Tottenham Hotspur have released a documentary called 202 Days: Antonio Conte's First Season at Spurs to help launch their new streaming service and football.london have watched it.
The north London club this week launched their new SPURSPLAY streaming service, which contains various videos, media and will show pre-season and academy matches in the weeks and season ahead. Their centre piece offering for their opening week is a blend between a documentary and a season review on Conte's first campaign at Tottenham with an exclusive interview with the head coach, including footage from inside and outside Hotspur Way as he took the team to fourth place and back into the Champions League.
Here are 11 things we learned from the programme on the club's new media platform.
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Levy's early meeting with Conte
Early on in the show there is a meeting inside Hotspur Way with Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, managing director of football Fabio Paratici and former technical performance director Steve Hitchen on one side of the desk with Conte on the other answering questions. football.london understands this was not the Italian's main interview but instead another meeting just before he signed his contract to become Tottenham head coach. With Levy doing the talking and the workaholic Paratici looking at his phone during the clip, the chairman is asking about the style of football to come.
Levy asks Conte at one point: "We have an expectation about the type of football that we want to see. How would you describe your style of football?" Conte replied: "I want to create something important, together. I want to be competitive. I want to be competitive with the best."
Conte's philosophy and tactics
Later on Conte gives an indication as to how he wants his Tottenham Hotspur team to look and the best fitting tactics for his new group of players.
"My coaching philosophy is very simple. To play good football, attractive football for our fans, with passion," he said. "I think for this team it is perfectly suited to play with the three central defenders. Also because in this way we can support the three strikers. We have strong physical midfielders and they match quality and the quantity. It was a perfect suit for our team to play with three defenders, two midfielders and two wing-backs and three strikers."
Son praise
It's clear from the outset that Conte is a big fan of Son Heung-min and he lauds the South Korean star's contribution on and off the pitch.
"For every manager, if you want to win, you need players of great talent," he said. "Sonny impressed me for the commitment, for the attitude, for the behaviour – he is a really good guy, but I think many people don’t know the man, the person that you find in Sonny. He always has a smile on his face. For sure he is a positive person. He is an important player for Tottenham. Every manager dreams of having this type of talent in your hands."
Ryan Mason on Conte's persuasive ways
Former caretaker manager Ryan Mason had dropped out of involvement with the first team after Nuno Espirito Santo's arrival. You'll notice the Portuguese's name is unsurprisingly absent from this piece of work from the club, with only a reference to a change needing to be made.
However, Mason took training after Espirito Santo's exit and Conte grabbed him to chat after the session, using his powers of persuasion to bring the highly-rated young coach away from his academy role and into the first team fold again.
"I spoke to the boss after the first training session and we spoke a bit about joining the team and becoming part of the coaching staff. It was something that I was really excited about," said Mason. "He's one of the best managers in the world. That winning mentality is contagious. He's a really top guy as well.
"He's hard working and all of the staff he has brought along are good people, professional and top mentality. Hopefully we can transfer that to the players and create a real togetherness along with the fans and everyone involved in the football club."
An idea that Conte tried to instil early
After Spurs lost to Brighton late in the season, following a last-gasp goal from the Seagulls, Conte made a big point in the media about the team needing to make sure that if they couldn't win then they couldn't lose. It was a mantra repeated by all of the players in their subsequent interviews.
In turns out though that Conte was preaching that sentiment from the start of his reign and admitted that after his first Premier League game in charge at Tottenham, a 0-0 draw at Everton: "I said to the team that it's important that if you don't win this type of game, you must not lose."
Unfortunately it seemed to take the players a while to get the hang of it.
The Covid outbreak
Spurs had big Covid problems with an outbreak at the club in December and Conte gives the impression in the documentary that even the Premier League did not fully understand the severity of the issues they were facing.
