“I’m enjoying every single moment of my adventure in Tottenham,” Antonio Conte stated flatly.
He made the remark after presiding over two Premier League defeats and a Champions League draw against Sporting Lisbon that ended with him being sent off for protesting Harry Kane’s disallowed winning goal. Conte appeared to be so enraged that the scolding fury emanating from his mush could melt the fourth official’s face.
But still, enjoying every minute.
For the game at Bournemouth on Saturday, The Athletic took a seat close enough to watch the Spurs head coach’s every move and sense just how enjoyable he’s really finding it all as he closes on a year in charge.
It all starts with such calm. As the players emerge from the tunnel, Conte sits, gently stroking his own cheek.
As the game begins, he slowly rises to his feet. Hugo Boss’ black leather trainers complemented her black trousers and long-sleeved black top. He appears calm and expectant. But only for a short time.
Conte responds with the first of a series of hand gestures from the Italian school of theatrical expression after Ben Davies hoofs a Bournemouth cross directly behind for a corner. It’s the “what the hell is that?” sign, with his thumb pressed against his fingers and his hand swinging back and forth.
Each time, his head is bowed with a sense of despondency that his players just aren’t doing what he’s instructed them to do. Or they can’t do what he’s instructed them to do.
It’s when Spurs are in possession that Conte comes alive, with most of his instructions centered on cajoling his defenders to move the ball quicker. “Faster, faster, faster,” he yells as Davinson Sanchez and Clement Lenglet rather casually move the ball along the Spurs’ back line.
This happens all the time. He wants brisker and more incisive passing, and he wants Bournemouth on the back foot, but his players aren’t responding.
He sways and ushers them upfield, incessantly encouraging left wing-back Ryan Sessegnon and left center-back Davies to make runs down the flank he’s patrolling. He talks to Davies a lot, he wants him to double up with Sessegnon and overlap down the flank.
Occasionally, he turns around and mutters to himself. Sometimes, he clasps his hands together in prayer. When Lenglet misplaces a pass, he slaps both his thighs in unison like he’s conducting an oompah band. It’s not easy being the Spurs’ head coach.
Sometimes he’ll yell but because the crowd has upped the volume, none of his players can hear him. In this scenario, he is essentially an angry man shouting at a cloud. When the crowd noise is loud he’ll use his arms to get the message across, with one diagonally in the air to get the attention of a player and the other pointing in the direction he wants them to run or pass. It’s like watching Robin Williams do semaphores and the signal he’s making is (genuinely) the letter Y. Or “why are my players so bad?”
As Bournemouth’s fans shout “ole”, with their team casually spraying the ball around at the end of the first half, Conte scratches his head. The many mistakes he’s watching are met with passivity instead of rage.
Despite the scoreline and the hopelessness of Spurs’ performance — epitomized by Emerson Royal’s volley that lands in the car park behind the stadium — the only time Conte properly loses control of his senses is when Son Heung-min lines up a free kick to the left of the box. Conte wants Sessegnon and Oliver Skipp to run either side of Son and offer him an option. He points left and right to convey this, but both players run to the left. It’s laughable, but Conte doesn’t laugh. He unleashes a tirade of expletives.
There is encouragement, too — lots of applause during breaks in play, but he spends a lot of the half with his hands in his pockets, motionless. He’s not even angry, just disappointed. That’s much worse.
He’s also probably thinking of his half-time team talk that seen as Moore adds a second on 49 minutes, you can’t imagine did much good, but his words in the dressing room do eventually seem to work.
“After the first half, my feeling was positive,” he later says. “I only asked that we show more personality to take more responsibility.”
Conte starts the second half by crossing himself, a reflection of his Catholic faith. That divine intervention will be needed after Moore’s second goal, which is another Spurs defensive horror show. He beats Royal and Sanchez to head home with an unchallenged right-wing cross.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to understand why some situations happen,” Conte later says.
“These are really good guys and players but sometimes they lose confidence easily. We have to try and work on this aspect.”
Lucas Moura and Royal are at the center of his thoughts for the second half. Again, the messages about overlapping, playing quickly, combining down the flanks, and overloading Bournemouth’s defense are unceasing.
