The Conte Thread

[xPetrCechx 13,563]

New #Chelsea manager Antonio Conte will be told on Monday whether or not he has been found guilty of match-fixing. [Mail]

[xPetrCechx 13,563]

Ancelotti: "At #Chelsea I won the Double. Sacked. At Real I won La Decima. Sacked. There is no manager that hasn't been sacked.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "Ferguson was sacked, Lippi sacked, Capello sacked, Mourinho sacked, Benitez.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "Conte is very tough, very focused on strategy. He is not so diplomatic. The owner will appreciate his intensity.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "Conte was my captain at Juventus. He was always really focused, really concentrated. As a manager he’s the same.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "I’m sure Conte will do a good job. #Chelsea understand that this is a new cycle. One period stops and another starts.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "#Chelsea have to replace John Terry, Frank Lampard - not just as players, but the personality, the image.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "Every club has this moment. I have spoken with Antonio Conte and he’s really excited.“ [Times]

Ancelotti on Conte’s match-fixing trial: "It’s bull****. His case will be solved without a problem. He won’t come with a stain.“ [Times]

Ancelotti: "In Italy, they make a big case because it’s Conte. I put my hand in the fire for him. He’s a really, really good man.“ [Times]

[BlueLyon 9,359]

4 hours ago, xPetrCechx said:

 

Ancelotti: "#Chelsea have to replace John Terry, Frank Lampard - not just as players, but the personality, the image.“ [Times]

This. We failed miserably so far in replacing them. 

[Captain Ahmed 528]

The perfect path forward for Chelsea FC:Antonio Conte

Quote

As Chelsea FC regroup after a horrific season, it is clear that much work lies ahead. Incoming boss Antonio Conte may be the perfect man to carry it out.

To say that the 2015-2016 season has been a disappointment would be a little bit of an understatement for Chelsea FC. The campaign would perhaps be better described as a truly shameful act of malignant wantonness. Now that the season is essentially over, the time for finger pointing and blaming is over as well. With that, it’s time to look toward the future which will hopefully be much brighter.

The announcement of Antonio Conte as Chelsea FC’s next coach should bring joy to Chelsea fans around the globe. It is a sign that despite the club’s haphazard season they still have enough of a reputation to draw a truly wonderful and first class talent to West London.

The Blues seemingly have a wonderful relationship with Italians (Gianluca Vialli, Claudio Ranieri, Gianfranco Zola) and the fit with Chelsea and Conte does appear to have been one that was made in heaven. Conte will show up and immediately spark improvement from what was a depressingly underachieving squad this year.

As a writer, fan and football analyst I actually wanted Chelsea to sign Conte rather than bring back Mourinho for his second spell. I know to every Blues supporter that sounds like utter madness but it seemed a little bit too much like Chelsea were trying to be the Chelsea of 5-6 years ago and not the team of the future.

Needless to say Chelsea hired Mourinho and Conte set off reestablishing the Italian national team after one of the most disappointing group stage exits in recent memory. Now, I’m not saying that Mourinho’s second spell wasn’t good. Chelsea won the Premier League again and the team looked to be something that would dominate in English football and on the continent for years to come.

Unfortunately, whatever deal was made last year ended up being paid this year in what is now historically recognized as the worst title defense by any team in the Premier League ever.

With Chelsea outside the Europa League places let’s look at the situation that Conte is inheriting from caretaker manager extraordinaire Guus Hiddink. Chelsea will most likely finish the season in 9th or 10th place and there’s not a lot of room to change there. The unfortunate thing about this is that while it will be necessary for the club to make changes this summer, the absence of that all-important European football will play heavily into the club’s transfer plans.

Footballers understand that their careers are short and incredibly risky due to the injuries that can be sustained with high-level athletics. Thus, few of the truly ambitious ones are willing to take time out of their careers to rebuild fallen clubs whom they hold no emotional allegiance too.

