We need to make sure he has the keys to the club. I believe Jose was always doomed because he sold himself as being able to make do with what we've got and false promises of attacking football. If we go all in on Contes system, get him the coaches and players he wants, give him control to remove whoever he likes from the squad etc, he will bring us trophies.
-
The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...
Manager Antonio Conte
- Thread starter Fattynomates
- Start date
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
For sure mate haha.
I think Conte is going to be what many expected Jose would be.
Give Kane 5 games to sort his shit out. If he starts playing again, sit him down and get him to commit and sign a new deal with a massive release clause - one even his drooling brother understands.
If he doesn't sort his shit out, get rid ASAP.
Otherwise we get to the next window and he goes when playing well and then Conte has a fucking meltdown.
If he doesn't sort his shit out, get rid ASAP.
Otherwise we get to the next window and he goes when playing well and then Conte has a fucking meltdown.
I had a sense of dread when we appointed Mourinho, just felt it was so obvious he wouldnt work and he'd leave us in a toxic mess within 2 years. Whilst i have a few reservations about Conte i'm more optimistic now than i've been for a good 2.5 years. He will have to be backed, it will be short term but no reason it cant work.
Too soon to give Levy credit. Let the two of them have a bust up, Conte get his way, then I could consider giving Levy credit.
To be fair, he is a good stadium developer.
I can hardly wait until Thursday.
Makes sense. Enough time for both parties to see if its working, and if they're happy to continue. At the rumoured £15.5m per year for Conte, clearly Levy didn't want to get stung with gigantic compensation amounts should they need to sack him.
I am so excited, I am 100% behind Conte and whatever decision he’ll take regarding tactics, players and so forth. I am all for giving him the time he needs to fix the squad (which imo doesn’t need major surgery) and hopefully the board gives him the tools he asks for. I think this is one in a hundred chance for us to get finally back on track and continue the good work Poch did at the club.
COYS!
COYS!
Yeah lets see what funds are released in January and the Summer first...the appointment is exciting though.
To be fair, the local council have done an amazing job overnight.
Not a shopping trolly or truck tyre in sight.
The Conte effect showing results already.
Yes, completely agree.
I think another difference is that this summer the economical situation was unclear. At the time of negotiating with Conte it wasn´t clear when the audience was going to be allowed in the stadiums and how much audience was to be allowed.
Now we know, we have hade NFL events, boxing events and i guess the event planning is in full bloom right now. So now Levy kan forecast ekonomy much better than in the beginning of the summer and therefore promise investment. Something he couldnt do 5 months ago.
Don't worry MrsP.
He obviously had too much pasta for lunch.
You know Thursday's match thread is gonna be full of whingers as soon as the lineup is announced... Lol
Antonio Conte to Tottenham: Why talks broke down in the summer, why it’s happening now and what to expect
James Horncastle 4h ago
Go with what you know. Fabio Paratici’s first impulse as Tottenham Hotspur’s new managing director of football back in the summer was to call Antonio Conte.
After Nuno Espirito Santo’s dismissal on Monday having been in charge for only 10 Premier League games, it was entirely understandable that an operator as determined as Paratici, the man who surprised everyone in bringing Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus in 2018, would double down and go even harder for Conte.
This time, barring some very late drama, he looks to have succeeded, and the swiftness with which he has acted changes Tottenham’s prospects.
All of a sudden, they will have one of the best coaches in the world, fresh from winning another league title, his fifth in nine seasons of club management, and it shouldn’t be long until they are a force to be reckoned with again.
Why didn’t it happen in the summer?
When Conte became coach of Inter Milan in 2019, he said: “In the beginning I can accept not having much chance of winning, even if, as a limit, it’s just a one per cent chance. There just has to be a chance.”It was therefore tempting to conclude that in the summer Conte felt Tottenham had no chance whatsoever of challenging for silverware. But that would be an exaggeration.
When Conte judges a project, he evaluates the credibility of the club who are expressing an interest in him. Spurs were not found lacking in this regard. They have the best facilities in the world — Italy used the Lodge at the Tottenham Hotspur training centre as their base before the European Championship final at Wembley in July — and with crowds back to 100 per cent capacity at their £1 billion new stadium following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions the projected uplift in revenue should provide significant monies for recruitment.
The presence of Paratici, with whom Conte worked at Juventus, strengthened Tottenham’s hand and offered the kind of reassurances that Beppe Marotta, another former colleague, provided him with at Inter. Marotta was Juventus’ CEO during Conte’s time in charge there and without him it is unlikely Inter would have been able to persuade the former Italy midfielder to accept their offer to cross one of Serie A’s fiercest divides.
Paratici has effectively played the same role for Spurs. Conte was always his first choice to succeed the sacked Jose Mourinho and knowing as much mattered then as it does now. Still, one or two questions did arise from a very positive Zoom call when Conte’s charisma and sheer force of personality impressed the Spurs hierarchy.
Talks did not break down in the summer over personal terms. The reservations were instead about how much money could be raised through sales, particularly in a market impacted by COVID-19. The future of Harry Kane was still uncertain then, even though Tottenham were determined not to sell him to Manchester City.
Conte had just left Inter in their post-title afterglow, knowing cuts were coming and with the (accurate) feeling that the club’s financial problems would lead to the sales of his top goalscorer (Romelu Lukaku) and a leading assist provider (Achraf Hakimi). It would be incoherent to join another club where the future of their star striker was unclear. Paratici had only just arrived at Tottenham too.
