Antonio Conte admits that he has a decision to make about his Tottenham future and that if he is not 100% convinced then he will leave the club.
Spurs have struggled for consistency this season and dropped out of the top four at the weekend after making it 10 matches in a row of conceding the first goal as they lost 2-0 at home to Aston Villa on New Year's Day. As he was last season so again during this campaign Conte has been non-committal over his future at Tottenham beyond the end of this season.
Conte's contract with Spurs ends this summer but the club holds the option to extend the Italian's deal for a further 12 months if they wish to. Tottenham are hoping to tie him down to a new longer deal to increase the stability at the club.
Conte admitted ahead of the Premier League clash at Crystal Palace that he struggled at first to adjust to the north London outfit and it's different place in the football food chain compared to his title-winning clubs of the past. He also made it very clear that if he is not convinced about the future then he will leave Spurs.
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"At the start for me it wasn’t easy but then I think this is an important experience. I accepted to do this because I found a great club, a modern club and for this reason I’m happy to work here. I found people that want to be positive and try to create. I found people that know the reality. For this reason, I accepted this," he said. "Otherwise, if these people had said to me we have to win I would have said sorry but this is not the right moment to think that in one year you have to win. For this reason, I accepted this.
"Now, the task is this, my big challenge is this. To continue to work so strong with my staff and the players to improve the club, to create a solid foundation. Then if I am satisfied to continue to do this work and to one day see the result I will continue to stay. If I'm not convinced 100 per cent then I can leave my work, I can leave my work here.
"It’s a big work we are doing together. I know very well what it is and it’s important. My task is this, and if you asked me you are used to (winning), yeah but to win you have to stay in the right condition. My task with the club is to create a solid base for Tottenham to come back to be competitive and to have the ambition, but in a strong way not only with words."
He added: "For now the most important thing is that the process has started. This is very important. Then, the process you can accelerate or you go step by step. It depends also on many circumstances, it also depends on the other clubs. You go to improve but the others continue to grow and invest a lot of money and then it becomes difficult.
"We have only one way to follow, we have to stay together and it’s important to have togetherness between fans, the club, the players. We have to stay together and know we are going to do something good if we have time and patience. The process has started and then this is the reality now."
Conte was asked whether it was frustrating for him to work at a club that is at a different process in its evolution compared to those sides he has coached before.
"Here, I understood that my task is different. My task here is to help the club, to build a solid foundation, to create a base and then to try to improve. This is my task here, this is my challenge here. If you ask me - and the challenge for you - is to win the Premier League, to win the Champions League, this is not the task here in this moment," he said.
"The task for me is to help the club. I found and I signed a contract in November 2021 when I found the club in a difficult position for many reasons. Now my task, I understood it very well, is to try to help the club go in the right direction or to come back in the right direction about the choices of the players, about the work, to organise and to create a foundation. Now this is my big challenge here. Now if I want to stay here, then I have to accept this. Otherwise, if I do not want to accept this then I have to go."
One player who has struggled under Conte this season after winning the Premier League Golden Boot as his player last time out is Son Heung-min. The South Korean star has scored in only one league game this season and in just one Champions League match and the Spurs head coach believes that Son is well aware of his problems during this campaign.
"I think that Sonny is the first person that knows when you compare to last season, the numbers are different. We are talking about an intelligent person," he said. "The player knows very well if you are performing well or if you are performing so and so, for many reasons. Don’t forget that Sonny had this injury in his face.
"On one hand, it's important to have the coach, the staff, the team-mates to try to help you. On the other hand, you have to know that you are mature, to face the situation and then to go out of this situation with your effort. This is important because we are talking about an important player.
"We need our important players to perform well. I was a player, I know you can live different moments. For sure, Sonny has 100 per cent trust from ourselves, and his team-mates. We know he is an important player for us. The player knows that he can perform much better than the way he did until now."
He added: "In this situation, you have to play, you have to be focused and know that there is one situation that can change it totally. In this moment, what you are seeing in a negative way can become positive. Football is this.
“(If you hit) the post (and it goes in or) it goes outside, it change totally the mood, the perception of the perception of the performance of the players. For this reason he has to continue very well, in the way he is doing, to be focused and to know he is an important player for us.
"If we start to have doubts about these players, then we are in trouble, but we have zero doubts about Sonny. If you remember last season it happened the same in a period. It happened last season also for Harry Kane in a period, but we are talking about a player that the expectations are really, really high. For this reason, when the performances are not so high or they are not going to score, you can see this much more than other players that play as midfielders or defenders."
With injuries galore and a World Cup slapped straight into the middle of the campaign, Conte was asked whether this has been the toughest season of his career as a manager.
"For us, it’s always difficult. Then the judgement about the manager, depends on the result. It’s normal. Then, if you ask me, about this season when we’ve started pre-season when many of you ask how do you manage this season because many players are already thinking about the World Cup and then the first step will be to try and find the solution, to find a way to push the players in the right direction before the World Cup," he said.
"Now, after the World Cup, the question is about the players being mentally tired, physically tired and which is the way the manager has to face it. This is our problem, every problem is for the manager because we have to face the situation because it depends on the result.
"You can work in the best possible way to find the right solution but it still depends on the result, but it also depends on the situation that many, many coaches didn’t want to face in this season because at the start of pre-season we said that this season will be really, really strange for everybody, we don’t know what will happen and blah, blah. That’s true, eh?
"The problem is that someone has already forgotten the difficulty of this season because it will be a strange season, a really, really difficult season for everybody, not only for us."
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