‘You either improve or you die’ – What

it’s like to play for Antonio Conte

Charlie Eccleshare and more 5/Nov/2021  83  
After the Tottenham squad had spoken to their colleagues
at Chelsea about what to expect from Antonio Conte as head coach,
some felt a degree of trepidation.
This is perhaps understandable. After all, they would have been told
about the ferocious work ethic, the instructions during training that are
so relentless he has to constantly suck throat lozenges and the volcanic
temper that can erupt when things are not going his way.
Most who have worked with Conte have a story or two to tell. Andrea
Pirlo remembers his habit for chucking bottles across the dressing room
(he regretted his station in the corner of the room that was invariably
right in the line of fire), Eden Hazard joked that he was blessed to be a
winger as it meant having Conte screaming in his ear for only half the
game, and Giorgio Chiellini said players were “not tired — dead” after
his training sessions.
Tiemoue Bakayoko said soon after joining Chelsea that: “Sometimes I
get the feeling I have to make even more effort in training than I do in a
match. That’s the level of intensity he demands every day in what we
do.”
But the Spurs players were also told that if you embrace Conte’s
methods then the rewards are huge. Which is why those such as Harry
Kane, desperate to finally win some silverware, are so enthused by
Conte’s appointment.
Not that his frenzied, sometimes maniacal energy is for everyone. There
will be some at Spurs who will go the way of many of his players at
Chelsea. Burnt out by and fed up with Conte’s uncompromising
demands and constant appetite for conflict. So much so that it is believed
several players would have pushed for a move in 2018 if Conte hadn’t
been sacked.
“He is so demanding, it’s almost psychopathic,” says one source in Italy.
“He seems crazy at times.”
After speaking to those at Chelsea and getting a sense of how Conte
operates, the Spurs players should have taken a deep breath and prepared
themselves. For the meticulous physical and tactical training, the dietary
requirements that will see goji berries and shirataki “miracle” noodles
added to their diets and the half-time rages when things are not going to
plan.
But they will also be working with a head coach who likes to foster a
team spirit and camaraderie, and demands that his squad become a tight-
knit group.
This is what it’s like to play for Antonio Conte…

Conte’s work ethic is legendary, and he expects similar from his players.
In his first press conference at Chelsea, he used the word “work”, or one
of its derivatives, 32 times in a little under an hour, including one
response where he insisted he was “a worker who likes to work”.
After news of his move to Tottenham began to circulate earlier this
week, social media was abuzz with quotes of his celebrating the value of
work. One of the most famous comes from an interview with Thierry
Henry while at Chelsea: “I always talk about education and respect. I
give this. But I demand this. And if someone hasn’t a good attitude in
the training session or good behaviour in different circumstances, I
prefer to kill him.”
Tottenham’s players, if they embrace Conte’s work ethic, will be
imbued with a similar dedication. “He never stops working,” Hazard
told the Guardian in 2016, with Chelsea en route to the title. “Whether
we win or lose, it doesn’t matter. He works, so we work. Work, work,
work. And we all know that in football, and all sports really, you have to
work so hard to reach the summit.”

Pirlo has nothing but praise for Conte (Photo: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
The point is that working with Conte comes down to how much sacrifice
players are willing to put in to reach their goals. As Hazard put it: “If
someone had told us before the season that if we did everything Conte
asked of us we’d have a chance to become champions again, we’d all
have signed up.”
Spurs’ players will, first of all, see Conte’s indefatigability during
training sessions, which are physically and mentally extremely
demanding. Many of the Tottenham squad felt physically undercooked
playing for Jose Mourinho last season, and after a brief uptick following
Nuno Espirito Santo’s arrival in the summer, have remained less fit than
most of their rivals.
They can expect big changes under Conte, who often talks about how his
players will have “to suffer”. Training under him is intense — and will
be even more so with the confirmation that Giampiero Ventrone, whose
nickname is The Marine, will be one of Conte’s fitness coaches.
Ventrone was on Marcelo Lippi’s staff at Juventus when Conte was a
player, and helped push the players to three straight Champions
League finals between 1996 and 1998. Spurs players should prepare to
be beasted on his watch.
Away from Ventrone, there are lots of sprinting and physical exercises
under Conte. He does not put so much of an emphasis on gym work —
he wants his players to be lean so his players can run more, rather than
bulk up. He will try to slim them down and get them to peak fitness,
similar to how Mauricio Pochettino used to.
