Bridge of sighs

Get ready for the COVID anniversaries, as they will be coming thick and fast over the next few weeks. My first of note lands this evening when Chelsea-v-Everton kicks off at Stamford Bridge. It was this very fixture, on this very date last year, that marked the last time I was sitting in my seat in the East Stand Upper Tier, at the very same venue, watching football "live" (i.e. not on an iPad or with fake crowd noise unhelpfully piped in by Sky Sports). 

The home side won handsomely, 4-0, in what turned out to be a miserable return to the Bridge for Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti (regulars to this blog will have endured, amid my rants-previous about Chelsea's biennial managerial schisms, how Ancelotti was dispatched by the club on the final day of the 2010-11 season at Everton's Goodison Park for leading the Blues to just second in the league...). But tonight, by some quirk of Premier League scheduling, it’s the same fixture on the same date at the same venue, albeit one devoid of supporters, prompting some reflection on the football year gone by. Because that win over Everton last year felt like the season had ended prematurely on a high. But as we walked out of Stamford Bridge, the weirdness that we’d all experienced that afternoon was just the start of things. Most startling was how, almost at a stroke, football dropped down the list of priorities and, to some extent, stayed there, though not immediately for everyone: three days after that Everton match, their rivals from across Stanley Park, Liverpool, hosted Atlético Madrid at Anfield in the Champions League. 

Four weeks later, the city of Liverpool experienced a sudden surge of coronavirus deaths, with 68 recorded across the Royal, Aintree and Broadgreen Hospitals between 7 and 9 April. The suspicion fell on a spike in COVID-19 infections following the Madrid game, which had been attended by 3,000 Spanish fans who'd flown in for it. Madrid was already succumbing to the virus by then, and had strict lockdown rules in place. A week later, 250,000 people descended on the Cheltenham Festival. “People were crammed six deep at the bars,” journalist Alan Tyers, who’d been covering the event for the Daily Telegraph, told The Guardian. “If you were going to design a virus dispersion hub, you could do worse than the indoor bits of a packed racecourse”, he said, as he recalled concourse bars packed with racegoers innocently enjoying some drunken revelry. Tyers’ comments appeared in a comprehensive, forensic examination of last year’s Cheltenham meeting which, combined with the Liverpool-Atlético game, were two notorious ‘superspreader’ events that took place just as the virus was taking a hold in the UK. By the final Cheltenham race on 13 March, The Guardian noted, there had been 2,263 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Britain. That same day, the Premier League suspended all games. 

The government remained unchanged until the 16th, when Imperial College modelling predicted that the country’s death toll from COVID-19 could reach 500,000 if there wasn’t a major intervention. By the following Monday, Boris Johnson announced the first national lockdown. That same day 56-year-old decorator Geoff Bodman was put on a ventilator at a Cardiff hospital. The Guardian reported that it was ten days after he’d returned home from the Cheltenham Festival. Eight weeks in intensive care ensued, during which he had a stroke. “They should never have allowed [the festival] to go ahead,” Bodman told the paper. “But it would have cost millions to cancel.” Perhaps if they’d known then what we know now, with the UK death toll approaching 123,000 and over four million cases recorded, the organisers of these events might have thought differently. But, benefit of hindsight, and all that.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

I, for one, shudder at the thought of what I might have been exposed to at Stamford Bridge on this day a year ago, not least because I was soon identified as “clinically extremely vulnerable” to the virus, and technically, should have spent most of the last year shielding. I eventually caught it in November and experienced only a very mild dose, but it could have been worse. Much, much worse. That Sunday, in our section of the East Stand, we didn’t know quite what the protocol was. Old friends, who’d been there week-in, week-out for years, greeted each other awkwardly with elbow bumps rather than conventional handshakes. A large swathe of Row 19 in front of us was empty, the unmistakeable sign of regulars giving the game a swerve. Not that it made much difference to the result.

When the 28th season of the Premier League resumed in June, it was to a very muted return. Matches had to be played behind closed doors with only essential staff allowed inside grounds. Home and away teams are still kept apart before kick-off, with visiting sides invariably forced to use makeshift changing facilities in club car parks, rather than the traditional ‘Away’ dressing room. Match balls and corner flags have to ritually disinfected, and non-playing staff and substitutes were required to sit socially distanced and masked in the stands. Players mingling, hugging and generally mixing is still a moot point. Broadcasters have tried to compensate for the lack of crowds by adding crowd sound effects but it just isn't the same (the one consolation of watching with the sound effects off is that you hear every swearword from the touchline, forcing commentators to regularly have to apologise for pre-watershed expletives).

