I’m backing Atletico to knock them out tonight. Flakier than exema
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Manager Antonio Conte
- Thread starter Fattynomates
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Depends on what our ambition is and if hes backed or not. Trying to win the champions league is still a higher ambition than being content with just existing at spurs.
In recent weeks..... We've scored:
3 - City
4 - Leeds
5 - Everton
2 - United
It's inevitable that a team won't be clinical every week; but when you're scoring at the above rate, it's bogus to wag the finger at the attack when you're at the same time conceding from corners and other soft goals.
2 - City
1 - Burnley
1 - Middlesborough
3 - United
(Granted this may be more of a team issue than solely the domain of the CBs.)
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There you go.
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There's two ways of looking at that.
1) He would want to go as PSG match his ambition to win the biggest prize in Europe. They'll go big, give him pretty much what he wants and they'll go for the big win.
2) His record in the CL is a joke and he'd be a one season PSG statistic.
I actually like that Conte put some pressure on the big name players at today's press conference. Saying that Harry, Son and Hugo had to take responsibility and "show the way" for the rest of the team.
Son needs a break and a new pair of boots.
Sunday Times (13/03)
Giorgio Chiellini
After an hour in his charis- matic company, Giorgio Chiellini apologises. With his twinkling smile and unexpectedly light-pitched voice, he says he has to dash and pick up his daughters.
Nina (six) and Olivia (two) are the lights of his life. “I am a present father and the good police- man. My wife is the bad policeman. I’m their daddy but also their friend,”
he says.
“I love to hug and kiss them. They are my princesses.”
Interviewers are often struck by the disparity between Chiellini's persona — the old, pitiless king of Italian defending — and his personality, which is so warm, empathetic and playful. He is the henchman who will leave you in a heap, then appear at your hospital bed, bearing flowers and jokes and concern.
He is the economics honours grad- uate who founded a charity for
children with disabilities while also being the warrior who had zero com- punction about grabbing Bukayo Saka's shirt and yanking him on to his back, to prevent an England attack in the Euro 2020 final.
More than 21 years on from his pro- fessional debut, for Livorno, what the Juventus and Italy captain, 37, doesn’t know about stopping opponents isn’t worth knowing. Defending, Chiellini says, is about passion, but not emo- tion. Or rather it’s about taking emo-
tion and channelling it into calculated hostility.
“When I was younger I was more . . . fire!” he says, “I needed an enemy. I didn’t have a good relation- ship with strikers. But now I like to talk to them in games, I like to share the feelings of what is happening on the field. I’m joking with them some- times. I’m not aggressive. Now, the enemy is not an enemy, he’s a friend playing against me, and I understand that if I don’t lose my energy fighting,
I’m more lucid and concentrate bet- ter. My performance has grown up.”
He used to get a few red cards but his last club sending-off was in 2013 and even that was down to ludicrous playacting by Cristiano Ronaldo, in a Champions League game between Juventus and Real Madrid. These days, Chiellini barely even gets booked. At the Euros, he committed just five fouls — one per 89 minutes.
Defending, “is something you have to feel inside. You have to be happy to not permit the striker to make the play he wants. It’s a role of studying, because you have to understand the opponent and catch their intention. It's a role to anticipate everything.
“And then it’s also an emotional role. I mean, touching before the cross or launch [high ball] . . . you start to feel the connection with the oppo- nent. You have to impress him with your superiority, make him nervous. Make him know he doesn’t receive the ball, he receives a push before he receives the ball. If you play soccer, you’ll understand what I’m saying.”
He talks about “entering the mind” of strikers and the need to “under- stand what is the battle you can win and what is the battle best to not have.” He spends 40 minutes the night before games studying opponents on Wyscout, and analysis clips.
His toughest opponents? “At the moment, I think [Kylian] Mbappé is the most talented,” Chiellini says. I first played against Mbappé when he was 18 in 2017 and he was unbelieva- ble. I can’t imagine what he’s like now and what he can do in the future. I love his mentality.
