“What do I have left to win? Honestly, I would like to one day raise the Champions League to the skies as a coach.” Antonio Conte he has been out of action for almost a year now, since he left Tottenham, he has recharged his batteries and can’t wait to get back into the game. Possibly in a club that aims to win the cup with big ears. “I know that it is very difficult to win the Champions League – confesses Conte in a long interview with Telegraph -. People think it’s easy but you have to be at the right club, which has the same ambitions as you, which is ready to take the final step to win the Champions League. Look at Manchester City, it took them seven years, didn’t they? But I would like to give this joy to my father. He told me ‘I would like to see you lift the Champions League’. It’s not easy but everyone has a dream.” Subbuteo enthusiast (“it allows you to reproduce some tactical situations, I have used it in all the clubs I have been to, sometimes even to explain some solutions to the players”), in recent months Conte continued to study in preparation for his return. “Playing with a high defensive line? It can be done but you have to press a lot, otherwise it becomes a big risk.”
The example of Manchester City
The Salento coach is ready to play with 4 at the back again but “it’s not true that the three-man system is defensive, go and look at how many goals my teams have scored in each season”. “It doesn’t depend on playing 3 or 4 at the back, but on how you build the team and the attack. At the same time It’s not good to be too offensive, just as you shouldn’t be too defensive. We must respect the characteristics of the players and adapt to them. My experience tells me that if you want to win the championship or lift a trophy you have to have a stable team. Manchester City last season is the best examplea team with great balance, defensively and offensively.”
“It’s not enough to just be a team that plays good football”
The coach has won trophies and “they are a great responsibility because they remind you that you have to win again. You did it and you have to continue doing it”. And whether it’s with a good game or not, it matters relatively. “If the final goal is to win the championship and lift trophies, it is important to offer the public good football. But just being a team that plays good football is not enough if you want to win. I know this because I coached big clubs and everyone always asked me to win. For me now it is impossible to work to just build a team that plays well because we always expect to win. I love my past but at the same time the expectations you bring are always very high and if you don’t win, you have failed. The best possible option is to play well and win. To be celebrated I must win, otherwise the others who are there waiting will celebrate my failure“.
“Guardiola is the best in the world”
Conte is one of three managers – the others were Mourinho with Real and Klopp with Liverpool – to have won a championship against a team of Guardiola. “It’s not easy, he is the best in the worldor. And when the best coach in the world has a club behind him that supports him and invests to provide him with important players who improve the team every season to stay at the top, then it is very, very difficult to compete at the same level. My story says I am I always arrived at the club with a difficult situation, with problems, and I always built something. After my first season at Chelsea, where we won the title, we could have become dominant in England. We had spoken with Lukaku and Van Dijk, with these two important players we could have changed the situation.”
Tottenham and the deaths of friends Ventrone and Vialli
Conte then returns to his experience at Tottenham, brought to the Champions League after coming on board during the current season. “For me celebrating a fourth place was really strangeor. At the end of the match against Norwich I said to my staff: ‘Be careful, don’t get used to celebrating a place in the Champions League’. I was very clear. We had done our best, climbing from ninth to fourth place, with all the problems we had faced, it was a miracle. But we didn’t have to celebrate it as such because I’m used to winning.” The period at Tottenham was also marked by two great deaths, the deaths of friends Ventrone and Vialli, as well as Mihajlovic (“one of the hardest moments of my life”), and from the gallbladder operation, with Conte resigning some time later.
“I took this time for myself and my family”
Then he saw his name next to the National team for post-Mancini and various clubs but the return to the bench is now close. “I took this time for myself, for my family, to be with my parents – he confesses -. My father pushed me to go back to work immediately but it was important to recharge myself, physically and mentally. My only problem now is that I have too much energy and I’m disturbing my wife…”. All the more reason to get back into the game.
2024-02-15 10:22:18
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