Football soldiered on under make-do circumstances. Games that went ahead in the first few weeks of the hastily resumed season were notably flat for home viewing, despite the bonanza of live coverage, with all Premier League games televised and 6pm weekday kick-offs (though the Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening kick-offs have eaten into time usually reserved for family entertainment). But despite this bounty of televised football, it would be hard to say that we’ve always had our money’s worth. Graeme Souness recently wrote in The Times that the absence of fans in stadia has had a statistical impact on matches. He noted that home advantage was no longer a factor, with one particular week, recording all five Wednesday night fixtures ending in away wins. We’re now on course for an away win record in the league. 

“People tend to forget that players are performers and entertainers and will all feel the impact to a degree, some by a lot and some by a little, without crowds to play in front of,” Souness wrote. “The vast majority of them enjoy the thrill of having a live audience there, so they are suffering without it.” As a player he recalled feeding off the atmosphere inside the stadium both home and away, especially the latter: “The more hostile it was, the more I thrived on it.” Aggression, Souness said, has been dampened, measured by the minimal number of player scuffles he’s seen during lockdown conditions. He also noted that the absence of baying crowds has also impacted referees’ brandishing of red cards and awarding penalties, though there is no evidence to back up such a claim.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

As forthright in print as he is in the Sky Sports studio, Souness concluded that Premier League football had, throughout the crisis, proved to be less of its traditional value, adding that it can sell itself for “astronomical figures” around the world “because it is deemed the most exciting, honest and entertaining,” but that has been missing. He cited VAR as a factor, and sort of has a point. Greater televisual scrutiny has, indeed, made VAR seem like a bureaucratic burden, with some decisions made using it no better than a referee giving or not giving a decision without it. I can only imagine what those interminable pauses in games would be like inside a stadium. 

Perhaps we will only find out on the last day of the league season, 23 May, when matches will be playable - in theory - in front of crowds for the first and final time, following the expected lifting of lockdown a week before. By then, Manchester City will have walked away with the league title, and it will be probably only the race for third and fourth place that will be of any consequence. For this Chelsea fan, tonight’s encounter with Everton will count greatly in that hunt for a Champions League place. If both teams approach it right, it’ll be - to use one of football’s many clichés - a ‘cup final’. And that’s just the sort of game that I would dearly love to be in my seat at Stamford Bridge to watch.  

It's a pity history didn't repeat itself

It was less than a hour after the final whistle at Goodison Park, in a match that Chelsea lost by a single goal away to Everton, that one of the greatest managers football has ever produced was brutally sacked. Some close to Carlo Ancelotti say he’d been expecting it, but that doesn’t diminish the ruthlessness with which then-Chelsea chief executive Ron Gourlay informed the Italian he was out, in the away team dressing room.

This was the Italian coach who’d won the league and cup double in his first season at Chelsea, who’d brought with him to West London an incredible pedigree from Italy, with scudetti and myriad other silverware during his spells at AC Milan and Juventus. Ancelotti had, it is said, even been seen as the model manager in Roman Abramovich’s eyes, given that he’d regarded the rossoneri as the template for Chelsea, stylish, successful in Europe. And yet, despite winning the Premier League and the FA Cup in his first season at Chelsea, Ancelotti was summarily fired on the final day of the domestic season - for simply guiding the club to second place. By the same token, then, you have expected history to have repeated itself yesterday at Goodison Park. A frankly pathetic Chelsea squandered a second successive league game in hand to remain in sixth place with only the momentum of their Europa League run keeping them in with a chance of playing in the Champions League next season.

I can't, then, be the only one obsessively checking Twitter yesterday evening, or hitting refresh on the BBC Sport home page today, expecting the headline "CHELSEA SACKS SARRI" (and the obligatory tabloid splash, "WHO'S SARRI NOW?". "Clueless Sarri," as The Sun branded him today surely must be reaching the end of the line. Surely, now, it's a case of 'when', not 'if'? I've tried to be sympathetic to Sarri, that implementing his philosophy must take longer than the eight months he's been at the club. And, to offer some benevolence, until the previous Sunday's frustrating draw with Wolves, we’d been beginning to think that Sarri had turned a corner, prompted by that Carabao Cup final when, even what seemed like a predictable team selection (Hazard as a false 9, etc) turned out to be inspiring, defensively frustrating a free scoring Manchester City and pushing them to a 0-0 scoreline after 120 minutes. Even the ridiculous “misunderstanding” with Kepa Arrizabalaga won Sarri extra respect. Momentum in the Europa League, too, has carried positives, as crowd-pleasing and rare appearances (and goals) from 18-year-old Callum Hudson-Odoi, plus better all-round team performances, have given fans the hope that the Champions League next season is a real possibility.