“From the past my best enemy was [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic. He is unlucky to play in the period of Cristiano and [Lionel] Messi because without them, Ibra would have a few Ballons d’Or.”
Chiellini has won nine Italian titles, 12 other club honours, and reached two Champions League finals with Juventus. In 2017, he was named in their greatest XI of all time and for him that is a great honour, because he is a student of football history, especially the history of Italian defending. He has even co-written a book about the legendary Juventus sweeper Gaetano Scirea.
“I grew up with [Paolo] Maldini and
[Franco] Baresi and was lucky enough to play with [Fabio] Cannavaro. I tried to get from him all the secrets possi- ble. The best now? Before the injuries, Sergio Ramos. In some ways not a real defender, more a global player, fantas- tic all over the pitch with a personality.
“Me? There are other defenders with more technical skills. But I work on my passing since the beginning of my career and still do. I was always the ugly duckling. If I’m not coordinated now, you can imagine what I was when I was 14, 15. But I improve day by day, year by year, match by match, because I had passion.
“And I still have the passion I had at 15. Every person I met in my career has tried to help me, because they saw in me those feelings. This eagerness to improve.”
He wouldn’t place himself on the list of Italian greats, but would include Leonardo Bonucci, his Juventus and Italy partner, and great pal. After Euro 2020, they even went on holiday together. “My twin on the pitch!” Chi- ellini laughs. “I have a twin brother in real life but a second one in football.”
In that Euro 2020 final, Bonucci and Chiellini played fundamental roles. Chiellini sparked the game’s shift in Italy’s favour when, bringing to bear all his tactical awareness, he began stepping into midfield to help Jorginho and Marco Verratti there.
Bonucci equalised Luke Shaw’s early goal and as England pushed to try to score again, the pair celebrated every tackle and block like they were lifting the trophy itself. All those high- fives and fist pumps had a calculated element too. “When you touch and share joy it gives energy to each other, improves your connection and per- formance,” Chiellini says.
“In a game when we’re under pres- sure and have to do many clearances and saves, my feeling is higher. When we win 3-0 it’s OK ... I have a rest day. But it’s not much fun.”
What did he make of England? “They were under more pressure than us and sometimes pressure is a fuel, but sometimes it’s an obstacle. We felt those feelings. We felt this fear. Well maybe not fear . . . but their nerves, this tension.
“At half-time [with England leading 1-0] our dressing room was calm. If we
have the ball, surely we’ll score. Surely we will find the solution. Keep- ing hold of our emotion was the most important thing for us. And we were lucky in penalty kicks. A draw was the right result for that game.”
Out with calf trouble since early February, Chiellini hopes to return for Italy’s World Cup play-offs this month. They face North Macedonia in a semi-final and then, potentially, Portugal for a place at Qatar 2022.
He would relish another meeting with Ronaldo. “Cristiano and Messi are aliens. Not from the herd,” Chiel- lini says. “I was lucky enough to play with Cristiano at Juventus for three years and seeing him day by day, you understand some of his secrets. He works every day to achieve his goals — and finds new goals all the time. In the big moments, when you need him, he is there.”
He has been following his old friend’s toils at Manchester United. “In the end, he’s just a single player. If Cristiano is in a team that supports him and plays better than the other, you can be sure he’ll get the goal.”
He views Paul Pogba’s Old Trafford travails similarly and will never forget his first impressions of Pogba when he signed for Juventus in 2012 having shocked United by forcing an exit, aged 19, against Sir Alex Ferguson’s wishes.
“Pogba is the LeBron James of foot- ball. Really, when I see him growing up it’s fantastic,” Chiellini says. “When I saw him that first week of training I said, ‘What? He is not real!’ He was from Manchester United, so I expected to meet a good player but I also thought if he is not playing for United he cannot be a top one. But he was. He was different from the others and I’m sad that [since rejoining
United] he is not showing completely what he is. He has done fantastic in many matches but has not been lucky, with injuries and for other reasons. He has not been able to show, continu- ously, all his skill.”
