Chelsea are embodying their manager’s personality in the passion, style of play and winning mentality. Under Antonio Conte the Blues are playing beautiful attacking football and winning in dominant form along the way.
Antonio Conte is proving himself to be Roman Abramovich’s dream signing. The Russian wants to win every trophy in sight.* That goes without saying. But he also wants to be entertained by watching attacking, fluid, beautiful football.
Jose Mourinho brought home the trophies Abramovich coveted and the fans desired. But he frequently did so at the expense of aesthetics. Even now at Manchester United, Mourinho hides behind the word “pragmatic” to excuse parking the bus. For Mourinho, it’s a zero sum trade-off: be pragmatic and park the bus to eke out a win, or play sweeping football and risk a loss.
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Antonio Conte thinks this is a false choice. Conte has led Chelsea on an eight-game win streak with some of the most dynamic and attractive football Chelsea – and the Premier League – have seen in years.
“There seems to be no ego with him,” Daniel Mcclue said about Conte on The Blue Lions (iTunes). “He’s willing to adapt.”
Conte is molding Chelsea in his own image, both tactically and in personality. Winning is Conte’s end, and tactics are the means to get there. By contrast, for Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, tactics appear to be the end and winning is merely the desired outcome.
"[I]t is important – especially nowadays – to adapt, whether that is as simple as starting in the 3-4-3 and dropping into the 5-4-1 mid-game. Mourinho has this 4-2-3-1 / 4-3-3 system and he essentially says “I’m going to put you in this system. You’ll be defensive. You are the best players in the world so you have to make something of it.” Antonio Conte is different."
Antonio Conte will have to adapt Chelsea’s tactics again on Sunday against West Bromwich Albion. West Brom will play a more structured, defense-oriented game, offering Chelsea few (if any) opportunities to counter-attack. The game will resembled Chelsea’s fixtures against Southampton and Middlesbrough more than the recent tilts against City and Tottenham.
"Chelsea really don’t need to counter-attack against anyone other than City. We not going to need to do that against West Brom. They’re going to sit back and we’re going to peg them, like we normally do. Until Chelsea see Spurs on 4 January we’re going to resume normal service and have counter-attacks in the bag if we need it. – Travis Tyler"
As Gianluigi Buffon recently said, Antonio Conte “doesn’t do second.” The Blues are quickly adopting this mindset as their own. This will be the club’s greatest insurance that complacency will not set in during this next run of games against mid-table teams. Conte does not have let-downs after big matches. He will not permit his players to do so either.
More importantly, though, he has instilled his players with such a passion and desire that they will not permit themselves a let-down. The team’s cohesion and selflessness (Hello, Nathaniel!) will do more for their sustained level of play than any threats or training ground tirades could.
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Conte and Chelsea know that wins over Stoke and West Brom are essential for their title goals. They will give these opponents the respect they deserve. That’s bad news for Stoke and West Brom fans.
*For the first team, at least. He has yet to weigh in on the Checkatrade Trophy