CONTE’S COUNTRYMEN CHANGING VIEW OF ‘DEFENSIVE’ ITALIANS
LONDON: The long-held view in England that Italian football philosophy is based on putting dour defence first, will not survive many more weekends like the one just gone, in which the four Italian managers in the Premier League were involved in dramatic games.
Last Saturday Watford, under new coach Walter Mazzarri, recovered from 2-0 down to win 4-2 away to West Ham United, before Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester City, last season’s champions, went down 4-1 at Liverpool.
On Sunday Francesco Guidolin’s Swansea City and Antonio Conte’s Chelsea played out a 2-2 draw that was one of the most eventful matches of the season.
“It’s the English league, every game is very, very tough,” Conte said after failing to win for the first time in his five competitive matches with the London club.
What he learnt, if he didn’t know it already, was that a team as dominant as Chelsea were for almost an hour needed to make more of 28 attempts on goal.
“It’s very difficult to talk because we lost two points,” the former Italian national coach said.
“When you have the opportunity to kill the game, you must kill the game. We have to learn that.
“We are disappointed because the performance was very good in terms of our intensity and because we played good football.”
Conte’s view of Swansea’s hotly-disputed second goal was backed up by a furious Gary Cahill, who television replays showed to have been fouled by Leroy Fern before the Dutchman was allowed to run on and score.
“You could be sitting on the moon and see it was a clear foul,” he said.
“He came through the back of me. It was clear as day and seeing it back has made me even more angry.
“That kills me and kills my team. We have dropped two points, which is massive in this league.”
It was a huge goal too for Swansea after two successive defeats, and Guidolin earned credit for switching away from his 3-5-1-1 system before half-time, as well as apologising to Welsh international Neil Taylor, who was annoyed at being taken off to facilitate the tactical change.
“After Chelsea’s first goal I saw my team not playing well and decided to change something before the end of the first half,” he said. “I am sorry for Neil Taylor, but I (made the decision) because we needed a reaction.”