Chiellini has been at Juventus for 17 seasons. “I have learned the meaning of playing for Juventus,” he says. “This is a club that tries to give everything to the players, so they can just play foot- ball. We’re lucky to have, watching over our heads, a family [owners, the Agnelli dynasty] who have been here nearly 100 years. For them this is not just an investment.
“They want to create something and the most important verb is ‘to win’. That doesn’t mean you have to win everything — but at Juventus you always aim to win.”
He believes those values were reaf- firmed when Juventus spent £74 mil- lion on the striker Dusan Vlahovic in January. “It gave us a feeling of new energy from the club. The club said, ‘We want to win and now you don’t have excuses.’ ” In November, Juven- tus were 11th after winning just four of their first 11 games but are now resur- gent in Serie A, in fourth place. Another scudetto is not beyond them.
The Champions League is “some- thing I miss, something Juventus miss since 1996. We have come so close,” Chiellini says. “We try every year and it’s a tournament where not always the best team wins. We can aim for it this year.”
On Wednesday, Juventus host Villarreal in the second leg of a tie poised 1-1, and have a point to prove. “In the last three years we went out to Porto, Lyons and Ajax and can’t be sat- isfied with that,” Chiellini says.
These days he lives in the present, enjoys what time he has left on the pitch and does not overthink. He will wait and see how he feels at the end of this season before deciding whether to carry on. However, I say, if Ibrahim- ovic — now 40 — is still going surely he should keep going too.
“Yes! Maybe I have to call Zlatan and we can decide. We can do a video for Sky — ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘No. What do you want to do?’ ‘OK, we can do together.’” Chiellini is really laughing: the pitiless defender who is also somehow the striker’s friend.
Why do I just feel that ‘All roads lead to Poch’ right now?
Why does he get asked the same question every press conference for fucks sake? And he isn’t wrong.
Because the media still don’t believe Spurs is a top club. They still see us as a stepping stone and can’t work out what the likes of Conte and Harry are doing here.
I’m enjoying them. He is very temperamental, which I find hilarious, but he is elite and has an unexpected class and integrity. I didn’t notice this while he was at the blue scum, as, well, it’s blue scum.
Love him to bits tbh. I just hope Levy gives him everything he wants and he has a long and successful stay.
Where else would Harry go? Spurs are one of his best options at this point in his career. He already fcked up his chance to go to City.
ENIC best start the manager search then. It's obvious they don't share his vision.
I think the question really is, “why do all the journalists want to twist his words into something negative all the time rather than positive?”
He says nothing wrong or negative at all. He’s previously said him and Levy are on the same page going forward and that he’s happy at the club. Here he’s just talking about wanting to make us better. If anything his words are good!
See, this is the kind of comment and reaction they want from posting those words in a negative light. They don’t suggest anything of the sort that you’ve said. He has a limited English vocabulary don’t forget. He’s previously said he’s happy here, happy with levy, happy with paratici and happy with how things are going. He wants that to continue. The words are nothing more than that.
But because we get negativity after negativity from journalists, compounded by aggregators taking quotes in isolation it builds this narrative in fans. If he signs a new contract in the summer along with Kane I wonder how they’ll frame that as being bad. I bet they do somehow.
Getting tired of Contes crying and moaning after every game now. I 100% agree with everything he says. But like man you took the job. everyone with a small following of football knows the way Levy runs things. Did he honestly know nothing of the club beforehand?
It seems he has the players backing and that they agree with what hes saying ie lack of ambition otherwise he would have lost the dressing room by now with his constant threatening to leave the club.
Honestly feels like he just took the job to tie him over nicely until summer and the serious clubs come knocking
It seems he has the players backing and that they agree with what hes saying ie lack of ambition otherwise he would have lost the dressing room by now with his constant threatening to leave the club.
Honestly feels like he just took the job to tie him over nicely until summer and the serious clubs come knocking