Ex-Chelsea boss Antonio Conte shows EPL flops what they are missing

Antonio Conte was an expensive man for Chelsea to sack, now he has Inter Milan at the top of Italy’s Serie A.

Inter Milan’s head coach Antonio Conte shouts instructions from the sideline at the San Siro stadium in Milan. Picture: AFP

After confirmation this week that it cost Chelsea an eye-watering £26.6m ($50m) to pay off Antonio Conte and his backroom staff, it is worth noting that the Italian manager is laughing all the way not just to the bank but to the top of Serie A.

That is an awful lot of money to get rid of one of the world’s outstanding coaches, who may pull off one of his most notable achievements yet if his Inter Milan team can break Juventus’s run of eight straight Italian titles. Inter have not finished within 20 points of the champions during this period of crushing dominance yet here comes Conte, top of the table, taking the fight to them with all the pugnacious intensity and tactical clarity that turned Chelsea from a mess into league-winners.

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The 50-year-old Italian may be high maintenance, liable to throw grenades at the hierarchy if they do not give him the signings he demands, but the man delivers – forcefully and with a strategy that seems to be working once more to get the best out of players who have slumped under other leadership – such Romelu Lukaku, who has 14 goals from 18 Serie A appearances, already more than he scored in his final Premier League season at Manchester United.

With Alexis Sanchez seeking to rebuild himself at Inter when he recovers from an ankle injury and Ashley Young seemingly heading to the San Siro this summer on a free transfer in one of the more unusual moves, it would be understandable if United fans wondered what Conte might have done given the chance to knock these players into shape at Old Trafford.

After all, this was the manager who helped turn Paul Pogba from a raw kid into one of Europe’s outstanding midfield players at Juventus, finding the right role and motivation in a way that eluded other coaches, including Jose Mourinho.

Perhaps Conte was always going to head back to Italy for family and professional reasons – he turned down an approach from Real Madrid in the year off after his sacking from Chelsea in July 2018 – but United never considered him or Mauricio Pochettino, preferring to put long-term trust in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Ah well. Perhaps this long road back – the quest for the holy grail, United’s missing DNA – will yield results in the end, but strange that it was not worth at least a call to a man who took over a Chelsea team that had slumped to 10th after the unravelling under Mourinho yet, under Conte, would not only be top of the table by early December but never looked like wobbling as they won the league with two games to spare.

This was a coach who turned Victor Moses into a title-winning wing back in a side of extraordinary efficiency where it felt like no run or movement was ever wasted; a manager willing to go down his own tactical route and force others to learn and adapt.

He imposed order and a ferocious work ethic. United are not the only team who could do with that, even if just for a season or two, in what has been such an underwhelming campaign for so many top-flight clubs (if Liverpool, Leicester City and Sheffield United will excuse the gripe).

With Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti, the Premier League has most of the biggest beasts in management but Conte is the one who got away all too quickly, though he was not exactly unhappy to depart after his fallouts with the Chelsea leadership.

The relationship was strained even as the bubbles rose in the glasses of celebratory champagne at the end of the 2016-17 title season but then we all know that the water in Roman Abramovich’s jacuzzi is never quite right for the oligarch, always too hot or too cold. There can be no real pleasing a man who gets rid of someone as amiable and admirable as Ancelotti a year after he has delivered a double.

Given Conte’s natural irascibility, the politics at Stamford Bridge were always likely to lead to confrontation. His fallout with Diego Costa and frustrations with Alvaro Morata meant it came even sooner than anticipated.

Conte picked battles he would never win but he had proved himself a manager of extremely high calibre, a whisker from winning the double in his first season in a foreign league. Even in the year when it all went sour, he reached a Carabao Cup semi-final, qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League and lifted the FA Cup. Chelsea threw away the top four but then it had been an open secret for months that manager and club were heading for divorce, and not amicably either. If Chelsea felt bruised by the end of a long legal battle over the payoff, there were reasons Conte could drive a hard bargain.

He had worked his way up via a Bari side facing relegation in Serie B and led them to promotion. Via Atalanta and Siena he arrived back at Juventus, the team he represented as a player for more than a decade, where he led them to three of those eight successive titles. The last of Conte’s, in 2013-14, came with the most points (102) in Serie A history.

He took over a shambolic Italy team and dragged an ordinary squad to the quarter-finals of Euro 2016, beating Spain along the way. At Chelsea he demanded, and was given, a new contract after one triumphant season. At Inter, helped by the signing of Diego Godin, and with Lukaku forming a formidable partnership with the blossoming Lautaro Martinez, the Argentina forward, Conte is proving that few managers are better at quickly instilling a sense of purpose and clarity in players’ minds.

Conte’s European record should be better – this season Inter went out of the Champions League in the group stage behind Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund – but no one will be complaining if they win Serie A and knock Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus off their perch.

Inevitably, there have already been bust-ups with the media and complaints about squad depth, even as he sits top of the table. No one said Conte was easy to work with. But for a club wanting a heavyweight manager to drag the best out of underachieving players (know any of those?), Conte brings certain rare guarantees in the fickle, volatile world of management. There is a reason he is not cheap to hire, or fire.

THE TIMES