Former Chelsea defender Mario Melchiot has told Premier League Productions (20/03/23 at 2:10 pm) that he thinks Antonio Conte took the Tottenham Hotspur job to prove a point to Chelsea, and it has all gone horribly wrong now.
Conte was previously in charge of Chelsea between 2016 and 2018, where he won the Premier League title and the FA Cup with the Blues.
After a spell in Italy with Inter Milan, Conte returned to England with Spurs in November 2021.
Despite a successful first season, where he led Spurs to a top-four finish, things have taken a turn for the worse this year.
Disappointing results and performances, twinned with personal issues off the pitch have left Conte’s position as manager at risk.
After an explosive post-match press conference on Saturday where Conte criticised his players and the club’s owners (Football.London), it has been suggested that the Italian will lose his job by the end of the week (Telegraph).
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Contemplating Conte’s motivations for taking the Spurs job in the first place, Melchiot posited he may have been looking for a way to send a message to Chelsea.
He said: “[Conte] took that job thinking ‘okay, I was at Chelsea’. It didn’t go the way he wanted it to.
“So, [he thought] ‘I am going to take [the Tottenham] job now and I am going to have something against them. I am going to show you that I am going to build a team that’s better.'”
“It didn’t work out. There is so much emotion, so much more impact than just only the game. There is history and there are things that happened in that team.”
On the recent events at Spurs, he added: “I know in that dressing room, things must have happened, and he took the emotion from the dressing room to TV.
“And that is the surprise no one expected – I don’t want to be part of a team that has a manager like that because I am worried.”
Spurs Web Opinion
I don’t know that Conte would be quite that petty and spiteful to take on a big job like Spurs just to prove something to Chelsea for whatever reason.
Sure, there’s a rivalry there, but I don’t think Conte would be so quick to agree to a job just on that basis.
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