Antonio Conte’s final words to the media in Tel Aviv on Friday were the ones that left the biggest mark. There was a change in the way the Italian spoke about Tottenham last season – towards the end of the campaign – when ‘they’ and ‘the club’ began to turn to ‘we’ and ‘us’. Within the confines of the air-conditioned beachside team hotel, away from the sweltering Israeli sun outside, Conte turned the heat up on Spurs’ rivals a notch further.
Antonio Conte said: “We have to continue with the club to build with the players, to continue to improve them. They have a lot of space for improvement. This is a young team and we can work for many years together to improve and fight with the best teams in England and in Europe.”
It might just have been the biggest use of ‘we’ for Conte so far, particularly when used in unison with ‘many years together’. There were times last season when the frustrated former Inter and Chelsea boss seemed on the verge of chucking it all in, now here he was pledging his foreseeable future to the club. Conte, who turns 53 on Sunday, has got what he wants this summer, with six players through the door before the third pre-season friendly had even been played and those players he does not want told that they can head off.
Antonio Conte said: “We spoke with the club and the players are informed about the plans for the next season. We are talking about really good players and the club and I, we think they deserve to play games regularly. For this reason these players are not here.”
Even in the press conference in the team hotel, with the only questions for Dejan Kulusevski coming from the two English reporters who were sat nearest to him, he seemed to open up nicely. football.london asked the 22-year-old what he feels his best position is on the pitch and many players, while sat alongside their manager, might have simply stated the old cliché “I’ll play anywhere I’m needed”. Not Deki, as he’s known by Conte and his team-mates.
Dejan Kulusevski said: “It’s a very good question, I’ve been thinking about this all my whole life. I always thought of me being a number 10, I still think I am, but my best results as a football player have always come being a right winger, so I don’t know! In the future, we will see where I’ll be. Yeah I can probably play wing-back too. It’s football, you want to help a good team, you want to play, enjoy, work hard and have fun.”
Kulusevski declared when he joined Spurs that “I like to suffer” so it seemed natural to ask him whether he loved Tottenham’s fitness coach Gian Piero Ventrone’s gruelling training sessions if that was the case. Without a shred of sarcasm,
Dejan Kulusevski said: “It’s amazing, it’s really amazing to have pain everywhere. I think it’s a fantastic thing to have you know? I love to work hard because everything in life comes from working hard. It’s a little bit difficult, of course, nothing is easy, but this is what you have to do to become a champion.”
From anyone else that first sentence might have sounded like a joke, but the 22-year-old said it with utter conviction and that’s why Conte loves him and wanted to sign him back when he was Inter boss. Ventrone, who could be spotted walking around the hotel with his shock of white hair, is loved by the players despite what he puts them through. The affable fitness coach is one of the most popular members of the club, which runs contrary to the scenes seen during the training sessions.
Antonio Conte said: “Maybe for you it is intensive training, for me it’s normal training. I used to have these type of training sessions in the past when I was a player and when I was a coach. Maybe it was strange for you or for the people that think that the players go out to the pitch to have fun. The fun is a consequence of when you work very well and during the pre-season it’s important for us to reach a peak of fitness and to start the season in the best possible way and also to avoid injury. To avoid injury, particularly muscular injury, you have to train your muscles with intensity during the training sessions, but I repeat for me it is very normal and it’s the same in other countries.”
Even training has been slightly more relaxed in Tel Aviv though, with the double sessions each day reduced to just one. The squad trained on Thursday morning before flying from Stansted Airport, where the Brazilian players bumped into Ronaldinho in the private airplane hangars, much to many of the club staff’s surprise.
