Depending on your point of view, either too much or too little happened at Chelsea FC this summer. One thing is certain: the Blues are truly Antonio Conte’s team.
A few things were different between the first match against Burnley and the second against Tottenham. The obvious: Antonio Conte’s suit and Chelsea keeping 11 players on the pitch. Tiemoue Bakayoko made an impression, and a genuine one at that. Andreas Christensen showed a glimpse of the future and Chelsea showed just who they are or at least who they are meant to be.
But even before that win over Tottenham, Chelsea fans could celebrate the most brilliant piece of football management that has ever happened: The Conte Laugh. Antonio Conte is my spirit animal, my likeness in a shorter Italian man – and my favorite manager that Chelsea have ever had.
It’s been wonderful hearing Conte talk about leading Chelsea out at the new stadium, and that his wife and daughter have arrived happily in London. Chelsea have to change this policy of firing managers so casually. Not only is it bad for the team, the youth players, the finances and the fans – before long there simply will be no more good managers left to hire!
Jose Mourinho has been fired twice. Pep Guardiola turned Chelsea down to live and manage in Manchester and Germany. Chelsea fired Carlo Ancelotti, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Claudio Rainieri, Andre Villas-Boas and Rafael Benitez. In that group of men there are eight European Cup trophy wins.
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Yes, since 2002 the managers that Chelsea have had, fired or flirted with (Pep Guardiola) have won eight European Cups. It is absurd how Chelsea have managed to hurt themselves by not sticking with a single manager. It’s the sort of cutting off your nose to spite your own face move that small, stupid and short-sighted clubs make. Antonio Conte is the right man, and no one should forget that the team he built at Juventus has reached the Champions League final twice in the past three years.
Chelsea need to keep Antonio Conte for more reasons than simply common sense. His management of the Diego Costa situation has shown exactly why. Managers famously text players. People communicate through text message now even for matters of sensitive information. Diego Costa likely would not have wanted to hear what Antonio Conte had to say regardless of what it was. It did not matter that it came through a text message. This move was the sort of shaming that a player like Diego Costa needs.
The Diego Costa situation is still a mess. But for as bad as it is, Antonio Conte is handling it perfectly. More and more Diego Costa is looking like he has not just one but maybe six or seven screws loose. His interview claiming that he was being treated like a criminal was just madness and his transfer demands are even stranger.
Costa knows – as does everyone else in football – that the one club he cannot play for at the moment is Atletico Madrid. They made this bed. Chelsea did not recruit underage players illegally outside FIFA jurisdictions – Atletico did. If Costa would act like a rational person and pick LITERALLY ANY OTHER CLUB then he would be out of Chelsea in a moment.
Contrary to those who say Conte’s handling of the situation hurt Costa’s transfer value, shooting a private text to a player is well within his job as a manager. That player taking it to the press like a 13 -year old who was just dumped by their first crush is another matter. Diego Costa hurt his transfer value. Antonio Conte preserved the rest of his team’s discipline and consolidated his leadership.
Antonio Conte sniffed out the weak, unreliable and childish mental mind of Diego Costa and managed him. Conte got what he needed out of him for a year, and then made his plans to better the team moving forward. Antonio Conte cannot build a team around a player whose mind is that weak with a character that selfish and foolhardy.
Conte handled this perfectly. He told Costa early in the summer that he wasn’t part of his plans so he could engineer a move someplace else. Costa’s agent is Jorge Mendes. He could literally play anywhere. The fact that he is playing nowhere is down more to his own self-righteous idiocy than anything else.
Conte’s laugh sums up the best piece of management that I have seen. You can imagine Diego Costa prancing around his home in Brazil furious about this. Conte knows that Costa is a joke and is finally treating him as such. Finally at least one person is man enough to treat this how it should be, like a complete joke.
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Conte’s laugh shows Chelsea’s current players exactly who the boss is and what kind of behavior he expects of them. It puts the end on the Diego Costa show and finally lets everyone move on. Good joke, glad it’s over. Forza Chelsea, Forza Conte.