A shirt, a tie and a win

Tracksuit has gone and the smile is back for the hyperactive manager

Antonio Conte has written his own book in the past week on laughter and forgetting. From the minute he dissolved into hysterics at the idea of Diego Costa being treated like “a criminal” – and declared the whole saga was now “in the past” – Chelsea’s manager has behaved like a man pleased to be in charge of the Premier League champions.

Until then, it was all sulks, grievances, coded warnings and apparent political friction with the board. Chelsea looked to be hell bent again on destabilisation, as if blowing the No1 spot in English football was as natural as night following day. Then someone at the training ground asked about Costa’s latest howl from the wilderness and Conte could not stop laughing. There were wider clues. For the first time since last season ended, the manager appeared positive and relaxed.

Cut to the end of the first Premier League game at Wembley, where Spurs failed to convert long spells of pressure into a victory that would have calmed their nerves about handing White Hart Lane over to the builders.

With Chelsea’s 2-1 win on the board, Conte strode over to the away end, loosening his smart white shirt as he punched the air. The tracksuit in which he slouched around on the touchline for the home defeat to Burnley was back in the wardrobe. Conte the smooth Italian businessman had re-emerged, in suit and tie. The turmoil was packed away with last week’s casual gear.

A tracksuit is a Chelsea manager’s propaganda uniform: discuss. Jose Mourinho wore one too, most famously at Liverpool, where he tried to project the air of a man walking his dog on a Sunday morning (this for a game he desperately wanted to win).

It was not only the outfit Conte changed. In the coaching zone here, he was back to his old hyperactive self, throwing out shapes like someone trying to help people in a lake swim safely back to shore.

At the end, he turned his bench into a kind of mosh pit, jumping on his assistants and grabbing at their clothes. Then came the performance in front of the fans, which was redolent of a big FA Cup win. Chelsea’s followers had chanted his name during the game. Whoever is to blame for the club’s needlessly tense start to this campaign, the fans were certainly not blaming the manager.

Did Chelsea deserve to win? No, though assessments of pressure applied – in this case by Spurs – too often ignore other factors, such as Dele Alli’s silly foul on David Luiz just outside the Tottenham penalty box, which led to the first of Marcos Alonso’s two goals, from