“When he arrived at Juventus in 2011, there was some scepticism,” says
a source in Italy. “But he made an instant impression. The players said
they nearly threw up in his first sessions because they were so much
harder than his predecessors.”
One of those players was the legendary defender Chiellini, who said in
2018: “It is not only in the match with Conte. It is all day, every training
session. He is like a police sergeant.
“When you finish training, you are dead. Not tired — dead. You can do
it only because you believe in what he does. We had 40 days in France
and it was like entering another world. You are 100 per cent with him.
He creates an atmosphere, everyone gives energy to each other. For sure
he is one of the very best.”
The former Spurs striker Fernando Llorente, who also worked under
Conte at Juve, said in 2013: “The physical work is outrageous. We did
very special strength work with machines I knew nothing about,
explosive exercises. The workouts are more demanding than what I have
done in my career so far. It has taken me a lot to adapt to the workload.
It’s brutal.”
Fabio Quagliarella, his striker at Juventus, described Conte’s training
sessions as “back-breaking”. Bakayoko said soon after joining Chelsea
that: “Here we run a lot. I’ve run an awful lot since I arrived.”
Pre-season is massively important to Conte, and it’s a shame that Spurs
have missed out on that this year. During Conte’s first pre-season at
Chelsea, the players were pushed extremely hard and felt as though they
had never been drilled like that before. Working in intense American
heat, the players were left feeling exhausted — but the benefits were
obvious and so they quickly bought into what Conte was asking of them.
They felt fitter than pretty much every team they played and scored
several late goals. In Conte’s first eight Premier League matches,
Chelsea scored six goals in the 80th minute or later. Hazard especially
benefited, developing far greater muscle definition and looking as fit as
he ever had. How Conte turned around Hazard’s fortunes after a difficult
season the previous year bodes well for the Italian working with Kane,
who has not looked at his sharpest this season.
As with most areas of Conte’s management, his punishing regimens are
not for everyone. Take Danny Drinkwater, who Conte pushed hard to
sign in 2017. In his first game since joining, Chelsea played against
Drinkwater’s former club Leicester City, but Conte was informed that
the midfielder was way short of match fitness after an injury from the
previous campaign had disrupted pre-season. Conte’s response was to
double down straight away with intense sessions to try and get
Drinkwater into shape.
It backfired. Drinkwater picked up a calf injury within days that ruled
him out for six weeks, which turned out to be the first of several fitness
issues that season. Drinkwater’s Chelsea career has failed for all sorts of
reasons, but there was a feeling that his first season was badly
mishandled.
To get his players into the best physical shape, Conte also places a big
emphasis on diet and nutrition. He likes to hang up bits of paper around
the training ground, and often this will include dietary instructions. Goji
berries, which have long been used in medicine to support immunity to
illness and infection, and Rhodiola rosea supplements, which studies
show can reduce physical and mental fatigue, are favourites of his.
Journalist and author Alessandro Alciato explained in his 2015 book
Metodo Conte how Conte would set up tables at breakfast during his
time as Italy manager with individual food groups (one for protein, one
for fats, one for carbohydrates, and another for tea, cappuccino and fruit
juice).
The players had never experienced anything like this. Then they would
look up to see those bits of paper Conte likes to leave around. Messages
included mantras like: “Diet can make the difference between victory
and defeat” and “FUNDAMENTAL: Start the day with a good
breakfast. If breakfast is inadequate, your glycogen reserves may run
close to empty.”
Conte held a meeting with Hazard which helped reignite his form (Photo: Kieran Galvin/NurPhoto via
Getty Images)
At Chelsea, Conte was just as hands-on, and completely changed the
players’ diet — introducing more protein through chicken and salads,
and less carb-heavy foods like pasta. He did compromise on this,
though, when some of his players said they felt their energy levels
weren’t high enough going into games. Conte also banned his players
from having pizza, fizzy drinks, tomato ketchup and brown sauce. Black
rice and low-calorie shirataki noodles were introduced instead, and the
expectation at Spurs is that the diet will be tightly controlled and move
back towards how it was under Pochettino.
To ensure he understands how his methods are working, Conte is big on
screenings and physical assessments of players to gauge their body fat
and weight. He does this alongside his team of nutritionists and, if needs
be, puts players on strict diets.
This was the case with Romelu Lukaku after he joined Inter. Conte
thought Lukaku was too heavy for what he was demanding of him, and
promptly oversaw a programme that led to the striker losing three
kilograms. Lukaku’s prescribed diet included lean meats like chicken
and turkey and lots of vegetables, with fried food and mozzarella off-
limits. Carlos Tevez, who puts Conte at the same level as Sir Alex
Ferguson, was given a plan to help him lose six kilograms when he
returned from pre-season overweight in 2013.
