It took less than a summer for Antonio Conte to guide Napoli back to prominence. One of the most successful European coaches of the last decade, Conte is a special manager and he showed it on the pitch as he was able to win almost everywhere he worked and in the shortest time possible. When former Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli called him in 2011 to coach the club where he was the captain as a soccer player, he couldn’t refuse and managed to win the league with an undefeated record in his first season, marking the beginning of an incredible cycle for himself and the team.
Almost 15 years later, the winning mentality of Conte is still one of the reasons why directors and owners want to work with him. After leaving Juventus, he became the coach of the Italian national team, and despite not winning and being knocked out in penalties against Germany in the quarterfinals, UEFA 2016 Euro remains one of the best memories among the Azzurri fans, as he was able to create an exciting atmosphere despite one of the least talented rosters that we can remember.
He won at Chelsea and again at Inter, making another big statement: Conte doesn’t look back and can manage teams he was rivals with in the past. In 2013, when he was the Juventus manager and icon as well, he shocked many when he was asked if he could one day coach a rival team. Conte had no doubts.
“Of course, I’m a professional. I give everything to this club until I’m the manager, but make no mistake — if one day I manage Inter or AC Milan for example, I will give everything for that team and I’ll become their fan number one.”
Conte was already thinking about his career, his future, and not just what he was living back then.
That’s the thing with him — he always thinks about the long-term plan for his team, despite how the media generally describes him. When he joined Inter in the summer of 2019, he asked the club to make multiple changes at the training ground, with a new guesthouse for the players and improvements in all the areas of the Appiano Gentile’s training center.
This is the kind of legacy he wants to leave when he part ways with the club, and this is exactly what he wants to do at Napoli, as he revealed a few weeks ago during a pre-match press conference.
“I want to leave something better for the future when I leave. The club must grow if we want to be competitive for the rest of the season. The game evolves and the club must grow as well. We need new infrastructures, a training center, a youth sector that doesn’t exist today,” he said.
It wasn’t always easy for Conte over the years. At Tottenham, for example, he couldn’t properly convince the whole environment about the changes that were needed at the club and decided to leave despite not winning before the end of the season. He needed a different place, a different club that could give him what he was looking for. Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis tried to convince him even before the summer of 2024. When in November 2023 coach Rudi Garcia was one step away from leaving Napoli, De Laurentiis called Conte, as he needed a manager that could restore the mentality that the Azzurri had under Luciano Spalletti, when in 2023 they won their first Scudetto in more than 30 years. Conte said no, it wasn’t the right moment.
Things were much different six months later and Conte arrived with a lot of enthusiasm from the fans. He started as he always did, trying to create a group of players that had the hunger to win every single game of the season and didn’t accept defeat. The 2024-25 Serie A start wasn’t great as Napoli had to deal with the outgoing of Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen after the end of the summer transfer window and joined Galatasaray on loan, and he was replaced by his beloved Romelu Lukaku, and Napoli lost 3-0 against Hellas Verona the opening game of the season.
It took some more time, but quickly enough the team was able to overturn the bad start, also helped by the fact Napoli are not playing any European competition and can work more during the week compared to their rivals. Conte is the kind of manager who completely changes the attitudes of his players, giving a lot of attention to all the details, including the diet of the players and how they behave on and off the pitch.
The winter transfer window was even more difficult for the club, despite Napoli now fully in the race to win the Scudetto, as the Azzurri sold Georgian winger Kvicha Kvaratskhelia to PSG for around $75 million and also failed to find the proper replacement in January as they only signed Noah Okafor on loan from AC Milan until the end of the current season. It’s likely, and obvious, that Napoli will make that kind of investment in the summer, but Conte wasn’t happy with himself for the departure of Kvara, as he admitted a few days before the player left.
“I spoke about disappointment not towards the player, not towards the club, but towards myself, because in six months, I failed to change the situation. I do not say Kvara or the club let me down, I always take responsibility for my actions, I don’t put it on someone else. I thought I could have a different impact in these six months, but I realized we were right back where we started.”
Despite key summer signings, like former Manchester United man Scott McTominay and Alessandro Buongiorno from Torino, the cycle of Conte at Napoli is just at its start. More than the tactical improvements he brought immediately, Conte was able to create that winning mentality he desperately looks for everywhere he goes. Where he was able to win, there was no trophy without that winning obsession in the team.
On multiple occasions, Conte coached a team that was in a bad moment in its history as it happened at Juventus, Chelsea or Inter, for example. His ability to restore a winning mentality in the team also became his biggest problem, as he was less often considered for a job when a top European club needed a manager, not specifically after a bad season. However, Napoli can surprisingly become that club. Even if the Azzurri are only in the first year of the new Conte era, they are much closer to the top compared to other teams he managed in the recent past. While Juventus and AC Milan are still struggling, it seems that Inter are reaching their peak and they might change a lot in the upcoming summer: a perfect scenario for Conte and his future plans at Napoli.
While Antonio Conte’s Napoli are in the race for the title in his first season at the club, with a crucial game coming up on March 2 in Naples against Inter, he doesn’t sit on the success and he’s already planning the future. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe he can’t win the Scudetto already this season, even if he says the opposite, but his priority is to create a proper winning mentality that can last for a long time. He did it at Juventus and Inter already in Italy and this is something Napoli need way more than anything else. And the early signs are there.
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