Credit is not redistributed logically in football. And the builders of the greatest teams have not always had the recognition they deserve. Those who build the clubs never have it like the men who participated in the construction of the current fortress that has become the Juventus Stadium. One of whom is Antonio Conte who distinguished himself by his tactical versatility, first a follower of the 424 formation, then at Juve, he adapted and played with the 433 formation, and then in 352, a tactic which finally has his preference. The Italian is a coach who favors attacking play. A real strong man with an oversized aura, he is therefore adept at a game based on possession of the ball with the aim of asphyxiating his opponents before placing deadly attacks. The rage to win or rather the hatred of defeat characterizes this coach considered wherever he went as the twelfth man all by himself. 

Antonio Conte’s Coaching Style Explained: Passion vs Discretion (6 Points) 

1. Who is Antonio Conte? Why is he famous? 

As a player, Antonio Conte will begin his professional career in Lecce where he will remain there for seven years before flying to Turin and Juventus. In the Juventus F.C. club, Conte will gradually become a centerpiece of the midfield device as well as the captain and will win during his thirteen years as a Juventus F.C. club numerous titles such as five Scudetti, a Champions League, a UEFA cup, and an Italian Cup, he will hang up his shoes in 2004. Conte will also have worn the colors of the Italian national team twenty times for two goals and will be a finalist in the 1994 World Cup and the Euro2000. This was all before his fame would skyrocket as an Italian football manager or head coach of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur.

2. Antonio Conte was benched during the 1996 C1 Cup: 

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May 22, 1996, the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. 

Marcello Lippi’s Juventus, carried by the Ravanelli-Vialli-Del Piero trident, faces the golden generation of Louis van Gaal’s Ajax. Antonio Conte starts in midfield, alongside Didier Deschamps and Paulo Sousa. But the Italian was forced out through injury before half-time, in the 44th minute. Number 8 is then replaced by Vladimir Jugović. Even today, beyond Ravanelli’s masterpiece, the image of this final remains the inimitable smile and the unstoppable shot of this same Jugović, the last Turin shooter. Conte, will be European champion in jogging, on the bench, injured. 

3. Stuck in the shadows, but still a warrior: 

A year later against Dortmund, the midfielder is not on the scoresheet for the Munich final. In 1998 in Amsterdam, Conte came on as a substitute and came on in the 77th minute, ten minutes after Mijatović’s goal decided Real Madrid’s victory. Five years later at Old Trafford, substitute Conte – who came on at half-time – will pass close to the big spotlight by hitting the crossbar with a diving header, long before the fate of the final is decided on penalties. A session in which he will not participate. Conte was a shadow warrior. 

Finally, he attends the last match of the Turin season still jogging, waving his scarf at the stadium or in his living room, crossing his fingers at each ball taken by Suárez and Messi, and sending Neymar’s fanciful numbers to hell. Still, Conte will not be sitting on the bench in Berlin. After the first season without a Cup, his Juve will have eliminated Chelsea from the pools before exploding Celtic in the eighth and folding in the quarters against the future champion, Bayern de Heynckes. For his second participation in C1, Conte bowed much earlier in what has remained one of the most important surprises of recent seasons, losing on the wire and under the snow against Galatasaray. In the Europa League, Conte will have eliminated Trabzonspor, Fiorentina, and OL before falling in the semis against Benfica. And that’s all. 

4. Antonio Conte’s role as a professional football manager: 

Sometime ago, when Conte ended his playing career, he first became De Canio’s assistant at Siena during the 2005-2006 season and then took over the reins of Arezzo (in two stages, but not avoiding relegation in 1^ Division of Lega Pro) and then of Bari. Arriving in December 2007 in place of Materazzi senior, he first brought the L.R. Vicenza football club to a quiet place in the middle of the table to then win the Serie B championship the following season. During this same year, he was strongly expected to become the new coach of Juventus who finally prefers Ciro Ferrara. After three months without a club, Antonio Conte finally signs for Atalanta replacing Gregucci but resigning very quickly after 13 points in 13 matches, the Italian will be relegated at the end of the season. 