But despite that apparent European momentum, the sharp focus remains on Chelsea in the Premier League, and here Sarri seems to be going down the Antonio Conte route of talking himself out of a job. "I don't know [what happened]," he told Sky Sports after the Everton defeat yesterday. "The players don't know what happened and at the moment I can't explain the change. We played, in my opinion, the best first half of the season and we could have scored four or five times and then suddenly we stopped playing. It is very strange. We stopped to defend and to counter-attack, everything. [We became] another team, I don't know."

Well, if he doesn't know, then who does? Over the last few weeks, as disappointment has given way to underachievement, Sarri has fallen back on his player's mindset, and thus he did the same yesterday: "I think the problem was mental," he told Sky, "so if you have a mental problem suddenly on the pitch the system and the tactics are not enough." This is just not good enough. I rarely support the notion that it begins and ends with the manager, and in most cases where a manager gets sacked, the players should absorb plenty of the blame. But there's something seriously lacking in the motivation department for Chelsea to play as resiliently as they did in the first half against Everton yesterday, and then, defensively, look like puppets with their strings cut in the second half. Not even the replacement of the poor Higuain with Giroud, and the introduction of Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Hudson-Odoi to bolster the attack could compensate for how poor Chelsea were at the back. There may be individual failings, but the manager trains the team and prepares them for matchday, and should select the most effective and motivated combination of players. Sarri's team were anything but in the second half. Which brings the blame game back on Sarri himself.

Given the history of premature, in-season departures of predecessors at Chelsea who failed to come up to expectations, Sarri has probably been under a stay of execution. Perhaps, though, it’s not that much of a mystery as to why he remains: Marina Granovskaia, the defacto Chelsea chief executive, placed a heavy bet on bringing Sarri and Sarri-ball to Chelsea. Abramovich presumably gave his blessing, but the Chelsea owner has been largely invisible over the last few months as he wrangles with the British government over his visa. It's hard, though, to imagine that the Chelsea hierarchy - in whatever amorphous form it currently takes - hasn't or isn't considering a replacement for Sarri. With a two-week international break, it even has the opportunity to bundle the Italian out and get in someone else without too much disruption to either the club's domestic or European programme. The question, of course, is who: Zinedine Zidane is now off the market, Massimiliano Allegri is unlikely to want the job, and Frank Lampard is only in his first season at Derby County. There's the possibility of John Terry, of course, perhaps with former Chelsea assistant coach Steve Holland being prised away from the England set-up. Or the club dives once again into its directory of Italian managers looking for an out.

Whatever happens, it is becoming clear that whatever Sarri has been trying to achieve at Chelsea is not working. Sky Sports have been reporting "sources" as saying that Sarri's future is now, finally, under evaluation by the club's hierarchy. That should have some bearing on Granovskaia herself for placing such a huge bet on the 60-year-old, but if there's one other thing the hierarchy should be evaluating, its why Chelsea should be looking at yet another season in which it jettisons its head coach not much longer after he arrived.

We've heard this one before

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The warning signs are there: Antonio Conte is not a happy bunny. "Sometimes, I can have an impact on transfers, sometimes you can't," he told reporters after Wednesday night's Carabao Cup exit to Arsenal. "My first task is to do my job and be a coach. For sure, I don't have a big impact on the transfer market."

Elsewhere, the Italian bemoaned the lack of options at his disposal after Willian went off injured, affording Ross Barkley his Chelsea debut, albeit one after several months out, with only a training match under his belt for his new club. "Willian's injury was decisive because we don't have many players to make subsititutions. Morata was out and, after injury, I was a bit forced to decide to play Ross Barkley."

Out of context, "I was a bit forced" might sound like a reference to the apparent indifference Conte showed towards the signing of Barkley. It probably wasn't, and Conte's English skills aren't 100%, but there is certainly something simmering with him. For a manager unable to suppress rumours that he'll be off at the end of the season, he's not doing much to lift the mood.