The positioning of his players is at the forefront of his mind. Spurs have awoken now they’re 2-0 down — Davies cannons a shot just wide of the post but Conte completely ignores that and continues telling his players where to run.
There is more eye-rolling and ground-staring as Rodrigo Bentancur plays a pass out for a throw and Royal can’t beat the first man with a cross that doesn’t make it off the floor.
Conte is angry, annoyed, and animated now. The spurs have pulled a goal back and this only elevates his blood pressure. The technical area is no longer big enough and a Bournemouth fan no more than 10 yards away demands in a big, booming voice for Conte to “GET BACK IN YOUR BOX”.
The Italian has barely spoken to the officials all game but now he’s pointing to his wrist and shouting, “COME ON ANTHONY, COME ON” at referee Anthony Taylor as Bournemouth keeper Mark Travers takes his sweet time with a goal kick.
Conte rocks and rolls back and forth from heel to tiptoe as Spurs push Bournemouth deeper and deeper, winning a ludicrous amount of corners (19) and drilling or lofting cross after cross into their box.
The equalizer is almost farcically simple, with Davies plonking in a soft free header from Ivan Perisic’s corner. Conte, again, remains completely focused, pointing to his forehead with not just one finger but two and repeating “think, think, think” to his players.
It’s all Spurs now and Conte is full with them, playing every pass, making every run, and taking every shot. He loses himself in a haze of instructions and passion, his voice starts to crackle, and his players can’t hear a thing he’s saying but he can’t stop himself, he’s living and breathing the game and talking in tongues.
Chances come and go. Son’s free-kick hits the wall and he turns his head 45 degrees towards the floor like a sad owl.
And then before, during, and after corners, Conte is telling everyone where to be. He goes absolutely nuts at Sessegnon for not putting the ball back into the box from a cleared corner. The burly Bournemouth fan continues his “GET BACK IN YOUR BOX CONTE” refrain and fourth official Charles Breakspear shepherds Conte into the technical area. No complaints from the Italians. He’ll be out again 15 seconds later.
And then it happens. All the intensity, the passion, the tempo, it’s reached boiling point… and Spurs get their winner. Bentancur with the volley from yet another corner. Cue Conte delirium? No. While the players and staff go berserk, he turns around and paces down the tunnel, no facial expression, Wednesday’s ruled-out stoppage-time “winner” fresh in his mind.
“I thought in my mind and my heart… I can have a heart attack, to (see us) score, and then be disallowed… I said, ‘I go down (the tunnel) and stay calm, and wait for the decision of the referee,” Conte says. “I came back when I knew the goal was regular.”
As the whistle blows, after a handshake with Gary O’Neil, he’s onto the pitch, picking out match-winner Bentancur for a particularly big embrace and also passionately hugging Son not once, but twice (applauding the Spurs fans in-between as they sang his name at full-time for what felt like the first time in a while). He gets Son in a headlock as they walk off together. Even Fraser Forster gets a hug and there’s a hand slap for Djed Spence.
In his press conference, Conte is exhausted. He laughs when asked if he believed they’d win at 2-0 down (something Spurs hadn’t done away from home since winning 3-2 at Arsenal in 2010). He had wanted overlaps down the flanks, crosses, quicker football, and more risk-taking. Eventually, he got it.
“It was great to see the desire of my players, the reaction they had,” he says. “Also the nastiness they put on the pitch. I’ve seen the desire in the eyes of my players the desire to win this game.
“At 2-2, the only thought was to take the ball and start to play again This reaction was really positive.”
Conte takes defeats to heart so much that he’s (in his own words) horrible company the day afterward. He celebrates wins like a diehard fan, he rails at referees and fourth officials, and he expends emotion and passion by the bucketload. But there is intelligence in his histrionic shouting, too.
“Sometimes it’s frustrating, no? Sometimes you see your team up and down, up and down,” he says. “We have to try and find stability. We’re a work in progress.
“It was vital for us, this win. Especially after two losses in the Premier League. And now this has to give us enthusiasm and passion to play a ‘final’ in Marseille.”
There is no doubt they’ll miss him on the touchline. Well, apart from the fourth official.
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