Antonio Conte admits he and Tottenham have failed in some aspects since he arrived at the club but has proudly stated that, unlike Pep Guardiola, he has met Julia Roberts.
Conte had won trophies at every club he has worked for in more than a decade until he arrived at Spurs, where he has thus far joined the long list of managers who have failed to bring silverware to the north London outfit. With a growing feeling that the Italian could leave in the summer when his contract expires, he was asked whether he would regard his time as a disappointment if he could not bring a trophy to Tottenham.
“For sure in my mind and in my heart there is always the will to lift trophies, for this reason since I arrived in Tottenham I tried to push a lot the total environment in the right direction,” he said. “But I understood that to reach an important level, to gain a win there is a path you have to go together and to this path it needs that we all work a lot.
“We have to learn to live with pressure and we need to learn to live with stress, to learn to live with fatigue of the situation because I have never seen in my life a team that lifts a trophy without pressure, stress and fatigue – but for sure in my mind and in my heart I have always had this ambition and I have tried to transfer this my feeling to the club.
“But after a year and half we improved many aspects but we need to continue to work to on this path and sometimes during this path I think we’ve failed. We failed because we weren’t ready to face the right pressure and stress and this aspect I think we are working on, but for sure the team and this club I think it’s in the right direction and the work we are doing is important work and the club can see this.
“We can develop a lot in the future but I repeat I understand the fans are frustrated because they don’t see us – we are and this season wasn’t good to lift a trophy but at the same time I can tell them we are working very hard to make them proud and to try to bring this club to be optimistic for the future and be ready to lift trophies.”
Even the managers at title-winning clubs feel the pain of failure – even when it is the more unexpected disappointments. City boss Guardiola said this week that one of his biggest regrets was that the Hollywood star Julia Roberts, one of his idols, came to Manchester in 2016 and went to watch United rather than City, and he joked that even if he could win the Champions League this season he would consider his time at City a disappointment because of how he felt over the Oscar-winning actress’s decision.
Conte had a very quick response when told about Guardiola’s admission as he remembered a victory back in 2017 at Stamford Bridge against United.
“When I was at Chelsea, Julia Roberts came to see us play and I had the chance to introduce her in our dressing room!” he said of the encounter. “But it’s normal for big coaches at important clubs to try to win every competition, and we know very well for Pep – one of the most important coaches in the world – the importance of winning the Champions League after seven years with Manchester City.
“During your career, failure is part of the job. The most important thing is to work hard to try and avoid failure. Sometimes failure is part of your job and it pushes you to become stronger and make yourself better.
“For the big coaches, the expectation is to lift a trophy: it’s the same for me here, and if we don’t lift a trophy the first responsibility falls on the coach. I know the expectations of myself are really high.”
With Conte’s contract coming to an end this summer and Harry Kane’s future the subject of plenty of speculation as his reaches the final year of his deal, it was put to the Spurs boss that a top Champions League club should not have so much uncertainty surrounding both their head coach and star player.
“But you know to finish in the top four could be very important for everybody, first of all for the club and for the players, the manager and the fans,” he replied. “For sure if you finish in the top four many, many situations are more simple because you know that we are going to play Champions League.
“The best players and the best clubs want to play in these competitions. We have this idea but other clubs have the same idea. We will see what happens.”
Conte said back at the start of this season that Kane’s contract needed sorting out and yet seven months on the club is yet to offer the striker a new deal.
“You know very well that in this type of situation it is difficult for the coach to force the situation on one side on the other side,” he said ahead of Saturday’s Premier League game at Southampton. “There is the player and the club to try to find the right situation. For sure I can tell you that every coach wants Harry Kane in his team but then there are a lot of different situations that you have to see to find a situation.
“It is on the player and the club, not on me. My evaluation, my decision I can tell you Harry is a really important player for this team, the most representative player for this team. You know the importance that he has in this team.”
As the England captain reaches his 30th birthday this summer, Conte believes that Kane will have the longevity of the world’s best strikers like Ronaldo, Messi and Lewandowski.
“In my experience as a player, when you reach this age of 30, and I think even before, you pay attention to all the aspects of your life as a player,” he said.
“When you start to become older, then you start to be really, really strong to pay attention in every aspect of your life as a player. To take a lot about yourself on the pitch and outside the pitch.
“We are talking about a player that is showing every day to be a really, really good professional. I see for him, for the rest of his career, a brilliant future because he takes care of himself, not only on the pitch but outside the pitch.
“This is the key. When you overcome 30 years old, if you take care of yourself then you continue to stay at the top. For sure, Cristiano Ronaldo is a really good example. We have a lot of important players, that continued to have big, big careers for the rest of the time that they played.”
When Tottenham take on Southampton this weekend they will likely do so again with the battling right-hand side of Cristian Romero, Pedro Porro and Richarlison and Conte was asked whether he needed more players with that nasty edge some of those players can bring.
“If you want to win, you need to be nasty in every game. For me, nasty means you are really focused in every moment of the game. You are strong from the start until the end. You are ready to win duels, to fight in every moment of the game,” he explained.
“If the team is nasty then you have a big, big probability to win the game. There are other aspects, tactically, technically, the quality of the players, but to be nasty is not for all. The team that is good at becoming nasty, I think they have a big, big chance to lift a trophy.”