We don’t know if any of the Spurs players will be subjected to a similar
regimen, but what tends to happen is that most of Conte’s players shed
weight because of the general dietary rules and intensity of the training
sessions. Again, this is more Pochettino and less Mourinho, who gave
the Tottenham players more leeway when it came to what they ate.
Conte is far more of a control freak in this regard. At Chelsea, he even
asked the owner of the Italian restaurant Gola, which he and some
players frequented, to send him pictures of what his players were eating.
No dietary detail is too small for Conte, and if he approaches his new job
like he has previous ones, then the Spurs players can expect their head
coach to compile lists with scores for their weight, fat percentage and
how they have performed in physical tests. These are marked green for
good, yellow for OK and red for bad. Anyone scoring badly can expect
pretty blunt advice about what they need to do to improve.

Ensuring his players are in peak physical condition is critical to Conte,

but so is ensuring his tactical messages are received crystal clear. The
idea is that through constant repetitions, they become automatic.
Conte’s preferred formations are a 3-4-3 (as seen at Chelsea) or a 3-5-2.
But he started his career using a 4-2-4 based on the ideas of Eugenio
Fascetti, whose Lecce side of the 1980s employed the system. In
possession, Conte’s teams still tend to move into a 4-2-4 system, with
the wing-backs moved high, the outside centre-backs pushed wide and
deep like full-backs, and the defensive midfielder dropping in alongside
the central centre-back.
To be able to successfully play Conte’s system requires painstaking
preparation on the training ground. Conte is known for constantly
stopping sessions to get his message across. At Chelsea, training was
often very stop-start as Conte would remind players if they had
wandered even marginally out of position. He’s hands-on and if players
are not in the right place he will come and physically drag them to where
he thinks they should be. Some of his players have felt as though he’s
playing a PlayStation, getting them to move precisely where he tells
them. For others, it has seemed as though they’re being brainwashed
through constant repetitions.
The general message from the more experienced players at Chelsea at
the time was that he was the “most demanding” of the club’s recent
managers.
Conte’s frequent exhortations at Cobham meant he would be constantly
sucking Ambrosoli al Miele lozenges in training and on the touchline
because his throat was always raw from all the shouting. Conte already
sounded a touch hoarse as he addressed the media on Thursday night
following the Europa Conference League win over Vitesse. “My wife
tells me my voice is more attractive like this, more sensual,” he said in
November 2016 with his Chelsea team in the middle of a 13-match
winning run. “But I prefer to have my normal voice.”
Conte is similarly vocal during matches, prompting that Hazard joke
about being relieved to only have to listen to his head coach for half of
the match. “There are times he’s screaming at you to do this or that,
telling you to concentrate and work, and you’re thinking: ‘Hold on,
we’re 4-0 up with five minutes to play. Easy, boss. Calm down…’. But
that’s the way he is,” Hazard said a few months into Conte’s Chelsea
reign.
As well as receiving these constant instructions on the pitch, Chelsea’s
players did far more tactical work than they had been used to previously.
At times, they wanted to have more fun, do more ball work. But that
sensational winning run convinced everyone of the merits of Conte’s
methods. “Everyone feels one step ahead of where we were last year
(under Mourinho),” Nemanja Matic said in November 2016.
One of Conte’s favourite ways to imprint his tactical messages is to play
an 11-v-11 game and map out their movements. Another exercise he
regularly employs is setting up an 11-v-0 scenario and making the
players repeat the same moves for 45 minutes — “Until he sees that
they’re working and that we’re starting to feel sick,” Pirlo wrote in his
2014 autobiography. “And that’s why we still win when it’s 11 against
11.”

Conte’s training sessions are incredibly intense (Photo: Claudio Villa/Getty Images)
Some Spurs players will be given individual drills to improve on a
particular area of their game — as was the case for Lukaku when Conte
took over at Inter. In the Belgian’s case, Conte would make Lukaku
stand with his back to goal and ask the rugged 6ft 4in centre-back
Andrea Ranocchia to go hard at him again and again. Every time Lukaku
lost the ball, they would start the drill again. This went on for three
months — constant repetitions until Conte was satisfied Lukaku was at
the level he needed to be.
