Is Antonio Conte becoming the next Jose Mourinho?
The Italian's press conference following Spurs loss to Burnley should be a warning sign to any club that might want to employ him in the future
(Author’s note: It’s weird to be writing this as war is basically breaking out in the Ukraine for the simple reason that it makes you realize how trivial this really is. Who cares? But alas, sometimes you’re just in the need of a distraction and when that happens to me I write. So if this is too trivial to you right now then by all means, skip over it. If you’re looking for a distraction from the world, then I hope this helps)
No one has used better words to describe Antonio’s Conte following Tottenham’s 1-0 loss to Burnley on Wednesday than The Athletic’s Jack Pitt-Brooke so I’ll just use his:
Antonio Conte rubbed his face with his hands, sat back in his chair, took a deep breath, and then spoke for five minutes into his laptop like a man on the brink of throwing in the towel.
Conte didn’t want to talk about the game. He just wanted to talk about “the broader situation.” That broader situation being that Tottenham are going “to need to have to have an assessment on his future” after the club lost their fourth Premier League match in their last five1.
The “mentality mob” on Twitter will obviously have a field day with these comments. There will be tons of tweets along the lines of “Top mentality!” “This is why he’s a serial winner!” “Good on him calling out Spurs for being unserious” etc etc. They’ll throw in the usual comments of “the club needs to back him” or “if he’s not backed he’ll leave.”
I’m sorry though. This isn’t a “top mentality” from a manager. This is Antonio Conte coming off as a baby and honestly, pathetic.
Antonio Conte has been in the job for what, five months now and you’re already talking about quitting because you don’t like to lose? You’re the coach dude! You’re supposed to fix that! You’re supposed to prevent that from happening.
Conte mentioning the same players and same results is a nice veiled way of saying “these players aren’t good enough, we need to sign better ones.” Obviously the media and fans are going to lap that up and back that statement. Transfer rumors and stories are what keep the media in business, while fans love nothing more than to dream of new signings taking the club to new heights. As soon as the club doesn’t make “enough” signings to the fans or media’s liking2 they’ll turn on the club and accuse them of not backing the manager3.
But here’s the thing. None of that actually matters here.
It’d be one thing if Conte was a year and a half or two years into the job and Spurs weren’t holding up their end whatever deal they agreed to when they hired Conte. It would still be (somewhat) understandable4 if Conte had been hired last summer and felt this way.
But Conte wasn’t hired last summer! The two flirted with each other last summer but talks ultimately broke down as they didn’t see eye to eye on certain things5. Instead, Conte didn’t take the job until November and with that, he lost the ability to have any moulding of what Tottenham’s 2021-22 squad would look like.
Waiting until November did give Conte a few extra months to do his homework on Spurs themselves. My question is, did he do any?
You had to know going in that you were getting into bed with Daniel Levy. That in and of itself, could be a difficult scenario. However even if your and my perception of Levy is way off and the two totally see eye to eye, by walking into White Hart Lane in November you have to understand that no matter what your transfer plans are for the upcoming seasons, THIS IS THE TEAM YOU HAVE. Full stop. There’s nothing you can do to change it.
Spurs were certainly playing poorly and underachieving when Conte was hired but what exactly was Conte expecting to find when he walked in? A title contender?
This is a team who’s main threat’s production had been declining for a few years. There was a spike in 2020-21 but given his shot volume and quality was continuing to drop it was fair to wonder whether that spike was going to be just that - a spike - or if he was getting back to that level consistently. After Kane they have Son-Heung Min, an excellent attacker but his best attribute is “gets behind the defense” which makes him at his best when he’s your second attacker. Rounding out the front three was Lucas Moura. Moura had that hat-trick against Ajax in the Champions League semifinals but other than that has spent his entire Spurs tenure being decent but nothing special.
A manager can only work with what he’s got and the level of improvement he can bring to each player is typically wildly overrated by fans.
While researching a different piece a few months ago I asked someone with first team coaching experience about how much time - at the top level - a manager/coach works on technical ability with a player. His response was at the top level, training sessions are about fitness and understanding (the tactical plans). Technical skills aren’t worked on specifically but may be developed as part of the regular drills run during the training session. If a player needs to work on a specific technique it comes down to their own desire to improve and the staff is there to help him and set up sessions.
This is a Spurs team that never replaced the creativity that left with Christian Eriksen. They never replaced what they lost when Dele Alli’s form fell off a cliff. They never fully replaced their centerback pairing of Toby Aldereweireld and Jan Vertonghen.
This was for all intents and purposes somewhere between the fifth and eighth (or ninth) best team playing a bit below that level. That was the job Conte was taking!
The isn’t the first time Conte has bitched about the situation either. A few weeks ago Conte made a comment about how he doesn’t like competing for the top four because he’s used to competing for titles. Again, did you not look at the table when you took over the job?
The crazy part of all this is Conte has actually been doing a really good job! Spurs have been much better since he took over.
Conte took over a team scoring 0.91 goals per match and conceding 1.6, since he’s come in their goal scoring is up to 1.57 while the goals conceded has come down by over half a goal to 1.14. Despite the four losses in five games, they’re earning 0.21 more points per match than they were under Nuno. That doesn’t seem like much but that’s is an eight point increase over the course of a 38 game season.