The fact that Chelsea will not be in the Champions League will limit their ability with transfers and make it absolutely necessary for the players already there to grow. Conte has shown the ability to make the most of what he has and that is genuinely the most positive thing that he can do in his early time at Stamford Bridge.

Fortunately, this situation draws many similarities to the one Conte inherited at Juventus. The year before Conte took over at Juventus they had finished in 7th place in the Serie A, something equally if not more unacceptable to the Bianconeri than Chelsea’s position this year.

At Juventus, Conte immediately reestablished The Old Lady atop the Italian game and they showed substantial improvement in every single year establishing a stranglehold on the league title. They tallied 84, 87 and 102 points respectively in each of his three championship winning seasons. The campaign in which they scored 102 points is a Serie A record for points accrued in a season as well.

The summer of 2011 was one in which he totally remade the Juventus squad bringing in Stephan Lichtsteiner, Arturo Vidal, Mirko Vucinic, Andrea Pirlo and Reto Ziegler for a grand total of €40.5 million (Juventus.com). They won Serie A that very year and have won it every year since with the team’s backbone still reliant on players that Conte brought in. This includes the leading midfielder in world football, Paul Pogba, whom he signed for free.

That is what brings me to our next point: developing youth. It’s a term that has been thrown around a lot these past few years with Chelsea FC but nothing has really happened. That all despite the club having the most dominant youth team in world football since Manchester United’s famous “Busby Babes”.

It is perhaps unfair that Chelsea expected Jose Mourinho to do this as he has never had any interest in promoting youth in his career. The Blues were essentially hoping a dog would teach itself new tricks.

Antonio Conte famously told Pogba that the best players are the ones selected, with fairly little heed given to reputations. That is all it took for Pogba to leave Manchester United where he was again stuck behind the ever aging Paul Scholes.

Chelsea have a lot of youth players who this writer secretly believes are better than some of the players starting in the first team and could help establish that fighting culture that the club have so sorely lacked this season.

It is often said that the most important coach a footballer will ever have is the one who gives them their break. That being their shot, their moment, their chance to prove themselves underneath the big lights and the big crowds. Players often identify strongly in character with that coach.

If the Chelsea youth players who hopefully build the backbone of future sides identify with Conte’s key ideals of organization, intensity, desire and sacrifice, then it is hard to see them ever falling to the depraved levels of this year’s team.

One of the issues the Blues have faced for years is how to handle the transitions between generations. In my opinion, no club has actually handled those transitions worse. Conte should sort this matter out very quickly. If the youth players are good enough they will play and they will play often. In his first season at Juventus Paul Pogba started 37 times. If the youth players are good enough in training this is proof that Conte will show them the field as well.

When Andrea Pirlo described Antonio Conte in his memoir Andrea Pirlo: I Think Therefore I Play he did so by saying “he is allergic to errors”. Pirlo on several occasions describes Conte as one of the best managers that he has ever played for (he has played for Carlo Ancelotti and Marcello Lippi as well).

When Conte speaks, his words assault you. They crash through the doors of your mind, often quite violently and settle deep within you. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve found myself saying, ‘Hell, Conte said something really spot-on again today’. – Andrea Pirlo
It’s hard to find a player with the same level of quality and sustained success as Pirlo in the modern game. He has won the Champions League (twice), Serie A (six times) and the World Cup. If Pirlo says that the man is special then he well and truly is.

Chelsea supporters should feel very positive about moving forward with a manager of Conte’s quality. He is a special manager and the sort of man who builds dynasties that win for the better part of a decade (look at his Juventus team). They are not one season champions. The Blues do seem to be moving in that sort of more patient and stayed direction as well and Conte seems to be the perfect fit.

As should have been expected with Jose Mourinho, matters blew up this year and Chelsea supporters have been left to wallow in the empty shell of their old hopes. However, this writer truly believes that it will be worth it should Conte usher in a genuinely new era for the football club.

The Pride of London

 

[Madmax 9,219]

^^ Did Dan Levene write that? If so, would be interesting to guess as to which players he's alluding to that are better than the ones starting.

