobody comes out of this wanting good.
Despite his makes an attempt after the draw at Southampton to painting managing Tottenham as an unimaginable job, it’s simple to argue Conte’s status has suffered most of all.
Spurs’ appointment of Conte was seen as a coup in November 2021, however 16 months on, regardless of some notable successes, it’s exhausting to think about a Premier League membership going after him.
Too a lot aggro, an excessive amount of cash, an excessive amount of 3-4-3.
Conte was all the time at pains to emphasize how the job at Spurs was beneath him, however in so doing, he undermined his personal credibility. Why take a job that you just turned down a couple of months earlier and that you just don’t assume is at your degree?
Throughout his tenure, Conte has come throughout like somebody in a relationship he doesn’t wish to be in, however on the similar time needing the companionship and so sticking it out whereas consistently undermining his associate. The message was basically: ‘Yes, I’ll stick with you, however you’re fortunate to have me, and I received’t be right here for very lengthy’ — underlined by the shortness of his contract.
The Premier League job Conte actually wished was the Manchester United one, and it’s an indictment of how the panorama has shifted that on the finish of final season, many United followers should have wished they’d employed him however now can be feeling fairly smug concerning the membership taking part in the lengthy recreation and bringing in Erik ten Hag as an alternative.
We shouldn’t neglect how effectively Conte did final season, or the attempting private circumstances he has endured in latest months, however a return to Italy now seems to be his most certainly choice. There have been whispers in April 2022 that he wished the Paris Saint-Germain job — options he denied — and in some ways, it might seem a very good match. But his disappointing European report would certainly depend in opposition to him there, as it’d with different huge golf equipment on the continent.
GO DEEPER
Antonio Conte’s painful relationship with the Champions League
Given the wretched method Spurs exited this season’s Champions League to AC Milan, his time in north London received’t have improved his status. The AC Milan tie additionally illustrated Conte’s warning and lack of tactical flexibility — two costs which have develop into extra pronounced all through his time at Spurs.
Conte now finds himself at a crossroads, doubtlessly simply one of many wandering big-name managers on the gun-for-hire carousel, able akin to Jose Mourinho’s after Manchester United. Where persons are nonetheless prepared to present him the good thing about the doubt given his earlier successes, and the ambivalence about how a lot this failure was his fault, however questioning whether or not after a decade on the high, he’s beginning to decline.
Failing to forecast that Conte’s finest days may need been behind him — as Mourinho’s proved to be when he pitched up at Spurs — is among the costs levelled in opposition to Levy. Was one other Chelsea hand-me-down identified for reactive soccer actually what was required lower than seven months after ditching one other supervisor matching that description? Especially given he had spoken concerning the want for a head coach with “Spurs DNA” within the intervening interval.
In equity to Levy, Conte was firstly introduced in to rescue the season and safe Champions League soccer, and he did that (a powerful achievement, pulled off with some type). But his appointment in the end proved to be a sticking plaster and one with little strategic or long-term benefit. Spurs discover themselves just about in the identical place they have been in two years in the past after sacking Mourinho — and at an enormous price financially.
Perhaps most damning is the truth that nobody can say Levy wasn’t warned. When United have been sounding out earlier colleagues about what Conte was wish to work with, some at Chelsea responded with variants of, ‘Well, if you thought Jose was hard work…’ Tottenham would certainly have heard comparable. Even within the public sphere, Conte has all the time been unstable, so none of this has come as a shock. His depressing second season at Chelsea was eerily much like the one at present taking part in out at Spurs.
Then, like now, Chelsea’s gamers bored with Conte’s depth and temper swings. Many Tottenham followers have little sympathy for this sentiment, and agreed with the gist of what Conte stated on Saturday concerning the gamers’ failings. In their view, the gamers have in the end let down 4 consecutive Spurs managers and so they too ought to take a bit of the blame for the failure of the Conte period.
Yes, the gamers should take some accountability, however given the ferocity of the competitors, you merely can’t make it as an elite-level footballer with out extraordinary psychological energy and dedication. So to counsel that the Spurs gamers are someway collectively missing the mandatory fortitude to succeed doesn’t add up. With the overwhelming majority of footballers of this degree, if you happen to give them correct constructions and somebody who can encourage them they are going to reply positively. Can Spurs actually say that within the combative Mourinho, the clearly short-term Conte, and the patently not-good-enough Nuno Espirito Santo they’ve supplied the gamers with the mandatory constructions?
Under the best supervisor in Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham gamers gave every part and punched above their weight for 5 years, till ultimately, and doubtless understandably, they and the supervisor ran out of steam.
Under Conte as effectively, the gamers carried out impressively to safe that fourth-placed end final 12 months, however some may need felt rather less motivated subsequently, realizing for a while that their supervisor is off on the finish of the season.
In any case, the notion of Tottenham’s gamers being unmanageable or having some shared flaw, as Conte urged on the weekend, serves to wreck the membership’s status as an entire and feed narratives that have been already exhausting to shift. There are individuals within the recreation who’ve expressed the concept in the previous few weeks that if Mourinho and Conte have failed at Spurs, perhaps nobody can succeed there.
But perhaps one of many classes from Conte’s time at Spurs is that soccer is typically too deferential to its established names. This can positively be the case within the media, the place managers usually commerce on their former glories longer than they deserve. Witness Gary Neville predicting final season that Rafa Benitez’s Everton can be that 12 months’s huge overachievers, or on the flipside the way in which Brighton & Hove Albion have been derided by Graeme Souness for hiring Roberto De Zerbi, “someone who doesn’t know our game”, in September.
With Conte, many purchased into the hype and the big-name pedigree. When Spurs beat Arsenal 3-0 in May to in the end pinch the ultimate Champions League spot, the prevailing narrative was that the grasp had schooled the apprentice. And that Spurs had future-proofed themselves by hiring a sure-fire success in comparison with their rivals who had gone down an altogether totally different path. The divergent fortunes of the 2 golf equipment within the subsequent 10 months have made a mockery of that view.
And so right here we’re, inching in direction of Conte’s departure, and with the sense that nobody comes out of this effectively. To use one among Conte’s favorite phrases, everybody concerned has needed to undergo.