If newspaper reports are to be believed, we're currently in the fourth transfer window where Conte's wishlist has barely been touched. For this we must remember the separation between church and state at Chelsea: Conte is 'First Team Head Coach', the club's football board is responsible for player acquisitions and disposals. Today's Times reports that Conte's relationship with board member Marina Granovskaia - the de facto managing director and the club's chief conduit to Roman Abramovich - has become so strained that they now communicate through Carlo Cudicini, the former Chelsea goalkeeper-turned assistant coach and Italian-speaking liaison. Things have worsened, according to The Times, since Michael Emanalo stepped down as technical director in November, having previously acted as a "buffer" between Conte and the board, bridging the former's responsibilities for first team performance and the board's role in squad evolution.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

Even if the headlines scream of paying inflated prices for average players, and a vast army of assets sent out on loan as a clear husbandry policy, Chelsea are, in the main, quite astute when it comes to transfers. Granovskaia is seen as being the key to that. Whatever you think of the player, reducing Everton down by £20 million for Ross Barkley is good business. However, the same probably can't be said of the £40 million spent on 23-year-old Tiémoué Bakayoko, whatever his reputation was at Monaco. But here highlights the divide between Conte and the club's board: neither of these midfielders were on his list of players to bring in. Nor was Michy Batshuayi, who has so far failed to win over Conte's trust (even when he could start as centre forward in place of Álvaro Morata, Eden Hazard has been the preferred option).

Now we have a seemingly desperate hunt for a back-up striker, with names as varied as Andy Carroll and Peter Crouch apparently in Chelsea's sights, along with a protracted effort to bring in the 31-year-old Edin Džeko from Roma, despite the player's apparent reluctance to move, the Italian club's reluctance to let him go, and Chelsea having to compromise on its policy of offering multi-year contracts to players over 30.

All of this points to dysfunction at Chelsea, but compared with the dark final days of the Mourinho era, things are anything but. But with Conte showing no signs of letting up in projecting his dissatisfaction over transfer targets and activity to the board that employs him, there is only ever going to be one outcome: either he walks in the summer, or he gets pushed, just as former manager Carlo Ancelotti (who, despite being fired by Abramovich has maintained a gracious proximity) moves back to London...with a view to returning to Premier League management.

A touch of High Fidelity with the return of the ex-

© Simon Poulter 2016

I am, obviously, totally biased when I say that the game of the weekend was yesterday's encounter at Stamford Bridge between Chelsea and Manchester, but for different reasons going into it than coming out.

Until 4pm yesterday I was the uneasy mess I often am before big games. It's an irrational neurosis, of course, but games between Chelsea and exalted opposition, or even just important cup ties, have me wound up tighter than a drum. It is - and here comes the first dig at those who think we're all arriviste glory-hunters at the Bridge - the result of years of underachievement, failure and humiliating defeats. Manchester United inflicted a particularly painful one on us at Wembley in 1994, and I've struggled - actually, failed - to let go of it ever since. Caught up in that is the lingering envy stemming from a period when United won everything and had the spending power, it seemed, to buy whomever they wanted. Looking back in cold hindsight, they were simply the best football club in the land with the best manager. It doesn't matter what their finances were like, it's simply what they were. But that period of United's imperiousness cast a long shadow over my relationship with the club as a Chelsea fan. Even when United haven't, actually, been that good (basically, since SAF retired), I have still approached games with them with queasy dread.

Yesterday's game had the added spice of the return of José Mourinho, coupled with a United that had spent generously in the summer, with all pundits, at the start of the season at least, pitting the 2016-17 Premier League season as, essentially, a face-off between the two Manchesters and their coaches. In fact, the return of Mourinho genuinely mattered least for me. Yes, it was like awkwardly encountering an ex-girlfriend with her new beau (which reminds me, I need to rewatch High Fidelity), but like adults you hopefully can move on from that.

The way Mourinho crashed and burned at Chelsea last season, almost taking the club with him through the trapdoor, fumigated any lingering affection for him. Don't get me wrong: I don't wish to sound ungrateful for what he did for Chelsea - truly, he brought about success on a scale I'd previously thought impossible in my lifetime - but last season exposed the toxicity of his personality, the vindictiveness that, when unleashed, undermines the brilliance of his successful football ethos.

Because - and I'll get on to yesterday's game in a moment - all the good, the pride and excitement that Mourinho had built up with Chelsea's Premier League title win in 2014-15, was unravelled in those first four months of last season, when negativity bred further negativity, when players' heads dropped when they should have been lifted by the coach, when the poisonous air around the club over the treatment of Eva Carneiro lingered long after Mourinho and Chelsea parted company again.

