ANTOn IO COn TE
the squad. Yet for the first, but not last time, Conte realised his
technical ability was just a degree or two below the mark. Of Italy’s
famously heartrending campaign, he started only the quarter-final
tie against Spain and had to come off after 66 minutes, suffering in
90 per cent humidity and from an unusual attack of nerves.
In 1994 Juve appointed Marcello Lippi, a less ardent Conte fan
than Trapattoni. That season witnessed a UEFA Cup final defeat –
but also Conte’s first scudetto and a Coppa Italia. Fate was merely
feeding him a few tasty morsels, however, before pulling the rug
from underneath.
Conte was not even allowed to enjoy what remains the high point of
his playing career: the 1996 Champions League Final triumph against
Ajax. Just before half-time, Edgar Davids’ granite pelvis bludgeoned
into Conte’s thigh. It ruptured a blood vessel, which began pumping
out into the muscle. Conte retired to the bench, thinking it was merely
a knock. As the final whistle sounded, he leapt up in jubilation and was
skewered with pain – the worst he had ever felt.
When Juve’s plane landed back in Turin that night his team-mates
headed out to party, while Conte can’t even remember which hospital
he was taken to. Too much blood had pooled to extract with a syringe.
He was bedbound for days. One night he attempted to get up to go
to the bathroom, prompting another setback and lots of leisure time
to watch the Euros he now wouldn’t be playing in.
But Conte clawed his way back and joined new signing Zidane for
pre-season. Playing blithely through several lingering symptoms, he
earned a call-up for a pair of World Cup qualifiers in October. Against
Georgia in Perugia, with nary an opponent nearby, he planted his left
leg awkwardly.
This time he had done his anterior cruciate ligament. After a month
of physio failed, he underwent a reconstruction, only for an infection
to almost wreck the surgeon’s handiwork.
The 1996-97 season whizzed by Conte’s window: Juve’s scudetto,
European Super Cup and Intercontinental Cup triumphs, and another
Champions League final. He gave up the captain’s armband that he’d
just been awarded, plus the central midfield spot he had coveted and
finally earned after years spent out wide.
Again, Conte’s misfortune acted like rocket fuel. When he scored in
August 1997 against Lecce, he was too hysterical to think about the
wisdom of celebrating wildly against his hometown team, whose fans
have had it in for him ever since. Against Brescia, Antonio even scored
a bicycle kick that Del Piero termed a “gol alla Van Basten”.
But by the second half of the season he was stuttering, starting less
often as Juventus won Serie A and on the bench as they lost to Real
Madrid in the Champions League final. By July, it was reported he was
joining Middlesbrough, then Marseille, then Blackburn.
He stuck around, which was useful for Juventus given his
newfound habit of scoring gol pesanti – ‘heavy goals’ or decisive
strikes. “Only he could have done a thing like that,” admitted Carlo
Ancelotti after one against Olympiacos that saved the club from
Champions League elimination. La Gazzetta likened Conte to
Winston Wolfe, the ultimate fixer in Pulp Fiction. Ancelotti, Conte’s
football soulmate, succeeded Lippi in February 1999 and called
Antonio “fundamental, whether he plays in the middle, on the left
or the right”.
Conte continued to lurch from misfortune to disaster. He endured
Manchester United’s devastating 1999 Champions League semi-final
comeback, and scudetto woe the following season after a final-day
defeat at Perugia, in part thanks to his defensive error. He rounded off
the decade with an overhead kick in Italy’s Euro 2000 opener against
Turkey, before Gheorghe Hagi thudded into his ankle in the last eight,
ending his tournament.
Before he hung up his boots, Antonio still had time to lose two more
Coppa Italia finals and a Champions League final (in which he missed
a golden opportunity), get left out of Italy’s 2002 World Cup squad and
make a rancorous departure from his life’s club.
When he finally returned in May 2011 as an imperious coach, Conte
spoke about how his playing days had left him riddled with the fear of
defeat. “When someone reminds me that I’ve won so much, I always
reply, ‘I’ve lost so much’. It’s a way of thinking which always helps you
improve yourself.” WordsAlison RatcliffeImagesPAI
t was a strange way to sum up a truly remarkable career. When
Antonio Conte hung up his Bianconero shirt in 2004, he nodded to
his 1996 Champions League triumph and namechecked a few club
figureheads. Then he recounted the finals he’d lost, the injuries
he’d suffered and his disappointments with the Italy national team,
before thanking the club doctor.
Through the mists of time, you might recall Conte as the bedrock of
the glamorous 1990s Juventus featuring Roberto Baggio, Alessandro
Del Piero, Gianluca Vialli, Zinedine Zidane et al. But the reality of his 13
seasons in Turin is more of a horror movie, complete with gore.
“He’s suffered so much on his footballing journey but he’s never lost
heart,” said his mother Ada in 2000. Maybe there was a smidge of the
worshipful Italian mamma in her portrait, but even La Gazzetta dello
Sport once canonised Conte as Sant’Antonio, after the saint who was
famous for miracles.
Conte had broken his tibia as a 17-year-old with his hometown club,
Lecce, yet at 22, in November 1991, he sealed his prize switch to Juve.
He then topped off his first season with a red card near the end of the
1992 Coppa Italia Final second leg, as the Old Lady chased a one-goal
aggregate deficit to Parma.
His response would have made Ada proud, and won the approval of
Giovanni Trapattoni, who has called Conte one of his godsons. Conte
kept up his fitness levels and returned with such focus that he became
an increasingly necessary regular. Trap looks back on him as “flexible
and intelligent. A force of nature both defensively and going forward”.
That campaign brought a UEFA Cup win for Juve, and a first dose of
sideline sickness for Conte: he was suspended for the second leg of the
1993 final as Juventus sealed a record 6-1 aggregate victory over
Borussia Dortmund. But his decision to watch it with the club’s
fans at the Stadio delle Alpi at least planted the seed for what
would be a recurring source of comfort in future
years: his undying love of the Bianconero tifosi.
By the of summer 1994 he had
earned a call-up to Italy’s World
Cup squad. Azzurri coach Arrigo
Sacchi was a sucker for Antonio’s
workaholism and tactical nous,
holding him up as an example toTHE REALITY OF COn TE’S 13
YEARS AT GLAMOROUS ’90S
JUVE WAS MORE OF A HORROR
MOVIE, COMPLETE WITH GORE
FourFourTwo.com The Managers 95MAnAGERS
AS PLAYERS