Chelsea break the bank to keep Conte
Club to offer manager huge rise and £200 m to spend Champions confident Hazard will sign new deal
Roman Abramovich is poised to make Antonio Conte the highest-paid manager in Chelsea’s history and bankroll a £200 million summer spend as reward for winning the Premier League title.
Chelsea are also confident that Eden Hazard will sign a £300,000-a-week contract after holding positive talks with the Belgian over his future in the days leading up to Friday night’s title success at West Bromwich Albion.
Conte, the head coach who has sug- gested he will stay at Stamford Bridge, wants to add greater depth and versatility to his Chelsea squad for next season, so he can swap between the 3-4-3 formation that has been so successful and his favoured 4-2-4.
Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, is expected to grant Conte his wish in the transfer market and also reflect the going rate for top managers in an improved new contract.
Conte’s current deal is worth £6.5 million a year, less than Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, Arsène Wenger and Jürgen Klopp are paid. Mourinho earned £7.5 million a year from his last contract at Stamford Bridge.
Inter Milan are willing to pay Conte £12.5 million a year to quit Chelsea, but Abramovich will offer the 47-year-old the biggest salary for a manager in Chelsea’s history and ensure he leapfrogs Klopp and Wenger in the earnings list.
Chelsea are adamant Real Madrid target Hazard will not be sold in the summer and are understood to have told the 26-year-old that he can achieve all of his ambitions at Stamford Bridge during an encouraging meeting.
With the club willing to hand him a £300,000-a-week contract, Hazard gave Chelsea further reason for optimism by giving an interview in which he claimed he could win the Ballon d’Or with his current employers.
Chelsea already have £60 million in the bank from the January sale of Oscar and, together with the return of Champions League football, the club can afford to give Conte the funds toto significantly boost his squad.
Striker Romelu Lukaku, whowho Ever-Everton value at £100 million, is a top target, along with central defender Virgil van Dijk and midfielder Tiemoueue Bakayoko. Conte is also looking for a fullback and a wide player to allow him to play a 4-4-2-2-4 when he so wishes. There will be departures this summer with captain John Terry going, back-up goalkeeper Asmir Begovic likely to leave and Nathan Ake keen to play regular first-team football. Major doubts also remain over the future of striker Diego Costa, who Chinese Super League club Tianjin Quanjian are confident of signing. Asked whether he could 100 per cent guarantee he would be Chelsea manager next season, Conte replied: “Yeah, yeah. But I think we started to do our work, and we have to improve in the next season and to find the right solution.
“We work only nine months together and I think if you continue with these players you can improve a lot. I think the club wants to fight to win every competition and we have the same ambition, and for this reason we try to keep the best players.”
Former Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard is confident the club will fight off Inter Milan’s interest in Conte and believes this could be a new “golden generation” of Blues players if the currsquad is kept together and added to.
“We’ve all heard the stories about Inter Milan wanting Conte and I am sure the club will want to put that to bed as soon as possible,” said Lampard. “They [Chelsea] will want to reward him for this – as all top teams do.
“There’s talk about Hazard, about Costa, about [ Thibaut] Courtois. But you can’t win titles or go into the Champions League without having top players who can make the difference. This year, players like Costa and Hazard have made that difference, so Chelsea will be desperate to keep them.”
As Antonio Conte spoke in the confines of a small, crowded room in the West Stand at the Hawthorns, close to midnight on Friday, those of us present were treated to the singular experience of what it must be like to deal, on a daily basis, with the challenging personality of Diego Costa.
The Brazilian centre-forward was in the room, too, shouting random English words, invading everyone’s personal space, shrieking in frustration and eyeballing anyone who dared to prolong the interview by asking his manager a question. Looking into those eyes, one had the strong suspicion that although the lights were on, it was by no means certain that anyone was home.
It was late in the West Midlands, the Premier League title had been sealed two hours earlier and Chelsea’s top goalscorer wanted to head back to the celebrations in London, and could not see why his manager was delaying.