Conte is willing to compromise on some things and at Chelsea, he
reduced the video sessions he made his players sit through. In Italy, it’s
typical for video sessions to last 15-30 minutes, but with the national
team, Conte’s sessions sometimes lasted an hour. He quickly realised at
Chelsea that his players were finding the sessions too much and so he
scaled them right back.
Conte will do whatever it takes to get across his tactical message —
sometimes running through movements with his players with the large
Subbuteo board he keeps in his office.

For someone with such precise ideas about pretty much every aspect of
his coaching, it’s unsurprising that Conte is known to erupt when things
don’t go to plan.
He has a fierce temper and it is standard practice for him to chuck
around any loose objects during half-time. Pirlo described his corner of
the dressing room as “the most dangerous spot in the whole of Turin…
especially at half-time”.
“He’s never happy,” Pirlo said of a man he described as “like a bear with
a sore head”. “There’s always some small detail that’s not quite right in
his mind. He can see in advance what might happen in the 45 minutes to
come.
“He’s obsessed over every last detail, exploiting it to his advantage. He
is allergic to error.
“Even when we’re winning, Conte comes in and hurls against the wall,
and thus my little corner, anything he can lay his hands on… almost
always full bottles of water. Fizzy water. Very fizzy water.”
Chiellini wrote in his autobiography: “Conte’s natural element is fire:
I’ve lost count of the whiteboards that have been thrown around the
dressing room at half-time. No one ever got hit by one in the heat of the
moment. But if he finds an object in his path, he’ll throw it, kick it, he
goes berserk. Then, when the game’s over, he lets the situation cool off,
as almost everyone does.”
But Conte tends not to say much after matches, especially if his team
have lost.
Shortly before he left Juventus, there was a famous incident before the
team’s final game of the season against Cagliari. Juventus were on 99
points and long since crowned champions, but Conte was obsessed with
becoming the first team to break the 100-point barrier in Serie A.
Conte was leading a video analysis session on the eve of the game when
he was interrupted by the club captain Gianluigi Buffon. Along with the
club’s CEO Giuseppe Marotta, Buffon entered the room and raised the
topic of bonuses owed to the squad for winning the title.
Conte lost it, screaming at Buffon: “I’ve had it with the lot of you. Get
out! I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Buffon tried to respond, but Conte shot back: “Shut up. You’re the
captain, Gigi, and you don’t understand a fucking thing.” Conte is then
said to have muttered “shame on you” as the squad left the room.
Interviewed for the book Metodo Conte, a philosophical Buffon said he
bore no ill will towards Conte for the incident. He suggested it was a
motivational tactic to keep Juve’s focus on the 100-point mark, and
added: “It’s the kind of thing I might have done. If it served his purpose,
it’s fine by me.”
Juventus ended up beating Cagliari 3-0 to finish with 102 points.
At Chelsea, the game in which Conte is said to have been most animated
was the famous defeat away at Arsenal that prompted the switch to a
back three and that 13-match winning streak. Chelsea were 3-0 down at
half-time, and such was Conte’s ranting and raving there were genuine
fears he might resign there and then. The club’s owner Roman
Abramovich was at the training ground for three days after that defeat,
underlining how seismic it felt at the time.
Conte admits he was extremely angry after that game and that it was a
difficult defeat to accept. He channelled that fury brilliantly to turn his
team around, but a variant of that rage is present after most defeats.
Even pre-season losses can infuriate Conte. One journalist remembers
being promised a one-on-one interview with him after a pre-season
game against Inter in Singapore in the summer of 2017. Chelsea lost the
game 2-1 and it was clear that Conte was furious, struggling to say
anything positive and unable to shake off the anger at losing the game.
The interview was eventually cut short with barely a grunt of
acknowledgement as Conte walked angrily onto the bus to leave the
stadium.
But alongside Conte’s red mists is the rousing rhetoric. The Tottenham
squad have already had an insight into his charisma after he gave a
stirring speech upon meeting the players on Tuesday afternoon. Conte
told the group he would help them win again, but that they had to give
absolutely everything for him, and that he would always be there for
them as long as they gave their all in training and matches.
For close observers of Conte’s career, it brought back memories of his
rallying cry upon taking over at Juventus a decade ago. “He got at our
pride,” midfielder Claudio Marchisio said last year. “He told us:
‘You’ve been seventh for two years. You’ve been awful for two years.
From now, on you either get your head down or get out’. He pushed us
to earn it on the pitch.“
Pirlo recalls Conte telling the players: “Every single person here has
performed badly over the last few seasons. We need to do whatever it
takes to pull ourselves up and start being Juve again. Turning around this
ship is not a polite request, it’s an order, a moral obligation. You guys
need to do only one thing and it’s pretty simple: follow me.”