[Captain Ahmed 528]

BPL:Antonio Conte will bring 'revolution' to Chelsea - Leicester's Claudio Ranieri

Quote

New Chelsea manager Antonio Conte will bring "a little revolution" to Stamford Bridge when he takes over in the summer, Claudio Ranieri has said.

Former Blues boss Ranieri, who takes his Premier League-winning Leicester side to his old club on Sunday, backed his compatriot Conte to shake things up when he succeeds interim boss Guus Hiddink.
Conte arrives in London after leading Italy at Euro 2016, and the Leicester manager said he expected him to shake things up.Ranieri told a news conference: "He is a tough man, it is hard for him to change because he will make a little revolution there."I am waiting for it -- I await the revolution when he arrives. He changes everything."He is very concentrated on his job, on the little things. He wants to care for everything, nutrition, everything."

ESPN

[CHOULO19 24,332]

As expected, he has been acquitted of sporting fraud accusations: http://www.football-italia.net/84405/conte-acquitted-sporting-fraud

[Leif 6,006]

On 4/26/2016 at 5:41 PM, petre.ispirescu said:

Jorge Sampaoli: "The offer which I was closest to accepting was from Chelsea. I even met with the owner, but it didn't work out.“

He said the same thing in an interview for a radio in Argentina more than a month ago. I listened to the entire interview back then (video available from the studio as well) and he looked disappointed talking about the opportunity of joining Chelsea. Said that he was Abramovich's 1st choice and felt that nothing can change as long as he is backed by the owner, but the people surrounding Abramovich did not want him and tried to do everything to get into Roman's head. Came up with all sorts of reasons (one was that Sampaoli does not speak a word in English) and in the end they managed to make Roman choose Conte instead of Sampaoli.

this runs our club. 

[OhForAGreavsie 5,895]

3 hours ago, Leif said:

this runs our club. 

 

Will you stop with this simplistic nonsense. Michael Emenalo does not run our club and while he cannot escape his share of the blame for our decent, nor is he exclusively responsible for it.

How and why self-declared Chelsea fans speak in these terms about Chelsea people is utterly beyond me. Personally I'd rather have M.E. in the board room, than opinions expressed on here in the way you choose to express them. Nothing wrong with holding and sharing strong views of course, but I don't buy the way you have done it this time.

[Tomo 21,733]

1 hour ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

Will you stop with this simplistic nonsense. Michael Emenalo does not run our club and while he cannot escape his share of the blame for our decent, nor is he exclusively responsible for it.

How and why self-declared Chelsea fans speak in these terms about Chelsea people is utterly beyond me. Personally I'd rather have M.E. in the board room, than opinions expressed on here in the way you choose to express them. Nothing wrong with holding and sharing opinions of course but I don't buy the way you have done it here.

Blaming the hierarchy is an easy copout that many unfortunately take.

Like you alluded to they haven't been perfect beyond any stretch of the imagination, but some of the sheer comments and conspiracy theories about the higher powers since Jose's sacking especially have been cringeworthy.

Last time the hate on the board/Emanalo was this bad was the last days of AVB (Gourlay especially copping a lot of pelters), only for us to have a great window in 2012, que lots of comical backtracking.

I get football is an emotional sport, but there's a fine line between critisism and faux outrage, a line football supporters (not just Chelsea fans) regularly cross, the comments sections in the match of the day Facebook page makes for especially painful reading and I am always fighting the urge to put some of those lunatics straight.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,895]

50 minutes ago, Tomo said:

the comments sections in the match of the day Facebook page makes for especially painful reading and I am always fighting the urge to put some of those lunatics straight.

I didn't know the page existed and now I do, I'm going to try to forget again as soon as possible. If I don't, I might be tempted to click along there and, if I do that ,then there is a high probability my fingers and my keyboard will conspire to get me into trouble!

[milka 3,349]

Here's what Valentina had to say about Conte, who will be joining Chelsea once he finishes his work with Italy at Euro 2016.

"He has very clear ideas of what he wants. That's both when he's playing a game and choosing the players.