Earlier he and David Luiz had dragged Conte out of the post-match press conference but the Italian and Chelsea’s director of communications, Steve Atkins, had faithfully returned to fulfil a promise to speak to the Sunday newspapers.
When Costa later removed a fire extinguisher from the wall and aimed the nozzle at his manager, and a group of us leant in close to catch Conte’s words, it was Atkins, a former Foreign Office press aide, who spotted the danger first. “Diego!” he shouted, and Luiz reached over to gently remove the fire extinguisher, as one might guide an eight-year-old with behavioural issues away from the kitchen knife rack.
While Conte continued to take questions, Costa occupied himself for a while doing pull-ups on a scaffold structure that had been built in the room. Drink had been taken earlier in the changing rooms, where footage had shown Costa in his underpants simulating a sex act on a kitman and then trying to rinse away the champagne he had inadvertently poured in his eyes with orange Lucozade.
Tiring once more of the delay, Costa thrust that preternaturally aged face of his into the group of reporters, and towards his manager. “Diego is No 1!” he shouted. “Diego loves you!”
Conte looked up at his centreforward, the man who had run tirelessly all season, clocked 20 league goals and six assists, and only once thrown the proverbial toys out the pram when there was all that fuss about his potential move to China. Conte saw the man-child who has been at the centre of the very best and some of the worst of Chelsea over three turbulent seasons, and sighed.
“Yes, Diego,” the Chelsea manager said plaintively, “I love you too.”
They disappeared shortly afterwards, the three giant figures of Luiz, Costa and John Terry, steering their “Mister” down the narrow corridors of the Hawthorns to the coach outside that would take them to their plane home.
Just five minutes in the presence of Chelsea’s top goalscorer had been, quite frankly, exhausting, not to mention unsettling on any number of levels. What must it be like to work with him for nine months of the year?
It was a reminder of the disparate group of multi-millionaire characters whom Conte has dragged together and forged into a title-winning team in such a short space of time. He has reintroduced Luiz, sidelined Terry and somehow managed to keep Costa operational despite his history of mishaps and that episode in January when he wanted to leave for the Chinese Super League.
As Chelsea know only too well from their previous league title, the most dangerous thing now would be to neglect the strengthening job that will have to be done in the summer. For all his achievements this season, it feels like Costa will leave, although he may surprise us and dig his heels in if he feels that the move is not right. Chelsea do need to evolve, however, and just as Conte shocked them into life this season with a radical formation shift, it feels like he needs to do the same thing again. One challenge will be keeping individuals happy, like Willian, their outstanding player in last season’s 10th-place finish but this season more often a substitute. The Brazil international has been the biggest loser from the switch to 3-4-3.
“My future is here with Chelsea,” Willian said, “I have a contract with Chelsea until 2020 and I am happy here. I know sometimes players always want to play, but I understand why I don’t play much.” Willian is rather more of a diplomat than Costa – who grew up in Brazil but now plays for Spain – and he will know that although there is strong interest from Jose Mourinho at Manchester United, there is little chance of Chelsea permitting him to go there.
Nemanja Matic, another 2015 title-winner whom Conte has restored to top form, said that the change in fortune had been hard won. “He [Conte] works a lot.” Had it been, as the story goes, a hard pre-season in Austria? “Yes, but not only Austria ia – all season. Tactically it is not hard, youou just have to concentrate. Physically lly it is more difficult. If you want to be e champions, you have to be fit andd tactically better than other teams.” s.”
They had certainly been all thoseose things, but the level of competition on in the Premier League has punished d the previous two champions in the season eason that has followed. This year Chelsea sea have had the edge on everyone, but that competitive line is a hard one e to tread, as simple as the difference between certain players being an n asset or being a problem.
Luiz removed the fire extinguisher from him as one might take a knife from a child with behaviour issues