In his next job as Italy head coach, Conte gathered the players in his first
squad and said: “I will call up only those players who deserve it.
Remember that I don’t need to explain myself to anyone.”
Before even taking over at Chelsea, Conte met with Hazard and
explained how he would help him rediscover his best form. “He spoke to
me about the difficult season I’d had, and what he expected of me,”
Hazard said in 2016. “I’d not scored many goals last season, but he saw
me as a goalscorer. He spoke a bit about the system he wanted to play,
the 3-4-3 or even one with two attackers up front. His passion and
enthusiasm were obvious even then.”
Camaraderie and team spirit are important to Conte. When he met with
the Spurs players on Tuesday, he pushed the importance of togetherness
and said they had to enjoy themselves again after a rough start to the
season.
Conte has told Spurs’ players he can bring them success (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur FC/Tottenham
Hotspur FC via Getty Images)
There’s hope among the Spurs squad that Conte’s arrival will see a
return to the Pochettino days when team meals and other bonding
activities helped to maintain a good team spirit. Monthly group meals
were a staple of Conte’s time at Chelsea, especially in his first season
when they weren’t in Europe, and it was something he replicated at
Inter. Conte also ingratiated himself with the players at Stamford Bridge
by singing his initiation song with gusto, sending them into hysterics.
Few who were there can forget the sight of Conte standing on a chair in
the middle of a room in Minneapolis belting out the Neapolitan favourite
Malafemmena.
Conte did not want his Chelsea players to be completely consumed by
their work, so would allow them a beer after a game — but there were
rules. “One. Not a lot. And, after you finish the game, you must drink it
quickly, not an hour after the end.” At Stamford Bridge, Conte would
also buy Prosecco for his staff at Christmas and take the press pack out
for an occasional pint at the Old Plough, close to the club’s training
ground.
Creating a good atmosphere where the whole squad feels like a family is
very important to Conte. And now that his English is far better than
when he joined Chelsea five years ago, it should be easier for him to get
across these messages. Communication matters to Conte — at Inter,
Lukaku spoke Italian upon joining and was accepted more quickly by
the group. Christian Eriksen, by contrast, did not and it took him longer
to settle.
Conte’s desire for the whole group to stay as one can sometimes be
taken to extremes. At Juventus, for instance, midfielder Arturo Vidal
was notorious for going out and partying, but Conte thought it would be
better to punish the whole team, not just Vidal. He would tell the team
that everyone would be put through an especially physical session, with
lots of running, expecting Vidal to be revealed as being a little worse for
wear. “The problem is Arturo is made out of iron,” Marchisio said in
2020. “A few kilometres into the run we were all gasping for breath and
begging for mercy while he kept running at the front of the group,
chatting as if he were at the bar.”
Those runs were a bonding experience for the squad and did nothing to
harm the relationship between Vidal and Conte, who, as hard-running
central midfielders, were kindred spirits on the pitch. “If I had to go to
war, I’d take Conte with me,” Vidal once said and Conte has said the
same about the Chilean.

Man-management has been an issue with this Tottenham squad, most

recently with Nuno creating the sense of a two-tiered group by leaving
behind his preferred Premier League team for the Europa Conference
trip to Vitesse.
Generally — though not always, as we’ll see later — man-management
has been a skill of Conte’s. At Chelsea, he was able to win over the
wantaway Matic in 2016 and get the best out of him. Conte is known
more for the use of stick than carrot but on this occasion went for the
latter and, recognising that Matic felt unappreciated and unwanted, said
in July 2016: “Matic is a very important player for my idea of football.
“He knows this and I’m delighted by his attitude and behaviour. I know
with work he can become a fantastic midfielder, one of the best in the
world. He is not for sale.”
Matic ended up leaving the following summer, but extracting one last
season was an important factor in Chelsea winning the title.
Conte’s greatest diplomatic feat was managing the transition of John
Terry from “captain, leader, legend” to warming the bench. This could
have been a very awkward situation, and one only has to remember how
toxic things became at Chelsea when Rafael Benitez dropped Terry in
2013. But Conte was able to keep Terry onside by frequently stressing
how important he was in the dressing room, and how valuable it was to
have those leadership skills in the building even if he wasn’t starting
games. Conte has continued to speak well of Terry since leaving
Chelsea, and the feelings of goodwill are reciprocated.