"For the whole environment it was a really tough period. We were the first team to have a lot of Covid positives. At that time, I remember many people, also the Premier League, didn't understand very well the serious problem that we were facing. It was really difficult to prepare for the game against Liverpool," he explained. "I was a bit scared before the game, because I know well that when you face Liverpool you know that they are one of the best teams in the world."
Harry Kane preference
Conte makes it very clear during one part of the programme exactly where he would prefer to see Harry Kane operating on a football pitch.
"Harry is a really good person. He works a lot during training sessions and it's a pleasure for me. He knows very well what I want during the game, because for me the number nine, the striker, is very important," he said. "He's our point of reference, but at the same time if he feels the situation, to drop and receive the ball, he becomes dangerous because he also has the capacity to become a number 10 and then to make fantastic assists for his team-mates.
"But at the same time he knows very well that for me it's very important for the number nine to stay in position, to be a point of reference for our attacking."
Lucas' fireworks and festive sadness
We know that Lucas Moura can light the spark into Tottenham on the football pitch, never more so memorably than against Ajax, but he also seemingly lights up the club's festive celebrations. During the programme Conte admits his sadness at the way English football carries on around a time for families but acknowledges the Brazilian's efforts in brightening things up.
"To play on December 26 it was very strange. In Italy Christmas is a period when we like to stay with the family. We feel a lot, Christmas," said the Spurs boss. "To celebrate the last day [of 2021] with the team, I remember Lucas Moura brought fireworks. It was good to stay together and celebrate, but at the same time a bit sad when you don't have your family close to you to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. It was a bit difficult for me."
More Conte talks with Levy and Paratici
Spurs' three defeats to Chelsea hit Conte hard and he admits in the documentary to having regular talks with Paratici and Levy throughout that period.
"It was a tough period for me in Tottenham. During that period we had Son injured, Romero injured. We lost three games against Chelsea in that short period. I wasn't use to winning losing three games in a short period and I remember very well, it was really tough for me to accept this," he said.
"During that period I spoke a lot with Fabio Paratici and also with our chairman, to speak about my disappointment and my frustration. Every game it's important to have a good reflection on this, to try to improve. When you lose three times in 10 days it means your opponent is better than you in every aspect. The first thing was to try to bring a bit of balance into the squad."
That Burnley defeat
We know that the 1-0 defeat at Turf Moor was a turning point in Tottenham's season, with Conte offering to leave at that point if he was considered to be the problem, and the Italian went into more detail about his mentality in the aftermath of that woeful performance in the rain at Burnley.
"The defeat hurt me a lot. When you have type of situation where you're up and down and you win at City and you lose at Burnley, after that game I wanted to push myself to the maximum level and also the players to improve the situation," he said. "The worst moment of the season was after Burnley. I started to understand that I should go strong with not only myself but also the players and the environment. If you want to be competitive and try to reach something important during the season you need to be stable and not up and down, up and down.
"I think this period was a part of a process, to understand very well, especially my players, the minds of my players, and if they wanted to achieve something important we should improve. This defeat gave me the possibility to push more, much more."
Celebrations and Conte looks to the future
Tottenham turned it around and grabbed fourth place and Champions League football, and we get to see a glimpse of the celebrations indoors after the final day victory at Norwich.
"We are back, we are back in the Champions League," Lucas screams into the camera outside the dressing room before the celebrations continue inside with Pierluigi Gollini lifting Son up into in the air before the South Korean goes along the whole squad and shakes hands.
Conte starts to make a speech to the group, saying "Only two words....". A mischievous Son interrupts with "Two days off?". That prompts a laughing Conte to put two fingers up in his general direction before saying: "This success, to play Champions League. You deserve this."
Then within the new interview footage we hear Conte's belief that last season will be crucial in defining the next one.
"With this next year we know to reduce the gap to the top teams is not simple. It's not easy," he said. "Now for sure I need a bit of rest, to go to Italy to stay with my family. It will be very important to not forget the difficulty of [last] season for the club."
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