Antonio Conte’s career is dotted with crises and divorces after a success or in the second year of a relationship. Here are the precedents with Juventus, Inter, Chelsea, Tottenham and at the beginning of his history as a manager
The break away from the team to recharge the nervous and emotional batteries is unprecedented in Antonio Conte’s career. Not the sophomore slump or the season following a championship triumphbecause the story of the Lecce coach in a prolonged break with the Napoli locker room tells of daring ups and downs especially after the first year or after having put a title on the board.
The starting point is that only at Juventus from 2011 to 2014 did Conte last on the same bench for three years and it still didn’t end well: the farewell to the pre-season training camp that had just begun, in the heart of summer, is a wound that has never healed for the Juventus environment and which perhaps also precluded the coach from any possibility of returning to Turin. At the time, the issue of contention was the differences on the market, summarized in the famous and unfortunate joke about the “one hundred euro” restaurant not viable on a ten euro budget. It was the Champions League that his successor, Max Allegri, took Juventus to the final in Berlin a few months later and then returned two years later to Cardiff.
Bari, Atalanta and Siena: the first farewells of Conte’s career
They learned firsthand that Antonio Conte’s character is not easy BariSiena and Atalanta where the Lecce coach began his coaching career. In Puglia he left after leading the team to promotion to Serie A in June 2009: championship won, contract renewed, differences of opinion on the transfer market and termination of the agreement without even making his debut in the top division.
AtAtalanta Conte’s parenthesis lasted even less: he was hired in September 2009 and resigned four months later with an unflattering score of 13 points in 13 matchdays. Another round a Siena the following season with a sensational performance (direct promotion to Serie A) as a leader and once the party was over he said goodbye to put himself back on the market. Also because, sharpness of relationships aside, his way of making the teams entrusted to him perform had attracted the attention of Andrea Agnelli’s Juventus and from there Conte would start his leap into big football.
Juventus, the farewell consummated in the middle of the summer
At the helm of the Old Lady Antonio Conte has become… Antonio Conte. He won by erasing the Calciopoli effect with one stroke of the sponge, that sort of curse that for five years had prevented the Bianconeri from becoming competitive again, leaving the events of 2006 behind them. A leader for a team with many champions, many who had gone through the suffering of Serie B, in search of a winning script because the previous seasons had been a succession of disappointments up to seventh place before his arrival.
Three championships in three years, the start of the streak that projected that one Juventus in the history of Italian football and which would later be completed by Max Allegri and Maurizio Sarri, extending up to nine consecutive titles. But also seasons of harsh communication with the surrounding environment, its managers and finally the club. Until the contemptuous allusion to the club’s economic possibilities in the heart of winter: “You can’t sit at the 100 euro restaurant with 10 euros in your head. In Europe there are teams that are economically unattainable, for me it will be very difficult to see an Italian team in the Champions League final for many years to come.”
Other frictions on the market, the imposition by Andrea Agnelli to respect the agreement signed with confirmation via tweet and, once the summer holidays were over, the return to Vinovo just in time to communicate the decision to give up everything. In the background the national team foundered in the World Cup in Brazil, without Prandelli at the helm, and which would have led to the quarter-finals of the 2016 European Championship.
Chelsea, Inter and Tottenham: the stormy separations
The second year rule was reinstated immediately after the blue break. Al Chelsea of Abramovich and Marina Granovskaia, inherited after a previous unsuccessful season and brought back to the top of the Premier League in May 2017, the negative results of the following year and the dismissal with a lawsuit (won) in court.
Then theInter of Zhang and Marotta, the man who strongly wanted him at the Nerazzurri by sacrificing Spalletti and who absorbed his harshness. Second place and final of the Europa League in his debut season, marked by the explosion of Covid, then the title in the second year with a final outburst to – Conte’s thoughts and words – not to let anyone other than him, the staff and the players, get on the winning bandwagon. As if the money Zhang spent to give him what he asked for on the market had had no impact. Finally the farewell with a lot of severance pay.
Al Tottenham back in the running to save what can be saved and the run-up to qualifying for the Champions League and the second season aborted in March amidst accusations and controversies, in a difficult moment also from the point of view of health and morale due to the loss of his friend and point of reference Ventrone. Now the Napleswhere the suspicion is of reading a script already worn by time and custom.