“In that last year under Conte at Chelsea, I was lucky because I had a
really good relationship with him,” Terry said during an Instagram Live
last year.
“I started the season, and then he changed formation. I got injured, and
he had a really honest conversation with me and said we were going to
play three at the back. He didn’t think I suited three at the back.”
At Inter in May, Conte masterfully diffused the tension between himself
and Lautaro Martinez after the striker had reacted angrily to being
substituted by challenging him to a boxing match during training.
Conte’s response to Martinez’s initial petulance was typically to berate
him, even though Inter had already won the Serie A title and the match
against Roma was essentially meaningless.
Above all, Conte’s squads must be a meritocracy. And this will be
appreciated by the Spurs squad in the wake of Nuno’s Arnhem decision
when it felt as though there was little fringe players could do to get in
the team. If a player doesn’t perform in training, they simply won’t be
selected. This happened to Michy Batshuayi on a couple of occasions at
Chelsea, when Conte decided that he wasn’t following instructions
properly and so was replaced by Hazard as a false nine.
Likewise, if Conte feels a player is deserving of criticism, he will deliver
it without hesitation — no matter how established the player is. Even
Inter’s talisman Lukaku was given a severe dressing-down in front of his
team-mates after a substandard performance against Slavia Prague in the
Champions League in September 2019.
“I played really badly, and Conte told me I was trash in front of the
entire team,” Lukaku told Sky Sports in January.
“He tells you to your face if you’re right or wrong, he said he would
substitute me after five minutes if it happened again.
“He hurt my confidence, but at the same time he woke me up. He does it
no matter who you are. For him, everyone is equal.”
While Italy manager, his striker Eder said of Conte: “He’s straight with
everybody. You can be the most important player on the team but you
have to work or you’ll be left out.”
And for those left out, Conte tries to ensure they still feel like an
important part of the group.
“At Juventus, it might be that I went five consecutive games without
playing,” Emanuele Giaccherini said in April. “But I felt valued. With
Conte, you either improve or you die. He’s brilliant at getting players to
mature, pulling things out of you you didn’t know were there. He places
the utmost faith in every player on the squad. He takes you beyond your
limits. He expects the maximum from every training session and after
every result. He is only interested in how you work and how you train.”
The majority of Conte’s players, like Giaccherini, buy into the head
coach’s methods, and upon doing so find great reward. In the awestruck,
cult-like way some of Conte’s former colleagues speak about him, there
is even something redolent of Mourinho’s players from the early part of
his management career.
Moses is one such player, which is understandable given the way Conte
transformed him from a nomadic winger to an elite Premier League-
winning wing-back. Moses is probably the player the outsiders in Spurs’
squad are looking at, hoping they can have something similar done to
them.
“The most important manager I had was Antonio Conte,” Moses told
The National last year. “He totally changed my game. He gave me that
fighting spirit to believe in myself and to enjoy my football at the same
time.
“I’d never played that wing-back position before. When he came in, he
talked me through it and then put me there. It was good to have the
manager’s support, and he backed me and gave me the confidence to go
out there and express myself.”
Conte ended up re-signing Moses on loan at Inter in January 2020,
where he made 12 appearances. Stephan Lichtsteiner enjoyed similar
improvements as a right wing-back under Conte, and said of their time
together at Juventus: “Conte’s a phenomenon — he does in a year what
other coaches take three years to do. He turned me from a good full-back
into a champion. I used to get to February every year exhausted because
I ran so much but he’d always find a way to get me to pull something
out from within that I didn’t know I had.”
Pirlo is another in the Conte disciple camp, and his autobiography is
littered with fulsome praise for his compatriot. “I consider myself
fortunate: I know Antonio Conte,” Pirlo said. “When Conte speaks, his
words assault you. They crash through the doors of your mind, often
quite violently, and settle deep within you. I’ve lost track of the times
I’ve found myself saying: ‘Hell, Conte said something spot-on today’.”
Lukaku has spoken in similarly gushing terms. “The mister is a mentor,”
he said in September 2020. “He’s like a father who understands me
really well. Playing for him is like a dream come true.”
When Conte left Inter at the end of last season, Lukaku posted a heartfelt
message on Instagram that included the words: “I will keep your
principles for the rest of my career (physical preparation, mental and just
the drive to win…) it was a pleasure to play for you! Thank you for all
that you did. I owe you a lot.”
Italy’s legendary centre-back Leonardo Bonucci told The Athletic earlier
this year that: “I’ve been jotting things down in a notebook for years
now — ever since I played for Conte. He was such an important coach
for me. He changed my career. It’s the mentality he gave me and
Juventus too, the football knowledge he passed on.”

