As a sports journalist, you cover so many press conferences that it has to take something pretty unique to remember exactly what was said in one a year after it took place.
The expectation and the norm during a post-match press conference is that the manager will be relatively guarded, will not give too much away when it comes to what they were disappointed with, and will try not to make headlines unless it is a message they clearly want to convey through the media. The hope is that, as a journalist, you will get one or two nuggets of significance that will interest the fans.
There are exceptions, of course, but rarely do you come out of a press conference not knowing where on earth to start. But that was exactly the case with Antonio Conte’s post-match rant after watching his Tottenham side spurn a 3-1 lead at struggling Southampton to draw 3-3.
Conte had been under pressure heading into the game following dismal exits in both the Champions League and FA Cup and an underwhelming league campaign which had seen them fail to build on their prior season in which they pipped rivals Arsenal to fourth place.
But few would have expected this level of outburst despite the pressure that was on the Italian coach. “Tottenham’s story is this: 20 years there is this owner and they never won something. Why?” he said in an astonishing ten-minute rant.
“We are 11 players that go into the pitch. I see selfish players, I see players that don’t want to help each other and don’t put their heart (in).”
That was just a snippet of the tirade he launched against the club and his own players:
There was a suspicion before Conte’s long-awaited arrival in the press conference room at Southampton that we might be in for a rant of some sort. He had already given interviews to the broadcast media and had said some pretty strong stuff to the BBC which had appeared in their live blog before he had entered the room.
But no one expected the level he would go to with his criticism of the club. It was almost surreal trying to process and take notes of what he was saying given just how extreme it was and how vastly different to the usual press conferences we cover are. And as it went on and on, the more and more frustrated he became.
There was no doubt after he left the room that this would be the end for Conte, and the almost disbelief among the journalists in the room told the story of just how significant this was. He would leave the club by the end of March with his assistant Cristian Stellini bizarrely taking over from his former boss.
Spurs have certainly come a long way from the doom and gloom of last season. Injuries derailed Tottenham’s early title hopes this campaign but Ange Postecoglou’s positive approach has injected fresh enthusiasm into what looked like a club drifting in the wrong direction
The current Spurs boss was asked about his predecessor’s comments a year on from them, telling the media: “12 months ago I was at Celtic trying to win a treble, that’s where my thoughts were and where my focus was.
“In terms of my experience since I got here, it’s been the same I’ve had at every other football club. It’s about coming in and judging everything on it’s merits. Changing the environment, seeing how people adapt and seeing where the gaps are, seeing where I can help.
“Most of the time when you get appointed it’s because there needs to be change.
“I didn’t need to look at the past, what happened last year or the year before, the last ten or 15 years.”
Thankfully for Spurs fans, Conte’s rant seems much longer than a year ago and the focus is now very much on what could be an exciting future for the club under Postecoglou. But it will long be remembered among the most iconic managerial rants in the history of the Premier League, and it could be a while before we seeing anything like that again.
