Conte is finally shown the door by Chelsea with Sarri set for hotseat

ANTONIO Conte has been sacked by Chelsea after months of speculation over his future and despite the Italian overseeing pre-season training earlier this week.

The 48-year-old had a year remaining on his contract, but has left the Blues 55 days after lifting the 2017-18 FA Cup in his final match in charge.

Former Napoli boss Maurizio Sarri is reportedly set to replace Conte as boss and was rumoured to be in London yesterday.

Conte (above) led Chelsea to the 2016-17 Premier League title in his first season in charge.

Finishing fifth in 2017-18, missing out on the Champions League, and friction with the Chelsea hierarchy and influential players prompted his departure. A Blues statement read: “Chelsea FC and Antonio Conte have parted company.

“During Antonio’s time at the club, we won our sixth league title and eighth FA Cup. In the title winning season, the club set a then-record 30 wins in a 38game Premier League season, as well as a club record 13 consecutive league victories.

“We wish Antonio every success in his future career.” GARETH Southgate has been blown away by his players’ response to their semi-final devastation as focus turns to becoming the second-best England side in World Cup history.

The extra-time loss to Croatia in midweek means the Three Lions have been preparing for today’s third-place play-off against Belgium in St Petersburg instead of the showpiece final against France tomorrow.

Southgate and his players are still trying to digest Wednesday’s 2-1 semi-final loss, but there is little time to wallow with England having the chance to achieve the nation’s best-ever finish at an overseas World Cup.

“In terms of mentality, it’s been a really difficult couple of days,” the England boss said. “We were 20 minutes from a World Cup final, and then in extra-time 10 minutes from a shootout to get to a World Cup final.

“The reason for us being here was to achieve that big goal. For all of the players and staff, we got back to St Petersburg at 6.30am after the game, so emotionally it has been a difficult few days.

“But I’ve got to say the players are incredible. They’re an absolute pleasure to work with and their energy, their desire to finish the tournament well... We feel we owe it as much to ourselves as to our public. We’ve brought a lot of pride but we want to finish the tournament well.

“We’ve set a standard in how we work, a standard in the way we play and we want to aspire to that level every time we come out and every time we train.

“We want to keep those standards right to the end and the players did that in training. What we have to decide with the team is who can go again physically — it’ll be important.”

Southgate reported that everyone had trained yesterday, but that some of those who had featured in the semi-final may not have recovered sufficiently.

“Sometimes it’s not always a good decision for people to play if their energy isn’t quite there and we’ve got to think about who can give us the best performance,” he said. “It won’t be exactly the same starting XI, but we want to make as few changes as possible. We’ve one or two injuries, one or two with a little bit of illness, so we just have to see.

“But we have high motivation to perform. We have the chance to win a medal at a World Cup, which only one other English team has ever done.

“So there’s a lot of motivation for us and of course Belgium have beaten us once already, so we’d like to redress that as well.”

Kieran Trippier trained but looks a doubt after a nerve problem and cramp forced him off late in extra-time against Croatia, while Southgate did not rule out changing goalkeepers.

Perhaps the most interesting decision, though, relates to sixgoal striker Harry Kane, who leads the Golden Boot race and was among eight changes when England’s reserves lost 1-0 to Belgium’s back-ups in the Group G finale last month.

“We have a captain whose first thought all tournament has been how far can the team go? How can he help the team to progress?” Southgate said.

“He was on board with us not playing him in the first game against Belgium. If he had a dif-