Conte’s abrasive management style is not for everyone. He is not exactly

warm and friendly to players who are struggling and because he is so
dedicated, he can struggle to understand why anyone else would have
anything in their life outside of football. He is not the most sympathetic
when it comes to personal issues.
And not every player reacts as well as Lukaku to being hung out to dry
in front of their team-mates.
“There’s a reason he has not stayed more than a couple of years in a
job,” says a source in Italy. “He has such a divisive character and a bad
temper, eventually his relationship with the board deteriorates, as well as
sometimes with his players.”
Chelsea is a good case study, where the huge excitement and buzz of the
first season gave way to a pretty miserable second.
And even in that first season, there was some collateral damage. Mikel
John Obi, for instance, is still angry at Conte for the way he was frozen
out of the team. Mikel told The Athletic earlier this year that Conte
informed him that if he played for Nigeria at the Olympic Games in Rio
he would not be part of his plans at Chelsea.
Mikel was not dissuaded and helped his country win a bronze medal in
Brazil. Mikel never played for Chelsea again after a decade of service.
“This guy who has just walked in the door for five minutes is telling me
I had to choose,” Mikel said. “He was saying, ‘If you do that, you won’t
be a part of this team’. I spoke to the club and told them that I wanted to
go. The club respected me because of what I had done for them and how
long I’d been there. So off I went and I felt punished for that. I came
back and I didn’t make the squad. I was never in the squad on match
days again.
“The funny thing is, just before the January window was going to start,
he came up to me and said, ‘I want a meeting with you’. This was after
making me train on my own for months, treating a player who had been
at Chelsea for a long time like this!
“When he tried to meet with me he was like, ‘Let’s try and make up, I
will need you in the team, let’s squash this, blah, blah, blah!’. I was like,
‘Are you joking?! Are you fucking serious?!’. He knew I wanted out. I
stood up and walked out of the room. You can’t disrespect a human
being like that.”
But during that first season, Mikel was generally a lone dissenting voice.
Even Diego Costa, who clashed with Conte during training and was
dropped for a game against Leicester in January 2017, generally got on
well with the head coach. That confrontation came after Chinese side
Tianjin Quanjian had made a huge bid to sign Costa, who it was known
wanted to leave England. Sources at the time claimed Conte shouted “go
to China” during the heated argument.
It was more evidence of Conte not taking a backward step no matter who
he was dealing with. After all, Costa was the Premier League’s leading
goalscorer at the time with 14 goals and was known for his combustible
personality. But Conte had no issue with confronting and then dropping
one of the team’s most important players.
Costa ultimately left Chelsea for Atletico Madrid eight months later after
a drawn-out transfer saga that included Conte texting the striker to say
he wasn’t in his plans. Much was made of that message, but those close
to the situation say that, although Chelsea were annoyed with Conte for
weakening their bargaining position, there was an almost unanimous
agreement that it was in everyone’s interests for Costa to leave.
Chelsea’s hierarchy were less impressed with Conte’s frequent
complaints to the board about that summer’s transfers (a window that
saw Bakayoko, Drinkwater, Alvaro Morata, Antonio Rudiger, Davide
Zappacosta, Ethan Ampadu and Willy Caballero brought in). The
tension was increasingly apparent and filtered down to the players and
contributed to what was a pretty disastrous 2017-18 season.
Conte was angry at Chelsea missing out on signing Lukaku
from Everton and then seeing Spurs pip them to the signing of Llorente.
His mood wasn’t helped when the indications from Alex Oxlade-
Chamberlain and Virgil van Dijk’s camps were that both were minded to
join Liverpool — partly because they found Klopp more likeable and
upbeat but also because they were also more enthused by his style of
play and had concerns over how long Conte would be at Chelsea.
The season that followed should act as a warning for him and the
Tottenham players of the downside of his volatility. The arguments with
the board over transfers was one thing, but it was the conflicts with the
players that really derailed Chelsea’s season.
Tensions first spilt over following an embarrassing 3-0 defeat at Roma
in October when Conte spotted Kenedy yawning during a team meeting.
Furious, he unleashed a tirade at the 21-year-old for his lack of
professionalism, which prompted David Luiz to intervene and defend his
compatriot. David Luiz barely played again that season and was pretty
much completely bombed out having been a key player in the title-
winning campaign. His compatriot Willian was similarly peripheral in
2017-18, leading to the midfielder covering Conte’s face with emojis
when he posted a picture on Instagram of the team celebrating their FA
Cup win at the end of the season.
