Conte Says Chelsea Won 2016-17 Title as Underdogs, Opens Up on Tottenham

Antonio Conte looks back on his underdog title win at Chelsea and the losing culture he says he found at Tottenham, in an interview with The Athletic.

Antonio Conte has looked back on his two jobs in English soccer in an interview with The Athletic, insisting that Chelsea's 2016-17 Premier League championship was achieved by a team few rated. The Italian also spoke at length about the frustration that defined his time in north London, where he coached Tottenham from 2021 to 2023 after leading Chelsea from 2016 to 2018.

Conte's most recent position was at Napoli, whom he departed this past summer after two seasons at the Stadio Maradona. Between his two London posts, he managed Inter from 2019 to 2021 and delivered the Scudetto in 2020-21 before taking the Tottenham job in November 2021 as the successor to Nuno Espírito Santo.

That first campaign at Stamford Bridge ended with the league trophy, and no Chelsea manager has repeated the feat since. A second domestic honor followed in what turned out to be his final year with the club, as the Blues added the FA Cup.

Conte described that championship success as something the team accomplished "as underdogs," pointing to a quiet transfer window rather than headline purchases. The incoming players were center-back David Luiz, left-back Marcos Alonso and midfielder N'Golo Kante.

The Kante signing, he revealed, met considerable internal resistance, with the club checking with him 10 times to be certain about the move. In Conte's telling, Kante looked nothing like the archetypal Chelsea footballer — imposing in stature and immaculate in appearance — and even the manager initially wondered about his physicality, a doubt he set aside because of his firm conviction that he was acquiring a top player.

Tottenham earned Champions League qualification across the season in which Conte arrived, yet the side never grew into a credible challenger for the league championship at any stage of his tenure, which concluded in March 2023.

What exasperated the coach, he explained, was the message coming from people around him: that Tottenham would never win anything and were, simply, losers. He believes the club was mocked then and continues to be mocked now, pointing to the reaction when Arsenal fell 3-0 to Brighton, with the running joke that Arsenal had "turned into Tottenham." All of it, Conte said, irritated him deeply.

Whenever results stalled — after draws as well as defeats — Conte said he messaged chairman Daniel Levy. The chairman's answer, he recalled, was always a reassurance not to worry because the following match would bring a win, a reply that left the manager incredulous and led him to press his point repeatedly.

Conte said he accepted the Tottenham position hoping to change the club's trajectory, partly because Fabio Paratici, the managing director of football and a former colleague from Juventus, was already there. Spurs sat ninth when he arrived and completed that season in fourth place, climbing above Arsenal. As for what comes next, the coach indicated he would consider taking a new job during the current campaign "if it's worth it."