This time last year Chelsea were 15th in the league, had lost five, drawn two and won three, had been dumped out of the League Cup (a title they were defending) with Mourinho suspended for allegedly telling referee John Moss: "Wenger was right. You are fucking soft" at West Ham. In the same week, Carneiro served papers on the club for constructive dismissal. In the space of three months, Chelsea had gone from English champions to laughing stock. Halloween has often been the starting point of a nightmare period for Chelsea, usually culminating in a managerial sacking, but by this point last year, the horror had already become unbearable. And Mourinho could be blamed for much, if not all of it.

So, then, yesterday. That Chelsea demolished Manchester United 4-0, providing some, admittedly petty respite for that 1994 embarassment, has nothing to do with Mourinho, revenge or any other misdirected emotion. In fact the real emotion of yesterday's game was more to do with commemorating Matthew Harding, the man whose investment pre-dated that of Roman Abramovich, and whose infectious fandom and largesse saw a club struggling with survival actually stay afloat. You could argue that Harding's money brought renewal to Chelsea that made it more attractive to Abramovich.

Yesterday's win was for Harding. But also for Antonio Conte. Like his compatriot Carlo Ancelotti, Conte has brought a dignified presence to the managership of Chelsea. Yes, it's a little alarming to see him windmilling so frantically on the touchline, but then in his post-match interviews and press conferences you see a gracious, charming and funny man, completely unbound by the neuroses that gnaw so visibly away at Mourinho. Even yesterday he had to drag the spotlight away from his team's moribund display by creating an argument with Conte about nothing (apparently the Portuguese was upset that his rival was trying to get the crowd going when the score was already 4-0 - this from a man who complained that Stamford Bridge was TOO quiet...!).

Removing Mourinho and even Manchester United from the equation, yesterday's game was delightful entertainment for a Chelsea fan. Every player - even David Luiz - did their jobs, and did them well. The wingback/three-man-central-defence system worked a treat, N'Golo Kante is looking terrific in his distribution, tackling and posession, and even Pedro scored. Pedro. After 28 seconds of the opening whistle. Happy days.

It's that old Red Devil called José again

I have to admit, I felt some pity for Louis van Gaal on Saturday evening. As he sat before his "friends" of the press, the FA Cup ostentatiously placed in front of him, it was impossible not to feel sympathy towards the Dutchman for not even being allowed his moment for winning the most famous national trophy in the world without being upstaged by José Mourinho, who was on the diametrically opposite side of London, apparently watching a boxing undercard at the O2 Arena.

Without Mourinho even opening his mouth he managed to install himself as the new manager of Manchester United, before the old one had even been told he wasn't anymore. The finger of blame pointed squarely at Mourinho's people, from whom Machiavellian games have been afoot ever since the Portuguese left Chelsea in December. Mourinho was seen to be after the United job from the minute he was fired for a second time by the club. Some even think that he was gunning for the job when he left Madrid, but ended up back in the arms of Chelsea as a consolation prize. With José you wouldn't put anything past him.

Even though I think it best for all concerned for van Gaal to move on, his palpable bitterness on Saturday night was understandable, even if he still can't see why he just hasn't been good enough. But, no matter how bad a season he's had, no matter how badly his relationship with some players has sunk, and no matter how turgidly Manchester United have played at times, van Gaal had, at least, delivered some silverware of merit, and with a side of exciting young players who should do the club well in seasons to come.

This is football's cruel streak laid bare, or at least 'corporate' football. Despite the cup, Van Gaal's Manchester United has, simply, not delivered on expectations. Consecutive seasons outside the Champions League, dry, stifled, defensive football, and single-goal wins that make Mourinho's celebrated pragmatism look quite lary.

The question is, will Mourinho do any better? Will his win-at-any-costs, defend-at-any-costs philosophy deliver any more expansive football than the snoozefests that van Gaal was serving up at the nadir of his tenure? At Chelsea Mourinho got away with it: successive managers have been called on by Roman Abramovich to deliver sexy, free-flowing, high-scoring football. Probably the only one of the Russian's ten coaches to have delivered on this expectation was Carlo Ancelotti, who says in his autobiography that even when Chelsea were winning by telephone number scores he was still getting bollockings from Abramovich. But Mourinho prevailed because, for the most part, he seemed to deliver the success that the club and its fans craved (though never the Champions League, the honour of which went to Roberto Di Matteo).