Willian later unconvincingly blamed the image on his young daughter
playing with his phone.
Conte irked his players in other ways that season. Some were frustrated
by him asking them to stay in a hotel together the night before games
when they would rather have been at home.
Others felt they were being worked too hard, and that Conte wasn’t
making allowances for the fact that, unlike the previous season, they
were having to juggle domestic with European commitments. This came
to a head after a humiliating 4-1 defeat at Watford in February 2018
when the players made clear their frustrations and requested extra time
off. Conte agreed and gave them three days to recover after admitting
they had played “with fear” at Vicarage Road.
He also denied that he had been demanding too much of his players and
suggested they had actually been “working a lot less”.
As the season concluded, many at Chelsea had completely lost patience
with Conte. They felt he was permanently seeking trouble and conflict,
and by the end, he had rubbed most of the players up the wrong way. It
was a shame, given how strong the bond had been the previous season.
After Chelsea ended their season by winning the FA Cup, goalkeeper
Thibaut Courtois explained how draining it had been for the players
having so much uncertainty surrounding their head coach’s future amid
his frequent disagreements with the club’s board.
“I don’t think it is a question for the players (whether it was a
distraction), it is a question for the board,” he said. “I think we trained
very well with him.
“You can not have him one more year and then not know if he will go
away the next year or not. You need some clarity so that everyone
knows what way the club is going forward. It is what we lacked this
season. There were always rumours about everyone and it is not easy
then to defend the title, with all the criticism.
“There was a negative spirit sometimes and then it’s hard to raise
yourselves.”
Conte wasn’t sacked until after the start of pre-season in July 2018,
much to the shock of some of the Chelsea players who were at the
World Cup and couldn’t believe he was still in the job.
Conte’s time at Chelsea should not be dominated by memories of how it
ended — there were many extreme highs in there as well and it ranks as
an exception in his career given how devoted other dressing rooms were
to him.  When Conte resigned from Juventus, Chiellini said: “Me, Leo
(Bonucci) Andrea (Pirlo) and Gigi (Buffon) would not have let him go.”
When his underdog Italy side lost the Euro 2016 quarter-final on
penalties, the entire team broke down in tears.
Barely able to control the waves of emotion running through him,
Andrea Barzagli wept as he said: “In the future, no one will remember
this national team that gave its all. There was a desire carry on together.”
The next day, Conte cried too and confessed that if he had not already
agreed to join Chelsea he would have stayed, so tight was the bond he
struck with his players.
Inter fought to keep him and were successful at the end of his first
season after a crisis summit at Villa Bellini. Once he delivered the
league title, an achievement chief executive Marotta called a “work of
art”, the board tried to retain him again. Conte was Inter’s “top player”
who was worth every penny. “It’s better to sign one player less in the
transfer market and appoint a great coach.”
Inter desperately wanted him to lead the club’s title defence and be the
manager who earned them a second star to commemorate a 20th
scudetto. But Conte was not for turning and agreed a severance package.
“These last two years have been hard and tiring but we won and all the
hard work paid off,” Inter goalkeeper Samir Handanovic said. “You
were hard but fair. I learned from you as a player and as a captain. You
were the one who always raised the bar and put the right pressure on
everyone. You were the one who made the difference. Thank you,
coach, and thank you to your staff, it was a pleasure and a privilege to
work and win with you.
Nevertheless, it’s understandable why some of the Spurs squad might
have felt a touch nervous hearing from their Chelsea colleagues about
the Italian’s time at Stamford Bridge.
It all ties back to the fact that Conte’s high-energy approach is not for
everyone — at Chelsea and wherever he’s been. Some players tire of
hearing the same phrases, like “Be ready to suffer”, ad nauseam. Others
find that, even though they know he’s a great coach, they tire of his
demands eventually.
“Not everyone can handle the intensity, himself included,” Chiellini
wrote in his autobiography. “He never switches off and sometimes he
needs to. He can get tired too.
“In the beginning with Antonio you give your all, but staying with it on
a mental level is hard, harder than from a physical perspective because
Conte trains you so hard that in the end, you become a war machine.
“Everything with Antonio is always pushed to the max: if you’re not
passionate about it, you won’t get on with him.”
Ultimately, Conte’s success at Tottenham will come down to how much
his players are willing to sacrifice themselves and commit to the head
coach’s methods. Do this and the rewards are substantial.
That’s what it’s like playing for Antonio Conte.