5. A father of a team, taking second place? 

Some philosophers will say that Conte feels like a father whose daughter on her day of marriage has chosen to have her stepfather or someone else accompany her as she walks down the aisle. 

The daughter is Juventus, the husband is the Champions League, and the guy who came after is Allegri (Think of the birth in 2011, the first cries in 2012, the first rise in 2013). 

Antonio Conte is indeed the father of the Juventus of the 2011-2015 era, for an obvious reason: he gave birth to it. When Conte arrived in Turin, he was the face of 7th in Serie A eliminated in the Europa League group stage. Three years later, in May 2014, Fabrizio Ravanelli releases these prestigious words towards the man of transformation, saying: 

“Antonio Conte is the best manager of all time. He is the Messi or the Ronaldo of technicians. What he did for Juve, no one in the world has managed to do. If he stays long, he can win up to five or six Scudetti in a row”. 

The Turin management and Antonio Conte brought in Pirlo, Lichtsteiner, and Vidal in the first season, then Pogba and Asamoah, and finally Llorente and Tévez. Of Allegri’s starting eleven, only Morata and Évra were added pieces, as is his wild card Pereyra. 

Conte will also have designed the insertions of the midfielders and refined the curves of the sides plunging towards the surface, called discreetly by the beautiful balls of Pirlo. Finally, he will above all have given birth to a group with the determination, character, mentality, and ” wickedness ” modeled in his image. 

6. Speaking of his image, he is often called the GodFather, working in the dark:

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You will see a man with a black Dolce & Gabbana suit and shiny shoes on the green grass. Antonio Conte is not the type to sit on his bench, Arsene Wenger style, nor with his hands in his pockets along the touchline, Jose Mourinho version. The Italian man is a volcano that erupts several times in the same evening. He tramples the four corners of his technical area which he often escapes. The expression wants him to pace, but the Italian does a lot more along the touchline. The manager of the Blues does not hold in place. No more than ten seconds motionless. He rarely sits on his bench, forcing his assistants to get up to talk to him. He stamps, mimics actions, and waves his arms, often in two different directions. It is a ballet unto itself, a conductor who demands from his players a score played to perfection. All that’s missing is the music, preferably an Italian opera: La Traviata or Rigoletto by Verdi.

Conte is a show as the Italian spends his time talking and shouting the names of his players who don’t hear him most of the time. To reposition them, reprimand them, or insult them, sometimes. No wonder Conte was referred to as Antonio “Godfather” Conte by the Italian defender Leonardo Bonucci for motivating the players and especially his role for the way he made them want to listen when he spoke in creating a unified team environment at Euro 2016. 

Some Other Shocking Things About Antonio Conte: 

Antonio Conte once permitted this man to marry his daughter: 

The Tottenham manager once said his striker Heung-min Son is the kind of man he could allow to marry his daughter. Son, who was not at his best in Tottenham’s 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest was furious after being substituted in the second half. The South Korean hasn’t been at his best in the recent season BUT Conte has no doubts about the South Korean’s talent or personality and will continue to support him.

“I understand that Sonny is a very sensitive player, a really reasonable man, and a really good guy. If I have to make an example, if I have to find a husband for my daughter, I would like it to be someone like him”, said the manager. 

“Right now he may be suffering a lot from not scoring… We have faith in him and his teammates”, he added. 

“For me, Sonny will always be a nut in my team, in my football ambition”, concluded the manager. 

Antonio Conte faced match fixing scandals: 

During the 2010-2011 season, Antonio Conte became the new coach of Siena, a club for which he had already worked – after working for 2 years he earned this promotion. He will then experience for the second time the joys of the rise in Serie A by finishing second … behind Atalanta. 

On May 31, 2011, Antonio Conte signed a two-year contract in favor of Juventus, which remained on two 7th places, Conte’s first season on the Turin bench would be a real success. Juventus won the title of Italian champion after a season concluded without the slightest defeat (24 wins and 14 draws) and an Italian Cup final loss against S.S.C. Napoli (the only defeat of the season). But Conte will then be splashed by the match fixing scandal, in relation to his time at Siena, his former player Carobbio accuses him of being aware of schemes, and justice believes him and suspends Conte for 10 months, then reduced to 4 on appeal. This did not prevent him from brilliantly winning a new scudetto, on the other hand, his team lost in the Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern, the future winner of the competition. Never two without three as they say with the championship of all records, 102 points scored, 19 out of 19 at home which contrasts with elimination in the Champions League from the pools and that in the semis in the Europa League While the final was played in Turin. Conte left for the fourth season, but crashed everyone just two days after the resumption by resigning!