"That's probably one of the reasons why he left Juventus at the time because he had a clear idea in his mind and he wanted the club to follow it. 

"He's going to be very influential in the transfer market because he's going to try and take a lot of players from Italy with him to the Premier League.

"There's Juan Cuadrado who is on loan at Juventus now, he is going to go back to Chelsea at the end of the season and is one of the players Conte wanted at Juventus when he was in charge there. 

"There are also players he wants to keep. Oscar was a target for Juventus but Conte wants to keep him at Stamford Bridge. There's another player on loan at Napoli, Nathaniel Chalobah. It looks like he will be going back to London to be part of the team. 

"Roma are feeling the pressure a lot on Radja Nainggolan. He was the first player we knew Conte wanted, but it looks like the player wants to stay at Roma even thought the offer is very high. 

"There's €36m on the table and €6 for the player himself. There are others like Miralem Pjanic, who Juve are also interested in. It looks like Chelsea and Juventus will have a kind of derby in the transfer market."

[Special Juan 27,439]

I stopped reading when it mentioned Oscar.

[Pizy 18,401]

Imagine we line up with essentially the same XI as this season with maybe one new player. That player being a new CB and that's it as far as the first XI goes. 

I think the big 3 are completely safe (Hazard, Costa, Willian) and Conte is a known admirer of Oscar so it doesn't look like he's going anywhere unfortunately. Fabregas is safe and so is Azpi. That leaves only a few positions that are still up in the air. Matic, LB, and CB. No chance we sell one of our only English players in Cahill, Ivanovic is a club favorite so he'll be here.

We may have the same slow, labored attack with only one or two sources of goals next season which is a recipe for disaster in addition to a defense with only one new face.

I hope Conte and the board realize that this is a huge window and minor changes won't cut it. We need an Oscar replacement, a new CM or two, and 2 defensive players. Trying to "get the best" out of players who have been average for years and under multiple managers will see us struggling in midtable again. Oscar in particular has had chance after chance under several managers and hasn't improved at all. Look at other players in his position an his contribution is pathetic compared to them. Özil, Eriksen, Payet, Courinho, even Mata who he was supposed to replace has been much better than him since leaving. We need production from that area next season.

[Mustafa 885]

Honestly might consider following a new sport if Branislav Ivanovic, Gary Cahill and Oscar are starters for my club. And also if I see Nemanja Matic stumbling across the pitch with his lanky legs all the way to the left corner flag and then stopping and losing the ball. I can't deal

 

Fix is Conte 

[Blue-in-me-Veins 4,067]

1 hour ago, Special Juan said:

I stopped reading when it mentioned Oscar.

 

1 hour ago, Mustafa said:

Honestly my consider following a new sport if Branislav Ivanovic, Gary Cahill and Oscar are starters for my club. And also if I see Nemanja Matic stumbling across the pitch with his lanky legs all the way to the left corner flag and then stopping and losing the ball. I can't deal

 

Y'all made my morning. Lmfaooooo

[Henrique 9,133]

Have a bad feeling. It seems Conte doesn't have a clue about Premier League. Every players we are linked are from Serie A, or players that were wanted by Serie A teams.

[Captain Ahmed 528]

ITALY'S PRELIMINARY SQUAD 

Goalkeepers: Federico Marchetti, Antonio Mirante, Marco Sportiello.
Defenders: Francesco Acerbi, Davide Astori, Leonardo Bonucci, Armando Izzo, Angelo Ogbonna, Lorenzo Tonelli.
Midfielders: Marco Benassi, Federico Bernardeschi, Antonio Candreva, Danilo Cataldi, Daniele De Rossi, Lorenzo De Silvestri, Stephan El Shaarawy, Alessandro Florenzi, Emanuele Giaccherini, Jorginho, Marco Parolo, Roberto Soriano, Davide Zappacosta.
Forwards: Fabio Borini, Eder, Ciro Immobile, Lorenzo Insigne, Leonardo Pavoletti, Graziano Pelle