Beyond the results, their underlying numbers have improved tremendously6. Their NPxG per 90 has increased by nearly a goal per game while their xG conceded dropped from 1.23 to 1.05. They’re taking more shots and conceding fewer.
Spurs’ possession has stayed relatively the same (51.4 percent under Nuno to 51.07) meaning they’ve become far more efficient in possession, not just turning their possession into more shots, but better shots than what they were getting before (their xG per shot rose to 0.13 from 0.09). Defensively they’re allowing one fewer shot per 90, but the same low quality 0.08 xG per shot. That’s a stark improvement!
Conte has had some chance to mold the team. Creative midfielders, who never seemed to settle in, Giovanni Lo Celso and Tanguy Ndombele were sent out in January7. He brought in the likes of Dejan Kulusevski8 and Rodrigo Bentancur from Juventus. Yet results haven’t gone Spurs’ way since their arrival’s. Maybe they need time to settle, maybe they’re not good, or maybe they’re just two pieces and you need a few more pieces to build around?
Yet none of this seems like enough for Conte. As Jack Pitt-Brooke says, “he seems like a man on the brink of throwing in the towel.” As Conte said “I can’t accept to keep losing.”
And that is the crux of this whole thing. This isn’t about Tottenham, this is about Antonio Conte. This whole thing screams one of two things: someone who is worried about nothing more than their reputation. You know, the one that he’s a “serial winner.” It doesn’t matter if he took over a bad Spurs squad and is improving them. What matters is where they finish. You’re not a serial winner if your finishing seventh. It’s even worse when compared with Spurs’ (unrealistically) high pre-season expectations and falling short of those.
It also comes across as someone who is insanely competitive and just wants to win. But he doesn’t want to win for Spurs, he wants to win for himself and because of that, he wants to win right now. He doesn’t want to spend the time building something. He wants to win immediately because he knows he has to win immediately.
He knows he has a shelf life. He knows that clubs spending the £100m+ a year like he demands is unsustainable and whatever you win will likely come at the expense of being able to win a few years down the line. That’s not his problem though, he won’t be there! He’ll be off somewhere else winning again. But in order to keep winning in short periods of time you need to join a club that’s ready to win right away. In order to get those jobs, you need to be winning.
That’s not to say that Conte can’t build something and be successful. We’ve seen him do it before. We’ve seen him play a big part in rebuilding Juventus. We’ve seen him have success at the international level - when he couldn’t sign whomever he wanted - with a team that wasn’t expected to be very good. We’ve seen him be successful with no budget in lower leagues.
All this reminds me of another brash manager. Mr. Jose Mourinho.
Along with his charisma mid oughts Jose Mourinho was an innovator and a fantastic motivator. He had a great way of creating an “us against the world” mentality. In 2004 when asked in an interview with a Portuguese magazine what kind of players he likes he responded “money, none, titles, zero9.” He wanted young, hungry players that he could mold. Follow me and I’ll make you a winner. He was a manager who built up players and teams and made them better.
He got his start at small teams and build them up. He won the Champions League with tiny Porto. He then moved to Chelsea, a club that hadn't won England’s top division since the 50’s. Especially because he dominated England for two years, and the Chelsea team he left ended up losing the title by two points and losing the Champions League final on penalties10.
He went to Inter and won again. In year two he took advantage of a volcano in Iceland and won the Champions League again. That earned him a job with Real Madrid that not only changed his career but changed who he was.
Mourinho walked into a Real Madrid dressing room that featured many players who had just won the World Cup. The “I’ll make you a winner” mantra isn’t going to work on players who have already won. Neither is the “the whole world is against us” ideal. You’re Real Madrid, half the world is already either with you or against you. That mantra was able to work a little bit in terms of Real’s battles with Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side, but as soon as they won La Liga things started to apart.
That Real Madrid job changed him. It’s hard to remember young Mourinho these days but the man was a forward thinker. He brought innovation to the Premier League. So what if that innovation was mostly just the 4-3-3 with a midfielder in “the Mackelele role11,” back then only Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal were playing a 4-3-3 so it was innovative. He changed his system at Inter, often playing two up top, to help him win there.
But after Real Madrid, Mourinho he was now a two time Champions League winning manager who had a reputation for winning everywhere he went at some of the biggest clubs in the world. He wasn’t going to go to a small club, he was only going to go to another big club.
By 2013, big clubs were spending a lot more more money than they were in 2004. You weren’t going to find underpaid players who hadn’t won at Chelsea. Gone was the “I can mold these players into winners” mentality and in came the “if we want to win you need to sign me the best players.”
Mourinho had success in his second stint at Chelsea as he came at just the right time. The league was in a transition12 period but Mourinho’s tactics still worked. Stay compact, be tough to break down, hit teams on the counter. And when you couldn’t hit them on the counter, well, Chelsea still had the best players. But tactically the league had done a lot of catching up in the past decade. Teams were more organized, their 4-4-2’s weren’t getting outnumbered by Chelsea’s three man midfield because they were playing a three man midfield themselves.