So, as sales of red-coloured Mourinho scarves start to do brisk businesses on the streets around Old Trafford, the phase "be careful of what you wish for" should be the cautioning guidance to all who have championed his succession to the job at United. Don't get me wrong: Mourinho brought to Chelsea success on a scale I could never have imagined as a teenager as I watched mid-table mediocrity (and relegation) from the cold, exposed terrace of The Shed. I have robustly defended the theatrics and imagined conspiracies, and most of the nonsense that came with Mourinho's time at Chelsea because, well, to be utterly mercenary about it, it won us trophies. It won the very thing that all football fans crave (spare me the 'ever-so-'umble routine of 'pure' fans who claim they're just happy to turn up).

© Simon Poulter 2015

But there is something unhinged about Mourinho, which this season now past brought out into the open, almost from the very beginning. It was the preening, pouting, petulant Mourinho, losing the plot within the first 90 minutes of the season by admonishing Dr. Eva Carneiro and physio Jon Fearn towards the end of that game with Swansea at Stamford Bridge.

We all lose it now and then, and one would hope that most of us would say sorry when we do so without reason. But Mourinho compounded the problem by publicly demoting Carneiro three days later, losing - in my view at least - the dressing room in the process, before the entire house of cards came tumbling down in the ensuing weeks as the 2014-15 Premier League champions slumped ever closer to the relegation zone. There was only one outcome. Yet again, Mourinho departed a club under a cloud in his third season with them.

Manchester United's board will be aware of all this. And the conservatives amongst it who still have a voice will have expressed the view that Mourinho is too much of a liability, too much of a threat to the traditions that, actually, the club upholds to its credit. As much as I loathed Sir Alex Ferguson's overbearing nature, especially towards referees and officials, and the concept of time itself, he produced successful teams over successive seasons by building on the club's traditions.

There is, of course, a lot of Mourinho in that behaviour, but whereas Ferguson maintained it until the last, it vanished for Mourinho, exemplified by Diego Costa's bib-toss at White Hart Lane, just two weeks before the manager was sacked. Van Gaal is said to have lost his players' respect in similar fashion, with stories of United players ignoring their manager's e-mails, not to mention the smartphone antics on the team bus outside Upton Park, which would have been unthinkable under Ferguson. Mind you, it's highly unlikely that the Manchester United bus would have left it so late to leave for an away ground under Ferguson.

There are also more practical concerns to come, should - as expected - United announce Mourinho, possibly tomorrow, as their new manager, with the biggest being United's policy towards youth. It characterised Ferguson's 27-year reign at Manchester United, not the least of which his personal nurturing of the 'Class of '92' - Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, Butt and the Nevilles amongst them.

Given how Mourinho patently didn't trust the raw talent at his disposal at Chelsea - Under 18 and Under 21 players who have now won five out of the last seven UEFA Youth League titles, as well as FA Youth Cups - the powers-that-be at Old Trafford will have their work cut out to ensure that the progress made this season by Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Tim Fosu-Mensah have not been in vain. Questions, too, will be raised over the future of Juan Mata, who Mourinho dispensed with at Chelsea on the grounds that the former two-time club player of the year couldn't adapt to the system he wanted. A penny, now, for the Spaniard's thoughts.

Same goes for Ryan Giggs, given that Mourinho rarely travels alone, and will want to install his own Sopranos-crew of assistants, including Rui Faria, Silvino Louro, José Morais and Carlos Lalin. That said, Mourinho stuck with incumbent coach Steve Holland at Chelsea, and is reportedly considering the same for Giggs for the continuity effect. Giggs may also recognise that appointing José Mourinho is rarely for the long-term, and might choose to bide his time until the inevitable happens and Mourinho moves on - either bored and by his own volition, or because he has, once more, allowed the devil inside to get the better of him, even if it will, by then, be a red devil.

Behind blue eyes - Ciao Antonio, come stai?

The last time anything took as long as the appointment, confirmed today, of Antonio Conte as Chelsea's new manager was, possibly, the tectonic movement that formed the continents.

For almost as long as there has been the vacancy at Stamford Bridge, following José Mourinho's sacking in December, the 46-year-old with frankly scarily ice-blue eyes has been in the frame to become Roman Abramovich's next club manager, although unrealistically Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone were higher up the short-list.