While we see him gone to rest for a few months, Conte finally agrees to take over the Italian national team after the flop of the 2014 World Cup and signs a two-year contract.

Coaching the Italian national team, he was asked to leave: 

After leaving Juventus, the name Antonio Conte appeared on the list of candidates for the post of head coach of the Italian national team. On August 14, 2014, Conte took charge of the national team, signing a two-year contract with the Italian Football Federation. In the first match, under the leadership of Conte, the Azzurra defeated the Netherlands national team with a score of 2: 0. 

In February 2015, it became known that Conte could leave the Italian national team due to the refusal of Juventus and Roma to release their players to the national team for the February training camp, but the conflict was settled. Under the leadership of Conte, the Italian national team successfully overcame the qualifying tournament for Euro 2016, winning seven matches out of ten and drawing three times. On March 15, 2016, at a press conference, the President of the Italian Football Federation, Carlo Tavecchio, announced that Conte would leave the post of head coach of the Italian national team after Euro 2016.

At the European championship itself, the Italians left the group without much difficulty, guaranteeing access to the playoffs after the first two matches (the teams of Belgium and Sweden were beaten in these matches), and in the third, already decisive match, Conte’s wards allowed themselves to lose to the Irish. During the 1/8 finals, the Italian team beat the reigning European champions – the Spaniards – with a score of 2: 0 and reached the quarterfinals, after which many began to call Italy the favorite of the championship. The rival of the Italians at the next stage of the tournament was the world champions – the Germans. The main and extra time of the match ended in a 1-1 draw, and in the penalty shootout, the players of the German national team turned out to be more successful. Immediately after the end of Euro 2016, Conte left the post of head coach of the Italian national team.

After leaving Inter, Antonio Conte refused to join Spurs: 

The coach justified this choice after he revealed why he refused to take charge of Tottenham after Spurs made the former Inter boss their priority to succeed Jose Mourinho. The Italian manager won Inter’s first Serie A title in 11 years in 2020-21, before leaving the club amid financial troubles. In 2021, the Italian looked set for a return to the Premier League – where he previously won the title with Chelsea – as he entered talks with Spurs, but the coach ultimately decided against joining the club from North London, saying: “If there is something that does not convince me, I prefer not to accept”…….”In general, I like a challenge and I’ve accepted a lot of them during my career. Even the best clubs I’ve coached were never the favorites when I arrived. However, if there is something that does not convince me, I prefer not to accept, whatever the money”. 

Most interestingly, the interim chairman Steven Zhang has previously said Conte left because he was unhappy with the club’s desire to cut costs due to financial pressures imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The technician therefore undertook to respond to his former manager.

“What I can say is that my project has never changed, but it would be bonkers to discuss it now. I respect Zhang and I thank you for choosing me. I love Inter, the club and their fans. I wish good luck to Simone Inzaghi because he is a very talented and ambitious coach, I wish the Nerazzurri all the best”, explained Antonio Conte. 

Faced with his permanent, overflowing agitation, Conte has been known to annoy: 

Back in 2017, he had already clashed with Klopp and Guardiola; Mourinho told him to calm down when he celebrated Chelsea’s fourth goal against Manchester United in October as if it were their first. The Italian ignites Stamford Bridge and pushes his players to their limits. Until the wear? Not impossible. At Cobham, the London club’s training center, the Italian’s sessions are long and intense, meticulous and rigorous. When tradition dictates, two days after a match, that those who have played the whole match stick their heads out 30 minutes before going to treatment, the Italian imposes a sequence of an hour and a half. Despite an idyllic picture – top of the league and a place in the Cup final – some wonder about the sometimes tyrannical management of Conte who attaches great importance to the work repeated at the length of sessions he imposes.