Things unravelled quickly and when they did Mourinho seemed to only have his same old bag tricks. The problem is, it’s hard to play the “follow me and I’ll make you a winner” card when you’re talking to a room full of winners. Publicly it was blaming everyone else, pointing at his C/V saying things along the lines of “I’m a winner, the problem can’t be me, I win wherever I go, clearly the players aren’t good enough, we need better ones.”
Manchester United got the last bit of success from him but all the other playbooks were the same. It was the same tactics from Mourinho. When it didn’t work it was the same throw everyone else under the bus.
For someone that was so innovative when he first broke through somewhere along the line he decided he didn’t need to develop any new tricks. He had his reputation that would carry him. It didn’t. He stopped winning. His career had become so repetitive he became a meme.
When Mourinho took the Tottenham job I genuinely thought it would be a great move for him. They were a team big enough to win hadn’t. Their wage structure meant that a majority of their players were underpaid, not over. This was a team of hungry players looking to get to the next level, this was exactly the kind of team that he’d had success with.
But things at Tottenham never took. It seemed like he couldn’t comprehend that the plan at Tottenham could be “build something so we can win next year or the year after.” In his head it was “we should win now” and when they weren’t it quickly became well it can’t be not my fault, I’m a winner! Clearly it’s the players fault. Twitter was quickly making jokes along the lines of “the writers are out of ideas if we’re getting Season three Mourinho in Season one.”
These days he’s back in Serie A with AS Roma. They’re currently eighth in the table and already Mourinho has reached into his old bag of tricks to blame everyone else. It’s sad really.
There was a time a decade ago where you’d be out of your mind to say that Jose Mourinho wasn’t one of the top three or top two managers in football. He was that good and nothing that happens now will change that. It’s written in history. But in 2022 you’re out of your mind if you believe that Mourinho is still a top manager.
It’s hard not to see the same thing happening to Conte IF he continues down this path. Sooner or later13 clubs are going to care less about what you did three to eight years ago for other clubs and what kind of a manager you can be right now, today, for their club.
There’s no denying that Antonio Conte has had tremendous amounts of success as a manager in his career. But what makes the best managers stand out is their ability to adapt. Manchester City isn’t a clone of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, or his Bayern Munich side. Hell, they’re not even the same as his early Manchester City teams. This Liverpool isn’t close to the same thing as Jurgen Klopp’s early Liverpool sides. They’re similar, but both managers have made tweaks year by year to stay ahead of the game and avoid others catching up to them.
Mourinho stopped innovating and his same tricks stopped working. He hit his shelf life. That’s what this Conte press conference emulates.
Conte’s refusal to accept losing is admirable. Quitting over it isn’t. You knew the job you were taking. You knew winning this season wasn’t going to happen. This was a good challenge to show you’re a top coach, take a weaker team and build them up. Talking like you’re ready to quit after five months - when the team is playing much better! - doesn’t seem like a man willing to build something, it seems like a man who only cares about where his C/V will say his team finished. Are you a good manager/coach? Or do you need the best players in order to win?
There used to be a time where Conte didn’t need the best players. Now he’s pulling out the same bag as Mourinho, it can’t possibly be me, look at what I’ve done, I’ve won, they haven’t, clearly I’m not the problem.
Other clubs should take notice of this and think before getting into bed with him. Has Conte hit his shelf life? I don’t know, but Mourinho had about 10-12 years at the top before he started falling down and Conte took over Juventus just over a decade ago.
A top coach shouldn’t be broken because of a bad run in February of his first year. A top coach should have a plan for the coming years to build the team up.
Antonio Conte is not that kind of manager. He doesn’t plan for a few years down the line because he won’t be there a few years down the line. He’ll fall out with you when you tell him he’s spent all the money.
At the end of Conte’s brief press conference he mentioned that now is not the time to talk about the top four and Spurs should be more worried about a relegation battle. That’s the kind of hysterics you would find from idiots on Twitter. Tottenham are currently seven points back from Manchester United in 4th with two games in hand. They’re 19 points clear of the relegation zone, but sure.
I get being competitive and wanting to win. It’s ok to be upset that you’re not winning. But at the end of the day, you’re the coach. You say you have ambition, then get to work and figure out how to build your team up! Acting like you’re going to walk out after five months because the team isn’t good enough. That’s not a winner’s mentality, that’s pathetic.
and five of their last seven
which is almost always just “the next transfer window”
In reality, spending £150+ million every season is simply just not feasible especially with FFP rules. Not to mention the overwhelming majority of transfer fees end up being wasted money as many transfers ultimately fail
but still a little pathetic
Most probably (and widely speculated) the transfer budget!
stats from Fbref via Statsbomb
Along with Dele Alli
Who already has a goal and assist
Jonathan Wilson - The Barcelona Legacy
Time was not kind to that Chelsea team that is so often forgotten. 2007-08 Manchester United is one of the best teams in Premier League history (and in my opinion the best) and that Chelsea team went right down to the wire with them in the two most important competitions.
Michael Cox - The Mixer
And overall it was quite poor
And my money is on later because clubs tend to be reallllyyy slow with recognizing these things