ANTONIO CONTE could end up costing Chelsea a fortune . . . in throat sweets.
The Italian pulled out a packet of lozenges after putting his squad through yet another gruelling session at the club’s US training base.
The Chelsea boss had just finished putting his team through yet another gruelling session at the club’s training base in Los Angeles.
And he pulled out a half-eaten packet of throat sweets and quickly slotted one in his mouth to start sucking on.
He said: “I need these for my throat – I’m shouting too much.
“I like to follow the training session and my voice is very important so I can call at them and talk to them.
“Also during the game it can be difficult for my throat.
“But I think’s it’s important. It’s important to try to explain my reasons of what I want them to do and ideas of football.
Chelsea suffered a 3-2 defeat to the hands of Real Madrid
“It’s important for me to make them understand when to move at the right time and not the wrong.
“For this reason, the support of my voice is very important to stop and explain in this period when we’re starting a new work together, a new method and new idea how to play football.”
Laughing, he added: “In Italy, Borocillina is a lozenge company – I must speak to their marketing people.”
Conte has always been a man who kicks every ball with his players as a coach – and there is little doubt his passion from the touchline is going to be box office entertainment.
He said: “Once, when I started out, I sometimes used a megaphone on the training field!”
Conte values the importance of good communication and will be stepping up his English lessons as soon as he touches down back in London next week.
Related Articles
He already has a good command of the language – but he admitted: “I must improve a lot. When we return, I’ll start English lessons. It’s very important to find the way to explain, to speak.
“There are many different people who don’t understand English but for the manager it’s important and I studied before to improve my English. Now I want to restart – but during the time we’ve had in Austria and now America, I haven’t had time to study.
“I’m starting to understand a bit better. The most difficult for me is to understand. People can speak very quickly and now I know I’ve been understanding two or three words but imagining the question and sometimes guess wrong.”
Conte is a man of principle. He has always believed in mutual respect, hard work and honesty.
He is deeply religious – regularly attending church as a catholic.
Conte said: “Religion is important and has helped me in good moments and bad moments.”
His darkest period was when he was accused of knowingly failing to report match-fixing under his watch while manager of Siena in Serie B in 2011.
He was only fully acquitted in May of this year, having always protested his innocence.
Conte said: “It’s a bad story for me. I didn’t accept it and I fought against this. I risked myself to have a judge because I could’ve chosen another way.
“It was very easy for me to go to finish a problem and then pass the time.
“But in Italy when you have this type of story in the past five years.”
Conte wiped his hands together before adding: “Finished … no, no – I wanted to be judged.
“In my heart the story was very bad for me, my family. I saw in that moment a bad situation. Many people who wrote bad things without knowing the reality.”
Asked if it was important that his players knew he was clean, Conte replied: “My players know me from Italy, all the players, people, all the managers. All the people know who is Antonio Conte.”
Zinedine Zidane – who was a team-mate of Conte’s at Juventus – believes his old pal is going to be a big hit at Chelsea because “he is meticulous and brings drive and determination to win.”
Leave a comment