Antonio Conte looked like a man who knows his time at Tottenham is almost over and doesn’t mind taking the risk of bringing his departure forward by a few weeks. He spoke like a man who has given up on his players, his relationships at the club and the whole idea that he is the manager who would take Tottenham to the next level.
He even sounded like he gave up fourth place, the only finish he has left. All Conte wanted to do was defend himself and bring down almost everyone else with him.
Can anyone remember such a press conference?
Conte arrived in the small room on the first floor of St Mary’s Stadium after 6pm on Saturday night, well after all the fans and most of the staff had left the house. He spoke for almost 10 minutes without having to ask. And then he walked out knowing he had set fire to his relationship with the Tottenham squad and possibly his whole standing at the club.
It’s unprecedented to hear a manager from any team at any level talk about their players like that. Conte labeled them “selfish” because they only wanted to play “for themselves” and refused to ever take responsibility for what goes wrong. More revealingly, he said three times that he tried to “hide” the situation up until Saturday but could no longer keep up the pretense. He finally had to tell it like it is.
When managers lose the dressing room, it’s usually because the players give it up. This is a rare example of the opposite – the dressing room loses the manager. These words can never be left unsaid.
Conte is no stranger to post-game outbursts. Just a year ago, after a 1-0 defeat at Burnley, he suggested he couldn’t change Spurs’ situation and that maybe he should leave. Rocking the boat like that never goes over well internally, but to a certain extent, Conte has “priced in” those moments.
But that was on a different level than Turf Moor or anything else we’ve seen from Conte at Spurs. His goal on Saturday wasn’t himself, but everyone else.
As with the Burnley eruption, your immediate response to it is pulling you in two different directions. Was he emotional and unable to contain his true feelings? Or was he political and trying to take advantage of the situation for the sake of his own reputation?
In this case, both elements felt true.
Conte was certainly emotional; you could tell that just by being in the room with him, looking into his eyes and hearing his voice. There is no question that he felt this authentically. There was plenty of pent-up frustration there, not only in those dismal last 16 minutes when Spurs threw away a 3-1 lead against bottom of the table, but also throughout this miserable season in which Spurs have never gotten off the ground. Conte’s comments about the FA Cup exit to a much-changed Sheffield United side suggested it was something he’d been wanting to get rid of for some time.
But here, too, there was clearly a political element.
Conte knows his Spurs contract is about to expire and that he has – at most – 10 games left. He has to present his time at the club as a success under very difficult conditions. That’s why he called last season’s fourth place a “miracle” and keeps talking about what an achievement it would be to repeat it this year. The Italian must know he can portray himself as another victim of this dysfunctional club, making the players seem uncontrollable and connecting with the struggles of his predecessors on the job. If he can tie himself to the efforts of Jose Mourinho, Mauricio Pochettino and the others, then at least there is strength in numbers.
Some of what Conte said was extremely self-serving. He spoke of the importance of “playing for the badge” even though the whole mood at the club hinges on his contract expiring. If Conte had signed a new contract or even said an open word about his future, it would have brought some clarity to fans and players who have a right to know what next season will be like. When this was presented to Conte, he snapped that it was just an “alibi” or “excuse” for players who are always ready to take it. Maybe, but Conte can’t pretend he’s the only man who cares about the club’s well-being.
Likewise, some Spurs fans have found themselves agreeing with elements of what Conte has said about the players. That as a team they are less than the sum of their parts, that they have made regressions this season, that they cannot handle pressure or stress well, that there is a culture of excuses and underperformance at the club. But whether what Conte said is true is far less significant than the fact that he would say all of this publicly, knowing full well what the ramifications would be.
The potentially most explosive part came when Conte was asked why Tottenham keep having these problems.
He pointed out that the club never “play for anything important” and that players don’t like to play “under pressure” or “under stress”. He mentioned Tottenham have never won anything under Daniel Levy and speculated on whose fault it was. At the time, that sounded like a critique of Levy himself, of a culture set by the club’s leadership and not calling for a Spurs win. Others have interpreted it differently, saying Conte’s only target is the players themselves.
Conte’s contract expires this summer (Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
Perhaps Conte will get a chance to clarify these statements, but Spurs won’t play for another 15 days.
He needs to know that comments that even sound like criticism of the board are playing with fire. But he still looked happy enough to toss around lit matches like that. When Mourinho made his infamous remarks about there being “problems I can’t solve myself” when Spurs lost to West Ham in February 2021, he knew he had to hit the brakes rather than go into details. He survived another two months on the job.
But Conte has less self-control than Mourinho. And it was impossible not to wonder if he was challenging the board to sack him now rather than give him the final 10 league games of the season.
Tottenham didn’t want that. They want a strong end to the season and then a friendly farewell to Conte with everyone saving face. A smooth transition to Conte’s replacement is far preferable to another very public scramble like in 2021. However, that is dependent on Spurs finishing fourth and it’s hard to see how they can do that when the most important relationship at the club – between the manager and the players – is clearly broken beyond repair.
When Conte spoke of finishing “seventh, eighth or tenth” at the end of his press conference, it sounded like he was igniting the possibility of a positive ending to his time at the club.
Nobody knows exactly what will happen next. Tottenham have breathing room as they don’t play again until April 3 at Goodison Park. Conte has survived before when it seemed his departure was the only option, not least after the Champions League exit to AC Milan 11 days ago when the home crowd turned clamoring against him. One has to be an extreme optimist to expect this to trigger a rebound like last year’s Burnley outbreak did.
Right now it feels like it’s going in one direction, towards a decision. The dynamic is clear.
And Conte is happy to speed things up.
(Top Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)