Of course, Conte still has the trifling job of managing Italy's progress through the European Championships this summer before he takes over at Chelsea, but when he does he will have his work cut out and then some. Even with his pedigree - 400 midfield appearances for Juventus, winning five Serie A titles and the Champions League with them, and then winning the domestic title for Juve in his first season as manager of the Bianconeri (and two more Scudetti in each season thereafter) - the task of rewiring Chelsea to be both a Premier League and a European contender once more will be huge.

I say "rewire" as the job in hand isn't necessarily about reconstruction. Many, if not most, Chelsea fans will say that now is the chance to rebuild the club around the exciting youth prospects that exist, including those in the trophy-gathering Under-18 and Under-21 teams, as well as those expensively cast out on loan in Europe, their futures uncertain. As Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino and even - gasp! - Louis van Gaal have shown, young prospects can convert hunger and prospect into excitement and results.

Quite why Chelsea have acquired so many young players and, under successive managers including Mourinho and even 'Uncle' Guus Hiddink, not played them at all or very little, has been baffling. Unless the club academy responsible for their development, or the executives responsible for signing them, simply haven't delivered the goods, in which case they should be sacked at the earliest opportunity.

The second scenario is that Conte may just want to hang on to the players that have been part of this, Chelsea's worst season, relatively speaking, in many years. Athletico Madrid want Diego Costa to return, and the Brazillian-turned-Spaniard's easily combustible nature has suggested that he hasn't settled in London. Conte, though, apparently sees him as the ideal spearhead, and there's no doubt that when Costa is focused on simply being the best goal hanger on the pitch, he can still do a fearful job for Chelsea.

And then Eden Hazard. Player of the season one minute, embarassing refusenik the next. Conte is said to have told people that he will wait until he's fully on board at Chelsea before speaking to the mercurial Belgian, but if body language counts as 90% of all communication, Hazard is already on his way to Paris or Real Madrid, his dream destination. It would be a supreme loss of talent - Chelsea were right to sign him up to an extremely lucrative deal - but when the head's gone, the body follows soon after, and that seems to have been the case this season, from the moment he scuffed a keeper-to-beat opportunity against Petr Čech in the Community Shield at Wembley, and when he went down injured the following week at Stamford Bridge, sparking the whole Mourinho-Carneiro hoo-ha. His season has been unbelievably poor ever since.

The other player Conte should give significant thought to ejecting is Thibault Courtois. He was the much-exalted successor to Čech, who kept him out on loan at Athletico because the Czech stopper was - and still is - that good. Like his fellow Belgian, though, Courtois' head seems to have been turned by interest from elsewhere. But the truth is that he hasn't consistently demonstrated that he is as good as Čech was, if ever, if I was to be brutal. Indeed Asmir Begovic, who covered for Courtois in the early weeks of this season, showed that he was equally up to the task. Having two top-quality No.1s is never ideal, from a player management point of view, but Begovic has maintained his dignity and fan respect since Courtois returned from injury before Christmas. Perhaps Chelsea could cash in...and pick up a bargain like Southampton's Fraser Forster as a result?

Conte will have other issues to consider: one of the most pressing is in central defence. John Terry is unlikely to receive a new playing-only contract, but could he be persuaded to stay on in a player-coach capacity? Some believe that Chelsea should cut their losses altogether with Terry, and adopt a new-coach, new-era approach, and there is some credence to this. Traditionalists, though, will see that keeping Terry and his natural leadership around could be valuable for a young squad looking for icons - of which he is about the only one left - at the club. One thing is certain, Conte keeping Terry would certainly not be a simple issue of age. "There is no young and old, only victory or failure," he told Tuttosport last year, sounding an awful lot like Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.

But what, too, of Gary Cahill - who plays worse the less Terry appears - and the criminally inconsistent Oscar. And Matic - who has stubbornly failed to regain his 2014-15 form - and Loic Remy, who has been pushed so far out to the fringes that it would be best for all concerned for him to move on.

That would leave Conte with the likes of Willian - the only real candidate for player of the season this term and also a player who would definitely fit the Conte mould - plus Branislav Ivanovic (himself no spring chicken), the promising Betrand Traore, Kenedy, Kurt Zuma when fit, the dependable Cesar Azpilicueta, young American Matt Miazga, Cesc Fabregas as a new permanent captain, and the still-to-be-polished diamond that is Ruben Loftus-Cheek. With the wealth of talent out on loan, such as Nathan Ake, Marco van Ginkel, Nathan Chalobah, Dominic Solanke and Isiah Brown, plus a few marquee signings (forget Pogba, but why not Cavani?), and Conte has the potential for a young, lively and - most important of all - unpredictable team.

