Two years ago today, Antonio Conte was appointed Tottenham Hotspur manager. It was a popular hire at the time, with the Italian having just lifted Serie A with Inter Milan. The man who had ended Nerazzurri’s decade-long wait for a league title seemed like a fine choice to break a silverware duck that had plagued Spurs since 2008. You’ll know by now it didn’t quite work out that way. But initially, Conte looked like just the man for the job.
Since the popular and successful Mauricio Pochettino left in 2019, Spurs had floundered in their search for an identity. Jose Mourinho was a statement appointment by chairman Daniel Levy. An attempt to replace the influential Pochettino with an A-lister capable of handling the pressure of following a beloved figure. As with much of Mourinho’s latter-day career though, the gruff and direct treatment of players was no longer justified by results on the pitch. He lasted just 17 months.
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Former Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Nuno Espirito Santo couldn’t even get close to that relatively short spell. The hopelessly out-of-his-depth former goalkeeper was gone 17 games into his spell. Levy engineered another left-turn when he then appointed Conte two years ago today.
The Italian was another big name, like Mourinho. He was also another uncompromising force of nature who didn’t care who he offended to get his point across. So far, so Jose. But what drew Levy and Spurs to the former Italy manager was the fact he was a title specialist. Now that was something Mourinho could no longer claim to be. As well as the Serie A title with Inter, he’d grabbed another three at Juventus. Most treasured of all in the eyes of Tottenham’s kingmakers, he had won the Premier League with Chelsea.
It started so well. Conte became the first Spurs manager to go unbeaten in their first eight league games. A 5-0 away win at Norwich City late in the season would secure Spurs fourth spot and Champions League football. They had failed to qualify the previous year.
The following season opened with more record-breaking. The 23 points Tottenham had earned in their opening ten games was signified their best-ever start to a Premier League season. But the wheels would come off. Gallbladder surgery led to Conte missing a number of games, with assistant Cristian Stellini taking charge. When Conte did return, a frustrating 3-3 draw with Southampton saw the gloves come off.
Conte took aim at his “selfish players” and the owners of the club in a stunning, self-destructive rant. He eviscerated the very idea of Tottenham Hotspur when he said, "Tottenham's story is this. Twenty years there is the owner and they never won something, but why? The fault is only for the club, or for every manager that stay[s] here?"
After being knocked out of the Champions League and FA Cup, the club announced Conte had left by mutual consent. Despite the cup exits, they were fourth in the table at the time of his departure. This was not an on-pitch collapse so much as it was a total erosion of the relationship between a manager and his club.
Tottenham’s current manager could not be more different to Conte. He is a serial title winner himself, having won the J-League and two Scottish Premierships as well as the AFC Asian Cup with Australia. But Ange Postecoglou is a very different personality. Full of dry Australian humour, the 58-year-old has sewn a seam of togetherness through his squad. Players want to play for Spurs and fans want to watch them, with Ange’s style proving more popular than Conte’s solid but drab fare.
Two years ago, Tottenham Hotspur made a managerial appointment they hoped would change everything. And it did, but not in the way they expected. While results on the pitch were adequate, they were forged in a hostile atmosphere. In appointing Postecoglou to ease that toxicity, Spurs might just have hit upon their most popular manager since ‘Poch’.
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