The Italian Antonio Conte has had barely half a season to learn to speak the language in his new English abode. Yet his team, Chelsea, has resurged from a sullen, broken, disintegrating bunch of individuals—who got their manager Jose Mourinho sacked last Christmas—to the side that is unassailable at the turn of the calendar year.
How has this transformation come about?
“We are a team!” Conte says, accentuating the word. “When we have to suffer, we suffer together. When we have the opportunity to play football, we play. I see every day the commitment, the will to win.”
He sees it. He demands it. He instils it from the sideline where he runs, points, gesticulates and shouts himself hoarse. He exudes the team essence, the demand that every man gives his utmost, just as Antonio Conte did for 19 years as a top player, and has demanded for 10 years as a coach.
All of that effort was spent in Italy. Now, he has joined Mourinho of Manchester United, Pep Guardiola of Manchester City, Arsene Wenger of Arsenal, Jurgen Klopp of Liverpool and Mauricio Pochettino of Tottenham Hotspur. And never forget what Conte’s countryman, Claudio Ranieri, pulled off with Leicester City, the most unlikely winner of the Premier League in history. All of them are drawn to this land that founded Association Football.
Money alone does not make England the mecca for soccer migrants. Nor is it, necessarily, the best example of how football should be played. Guardiola, for example, is unlikely to ever manage a better, or purer, team than the one he had at Barcelona between 2008-12, or even the club he managed until this season, Bayern Munich.
He gave that up, he says, to test himself in the toughest league to win—the Premier League. And though his Manchester City hit the ground running with 10 straight wins, the opponents turned the screws like a clamp around the head until, in the run up to Christmas, City’s vulnerability—its defence—was exposed.
Arsenal and Liverpool also had splendid runs, punctured by losses that, everyone knows, can come from top to bottom of the 20-club league. Leicester’s story-book triumph, winning the league title last May, has also swiftly come to earth, albeit relieved by the underdog Foxes’ successful run through the group phase of the Champions League. The so-called league of champions is as high a status as there is in the global game. High class, but not in every group always as competitive as the contests against fellow Premier Leaguers.
Yes, Chelsea has managed consistency. Yes, Signor Conte has adapted, or maybe transposed his Italian style in a run up to the final weekend of 2016 that was not merely unbeaten, but Chelsea won 12 consecutive EPL matches.
It all started at the beginning of October, directly after Chelsea suffered an emphatic 3-0 loss at Arsenal. Conte had tried to manage through stealth, to adapt to the style that the Chelsea players were accustomed to. The implosion last season appeared to be in huge part to centre on the ego of the manager, Mourinho.
The loss at Arsenal, and before that to Liverpool, suggested that nothing had changed. Chelsea seemed then just as vulnerable. But Conte used the defeats to realign the players into a system he knew best. In Italy, he had employed a defensive line of three, a midfield of four, and a front trio. Two of that middle four, Alonso on the left and the right-sided Victor Moses, are neither attackers nor defenders. They are both—also called “wing-backs”.
Moses, who was repeatedly loaned out by Mourinho, adapted rapidly and hungrily to the new Chelsea. Several others in the squad had seemed to lose enthusiasm for Chelsea after last season.
Look at them now. Top dogs, top of the league, and in striker Diego Costa’s case not simply a restored goalscorer, but a warrior who looks as though he would run through a brick wall for Chelsea—and for Conte.
The secret? Go back to Conte’s words about team work and team spirit. Whatever the accent, those have been the words used by successful club managers. Ferenc Puskas, a great Hungarian of Real Madrid’s past, used to say that a winning team needs men who can play the piano and others to carry the piano onto the stage for them. Chelsea has that blend right now.
Arsenal and Manchester City have, at the height of their game, artistic players who go somewhere close to the almost balletic ebb and flow that Barcelona had a few seasons ago.
Do I suggest that pragmatism wins every time? No sir, I do not.
Football has the wondrous fascination of seeming to be transcended week by week, year by year, almost decade by decade by a few extraordinary individuals.
2016 has been no exception to that. Cristiano Ronaldo undoubtedly deserved to win back the Ballon d’Or prize as world player of the year. It might seem a misnomer—an individual award in a team sport—but Ronaldo won the Champions League (with Real Madrid), the European Championship (with Portugal) and scored a hat-trick in the final of the FIFA Club World Cup, won by Real Madrid.
Player of the year, as well as torso of the year, Cristiano R.
Yet on that same Sunday of the CWC final, as on many a day during the last decade, Leo Messi was majestically mesmeric. Four times he ran rings around four or five opponents, drawing them in, skipping joyously away, and creating goals for his mates as well as scoring for himself.
Neither plays in England. The Spanish league has two superior teams in Real and Barca, though neither throws off the tenacity of Atletico Madrid with ease.
The Premier League has so many imported players that, often, barely an Englishman gets into the starting eleven of the Arsenals, the ManCitys, the Chelseas.
Manchester United paid almost £100 million this year to buy Paul Pogba. He has time on his side, but the player he has to look up to has so far been Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Soccer’s supreme nomad and a Taekwondo martial arts black belt in his teens, Ibrahimovic chose to take on the English league challenge in his 35th year. In a United team struggling to adapt to the new manager, he sets the example of belief in one’s self and one’s team.
The Swede is up there with the EPL top scorers—Costa, Alexis Sanchez (Arsenal) and Sergio Aguero (ManCity). Only Zlatan is fluent in five languages, and has played in six lands—Sweden, Holland, Italy, Spain, France and England.
He could, if he wanted to, move to China, whose government reportedly backs a move to pay £120 million (that is Rs 1,000 crore), when he feels ready.
Ibrahimovic responds that he has unfinished business. He wants to stay in, and conquer, the Premier League.