One of Mourinho's failings was his lack of variety. Once opposing teams figured out how to shut down Hazard or crowd out Costa they exploited Chelsea's predictability, who failed to have a plan B ready. Thus there was little squad rotation, little change from 4-3-3 and little chance of fringe and youth players getting a chance, all of which surely added to the team's mental and physical collapse and their season's success being measured only by how they avoided relegation.

Not that Chelsea's still-bruised and battered stars can expect any respite from Conte: by reputation he is an unrelenting taskmaster who built his own playing career on hard graft and has come to expect the same of anyone playing for him. Perhaps that might prove too much for some at the Bridge, though Chelsea won't want to see a repetition of this season's abject collapse until Hiddink's brand of Dutch lassez-faire restored confidence. And the results have clearly followed.

Life under Conte will not necessarily be any more comfortable than they were under Mourinho. In his autobiography, former Juve star Andrea Pirlo recalls how Conte had a volcanic temper, describing dressing rooms filled with flying water bottles and even stronger invective when things weren't going well: "When he talks, his words assault you," Pirlo describes his former coach poetically. "They crash through your mind, often quite violently, and settle deep within."

Regardless of how the azzuri do in France this summer, it's clear that Antonio Conte will join Chelsea with a history of success for a manager who is still only in his mid-40s. Even with some residual reputational baggage hanging over him from the ten-month ban he received during his time as coach of Siena (he was charged with failing to report a match-fixing attempt - which he strenously denied), the Premier League is a vastly different place to Serie A. That may not be a concern to Conte from a physical point of view, but it will inevitably inform his tactical outlook, and obviously the choice of players he might ask Marina Granovskaia and Michael Emenalo to deliver (though he shouldn't hold his breath if the experience - and latterly barely concealed frustration - of Mourinho last summer is anything to go by).

Ultimately it will be Roman Abramovich himself who will have to accept that no matter Conte's history, the 2016-17 season will be a relatively fallow one, especially without any European involvement (unless a Europa League comes unexpectedly good in the next month). Abramovich might, to some degree, shoulder some blame for Chelsea's state this season (though given his remarkable benevolence and genuine enthusiasm - take note, R. Lerner... - it would be hard to go further than that), as he appointed Granovskaia and Emenalo to their posts as, respectively, executive in charge of player acquisitions and technical director. These appointments have led to the ridiculous state of affairs of more than 30 players out on loan and the abysmal transfer deadline day grab of soon-to-be-forgotten players last September.

Conte will have to deal with that haphazard mechanism above and aside him. He might ask for Pogba, just as Mourinho did, but it will be a wonder if such a player can be lured to a club which is hardly one of Europe's giants (even if it thinks it is) and most probably will only be focused next season on domestic honours.

One thing, however, is certain about Conte joining Chelsea: the club has benefitted immensely from its recent history of Italians. Even now I can't believe that the Chelsea of 1996 was able to sign the gentlemanly Luca Vialli, soon after he lifted the European Cup as Juventus captain; and I still revel in every twist and turn that I saw Gianfranco Zola put in during his mesmerising spell at the club.

Italy and everything Italian suddenly became cool again in London (as it had been in the Mod era of the 60s). Not that long after Italia 90, the arrivals of these Italians, and those who'd played in Italy like Ruud Gullitt, may have come towards the end of their playing carreers, but to this Chelsea fan and committed Italianophile, they marked the end of a period of moribundity at the Bridge. All of a sudden, a club that had history but little to show for it, had panache and style, on the pitch and off. Even Roberto di Matteo's restaurant, La Perla, was an exquisite dining experience.

Conte will become the fifth Italian to manage Chelsea, and the sixth to have managed in Italy, if you include Mourinho's spell at Inter. The expectation for success will come from Abramovich alone: his acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 was, it is believed, in order to create an English version of AC Milan, complete with Andrei Schevchenko and a rumoured attempt then to lure Carlo Ancelotti away from the San Siro. That he eventually did, with the arch-eyebrowed one winning the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the Community Shield in his first season in charge, 2009-2010. Vialli became player-manager, winning the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Super Cup, while di Matteo 'just' won the Champions League. And Claudio Ranieri? I believe he is now at a club called Leicester City.

Benvenuti, Antonio, e buona fortuna.