Di Matteo: Conte gives players freedom to express

Sport360 staff 12:10 31/01/2017
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  • The Italian has backed Conte.

    As a former Chelsea player, manager and still a fan, I’m thrilled with how their season is going so far. They’ve been really impressive.

    They start from a solid base and win games while conceding so little to the opposition, which is the key factor as to why they’re top of the league. They concede very few goals and opportunities and have the quality to create enough chances to score enough goals to win games. It looks really good and they’re obviously favourites to win the Premier League.

    Antonio Conte has done a brilliant job turning the side around and making them play as a team again, which they did in the past but lost it a bit last year. It was a difficult season last year for the players and the club.

    He’s come in, found it difficult to turn around straight away, then after the patchy start he realised he needed to make some changes and switched back to a system he knows very well, which he trusts and used for many years with Juventus and the national team.

    He’s put the players in the right positions to express themselves and it’s worked really well. Everyone seems to enjoy their position and the way they’re playing, and that’s been a real turnaround. He’s a brilliant manager. There was never any doubt about that.

    I was disappointed with last year and how the manager (Jose Mourinho) left, but this is the way it is in our job. It doesn’t really matter what you achieved yesterday. People just don’t seem to care any more about it at all. You have a bad month or a few weeks and everyone’s crying for a change.

    Mourinho is one of the best managers in the world and I’m sure he would have finished well, but that’s how it is.

    I’m a big fan of Diego Costa but I’m not sure if the title race would have been over had he left for China in January. You don’t know what the future would have been without him but in the game they played without him (beating Leicester 3-0) they played pretty well and maybe would have a bigger impact without Costa than people would expect. But, of course, he’s a handful and defenders don’t like playing against him.

    When I was playing there were some strikers defenders would love to play against because they knew he wasn’t tough or wouldn’t give them too many problems, but Costa is one of those guys that you know you’re going to have a hell of an afternoon when you play against him. He’s going to give you a hard time. He’s very aggressive and scores very important goals.

    He’s a lot like Didier Drogba in that regard but I think Didier is still a level above, for all he has achieved. But Costa is certainly at a very high level, and Chelsea are certainly a stronger team with him.

    Di Matteo, who played 175 games for Chelsea, and managed the Blues to the 2012 Champions League title, was speaking at the Abu Dhabi Invitational golf tournament.

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