A post-season meeting at Tottenham Hotspur will define what comes next in north London with Antonio Conte linked elsewhere and the likelihood of former manager Mauricio Pochettino being on the market for a new job.
Spurs' final games of last season were dogged by talk about the future of Harry Kane and now 12 months on it is Conte's future that is the subject of discussion as his team faces five crucial matches in their bid to finish fourth in the Premier League and gain entry to the Champions League next season. One report in France has claimed that the Italian has offered himself to PSG as the successor to Pochettino for next season. Those around Conte have dismissed the reports as mere speculation, as they must for a head coach who is under contract for another season at Spurs and football.london understands there is no official break clause this summer in the former Inter Milan manager's deal.
There is currently a sense of flux though about Conte's situation at Tottenham with all eyes on the remainder of the campaign before a meeting between the head coach, chairman Daniel Levy and managing director of football Fabio Paratici after the season's end. The 52-year-old has publicly stated that he has found a club further back in their development than he expected from the outside looking in, although there is little doubt that he has since dragged them up from the mess they were in when he arrived in November to a side that now has fourth place in its own hands with five games to go.
READ MORE: What Conte did to Spurs' players in Brentford dressing room and his big summer transfer overhaul
The PSG noise, while of no help for Spurs at this delicate stage of the season, plays into Conte's hands when it comes to applying more pressure on Levy to find the finances for a major overhaul this summer to turn the club into the title contenders the head coach desires.
The Spurs fans' frustration with the club's hierarchy will hit new heights if Conte were to walk after the season ends, lasting just over six months after Nuno Espirito Santo managed only five, although there has also been a growing irritation among some sections of the fanbase at Conte's very deliberate way of talking about only this campaign and no more. The former Chelsea boss has also never been shy in stating that he believes he is better than the stage Tottenham are currently at.
How he deals with questions about the PSG links and next season at this Friday's press conference ahead of the match against Leicester will no doubt be closely scrutinised. Spurs have been planning for a pre-season under the Italian, with two games to be played in South Korea, talks held over a friendly against Rangers in Glasgow on their return and then a match in Israel against a European opponent the weekend before the Premier League season begins.
For Conte, much will depend on the situation around him and what he believes the club is able to do next season and he has previously indicated that he will have no hesitation in walking away if he is not backed.
"Honestly I have my vision and the vision is this, it does not change," he said last month. "The vision was the same in the past, the vision is the same in the present, the vision will be the same in future. The vision will be this. I stop if the vision of someone is not the same. OK. It is OK. I have a vision. One vision. I want to fight to win. I want to fight to be competitive. I want to feel that we only have one per cent but we need one per cent to win the title or a trophy in which we participate.
"We have to feel this. This is my vision and I continue to have this vision. And then I know that there are different visions and many clubs have different visions but I think which is my vision and the vision that brought me to be competitive and for sure I follow my vision in any case."
He added then: "In this moment it is important to be focused on the present and we have a lot of time to sit around the table and then to speak about everything. At the end of the season everyone has to speak about their own vision, and I speak about my vision, and I think also the club will speak about their vision, and Paratici will speak about his vision, and then we will see. After this we will see now is too early. We have to be in the present, the future is very far in this moment. For sure there will be a moment when we will go to take decisions."
The PSG link to Conte is an interesting one. While the French giants offer a glittering array of stars to work with and riches galore, Ligue 1 is not one of the toughest leagues in relation to Europe's major top flights and for a Premier League and multiple Serie A title winner like Conte it would not represent a step up in that respect.
The challenge at PSG lies in their biggest desire - to win the Champions League - and that is an area where the Italian has fallen short in his glittering managerial career. He won the competition as a Juventus player but as a coach his European pinnacle was reaching the Europa League final in 2020 with Inter Milan, where they lost to Sevilla.
In the Champions League, with Chelsea and Inter, Conte has won only three of his past 15 Champions League matches. The furthest he has got in the sport's elite club competition was the quarter-finals in 2012-13 with Juventus, losing 4-0 on aggregate to Bayern Munich, although that was the Turin club's first appearance at that stage in seven years.
PSG are reportedly favouring Zinedine Zidane as their next manager, with the Frenchman having lifted the Champions League three times as manager of Real Madrid as well as the FIFA Club World Cup twice, but there are suggestions he dreams of managing his national team after the World Cup.
Then there is the current manager of PSG - a certain Mauricio Pochettino. The expectation is that the Argentine will leave the club after taking them to their joint record 10th Ligue 1 title this week.
The 50-year-old added the first league title win of his managerial career to last season's cup double with PSG, but his relationship with the Parisian club's fans has been an uneasy one with booing during matches and large sections of them left mid-game on Saturday to celebrate the title win away from the team.
That Pochettino could not take a PSG team with Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe up front past the Champions League semi-finals last season or the last 16 this year has ultimately defined his time in Paris, with the Ligue 1 title the bare minimum demanded by the supporters.
There have been reports in France that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has been calling Pochettino repeatedly about a return to N17. However, those within the Argentine's camp have told football.london that is not the case, with relatively little contact between the two men in recent times other than the odd friendly message.
There of course is a certain irony to the prospect of PSG paying Levy compensation to prise away Conte and Spurs in turn bringing Pochettino back from Paris for nothing. If Conte were to depart then the Spurs chairman would likely see Pochettino as the one man to soften some of the backlash from the fanbase.
However, while Pochettino has often spoken about his desire to complete "unfinished business" at Tottenham and his love for the club, the north London outfit's current structure is not one he is fond of. The Argentine is not the biggest fan of the the sporting director set-up and has reportedly had a strained relationship with PSG's Leonardo.
At Tottenham, Pochettino worked with both Paul Mitchell and Steve Hitchen, but both were friends of his before their appointments. Even then the Argentine publicly complained in his final summer at the club that he had become more of a coach than a manager despite his title. What any potential return for Pochettino would mean with Paratici's position at the club is unclear.
For now though all eyes are on the remainder of the season with Tottenham and a fourth-place finish and Champions League qualification would help make the summer a clearer one.
Conte will wait until the end of the campaign to hold that crunch meeting with Levy and Paratici before all parties decide what comes next.
There have also been suggestions that Conte would be keen on managing Roma should the Serie A club and Jose Mourinho go their separate ways, but with six months of foundations already laid at Spurs, Conte will feel that with the right backing he can take the club to new heights.
When he gets that backing, Conte's CV suggests he succeeds and Tottenham's hierarchy knew when they appointed the Italian that they were bringing in someone who would not only raise the expectations of the fans but also the expectations of what they must do after 20 years with only one League Cup to their name.
Pochettino fitted Tottenham better than any other coach in the modern era but he could only take what he was working with so far. In contrast, with Conte, Tottenham must fit the Italian rather than the other way around and that is what this summer will hinge upon. Some might suggest that it's time to change the mould.