Leaving all that aside, everything seemed to be set… only for Conte to have a change of heart.
So, why is it happening now?
For a start, there are fewer unknowns. In the end, Tottenham didn’t lose Kane after all. Paratici was able to replace Toby Alderweireld with Cristian Romero and you might say it’s somewhat serendipitous Inter were looking at Emerson Royal as a successor to Hakimi at the time of his move from San Siro to Paris Saint-Germain. Players such as Serge Aurier are now gone and while Spurs still have some work to do in reshaping the squad, it’s undeniable they are further along than was the case in July.As for Conte, he did not leave Inter with the intention of taking a sabbatical. He can’t switch off from football and has spent the last couple of months working as a pundit on Champions League nights for Sky Italia.
As Conte revealed towards the end of his two years coaching Italy from 2014-16, he misses the smell of freshly cut grass at the training ground and likened those months between European Championship qualifiers to being a car that’s been forgotten about in the garage. He needs to rev the engine.
How eager Conte is to return to work is signalled by his willingness to forego something sacrosanct to him: a six-week pre-season and open transfer window. He was prepared to make such a compromise in the event the Manchester United job became available mid-season and knows the Premier League is the place to be, now more than ever. While the pandemic hit English football hard, it has come out of it far stronger than its rivals in Italy, Spain, France and Germany —leagues that were already trailing in its wake.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that, in time, United may come to regret not acting on Conte’s interest in taking over at Old Trafford.
Conte has also had four more months to study European football and will know the strengths and weaknesses of this Tottenham squad and their competition better than he did when he first spoke to the club in the summer, when his focus was exclusively on Inter. He has also had a chance to see how they operated in the ensuing transfer window and what they’re willing to spend. It’s hard to imagine the acquisition of Romero from Atalanta not meeting with his approval.
What kind of football can Tottenham fans expect?
Conte is often mischaracterised as a defensive coach. He’s nothing of the sort. Balance is what matters to him and yet his response to Inter losing the 2019-20 Europa League final 3-2 to Sevilla was to make the team even more top-heavy.Go back to the start of last season and he played two strikers, a No 10 to get Spurs old boy Christian Eriksen into the team and a couple of wingers disguised as wing-backs in Hakimi and Ivan Perisic. At left centre-back was an attacking full-back by the name of Aleksandar Kolarov.
By the October, he’d reined that in a little, developing a then 21-year-old Alessandro Bastoni over Kolarov, who turns 36 next week, and leaving Eriksen and Hakimi out, only to reintegrate them in the second half of the season when they had been coached into playing exactly the way he wanted.
Conte’s style is not counter-attacking. He bristled when Fabio Capello made that assertion, for the simple reason it overlooked the meticulously choreographed passing patterns he designed to help lure opponents onto Inter. His players were then taught to neatly play through the pressure and release Lukaku, Hakimi and Lautaro Martinez into wide open spaces where, frankly, they were devastating.
As Juventus and Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini has noted, Conte is a master at getting the best out of strikers, syncing up Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente, Graziano Pelle and Eder as well as Lu-La — as Lukaku and Martinez were known in Serie A. Only Atalanta did better than Inter’s 170 top-flight goals in Conte’s two seasons and the difference between them last year was a single goal.
Prepare to see Kane dovetail with a partner as well as he ever has in a Tottenham shirt and for Conte to work on mining the midfield for goals. Lost causes may also rediscover their best under him, providing they have the right work ethic and are functional to the system Conte implements.
While it may not conform exactly to the “Tottenham DNA” that Daniel Levy insisted the club would return to at the end of last season, appointing Conte gets them closer to it than you might imagine and is a compromise worth making.
His football is certainly easier on the eye than anything Nuno could offer and Conte DNA is winning DNA.
How long does it take him to get his teams looking good?
Typically, no time at all.Conte’s teams tend to come out of the blocks like peak Usain Bolt in the Olympic 100m final. They actually make a marathon look like a sprint, so hard do his sides run.
Juventus became only the third Italian team of all time to go undefeated in his 2011-12 debut season. Chelsea won their opening three Premier League games with Conte in the dugout. Inter also made a statement from the get-go, blowing away Lecce, their new manager’s hometown club, 4-0 at San Siro in August 2019 and taking maximum points from their first six Serie A matches.
That said, the circumstances are different at Tottenham. This is the first time Conte has taken a job in-season since 2007-08 when he stepped in for Marco Materazzi’s Giuseppe at second-division Bari just after Christmas. He comfortably saved them from relegation, then took them up as Serie B champions a year later.
A more recent comparison can be made with how he prepared Italy for the European Championship in France. Conte made a national team play like a finely-tuned club side in no time at all, compressing his ideas and articulating them so well that the most underwhelming squad Italy has sent to a major tournament since the 1950 World Cup looked like they might actually win Euro 2016 before then-world champions Germany beat them on penalties in the quarter-finals.
Make no mistake, time will be at an even greater premium at Tottenham with a mix of Premier League, Carabao Cup, Europa Conference League, the November internationals and the relentless Christmas to New Year programme on the horizon.
Don’t be surprised to hear him initially call for patience then.
Expectation management is tough when you are instantly welcomed as a guarantee of trophies.
While it may take a little longer than usual for Conte to start racking up win after win at Spurs, it’ll be worth it in the end.