“For the first time I have seen my mark about this system, to create with the wing-back and the other wing-back to score. This is a mark of my system, my formation. This is the first time. It means the work is starting to work.”
You can see Antonio Conte’s point. In Tottenham’s six league games prior to the 4-0 win over Leeds on 26 February (after which he was speaking), Tottenham’s starting wing-backs failed to score or assist a goal. In their last six matches, including that win at Elland Road, they have scored or created six. Tottenham are motoring again; there’s a top-four place up for grabs.
Surely the success of no other manager over the last two decades is wedded to one position quite like Conte and his wing-backs. With Juventus, he switched to 3-5-2 midway through his first season and won three successive domestic titles with Stephan Lichtsteiner and Kwadwo Asamoah as the most regular starters in that position.
With Italy at Euro 2016, Andrea Candreva and Mattia De Sciglio were his wing-backs. At Chelsea, Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso became unlikely stars. Even when Conte has trialled a back four – first half season at Juventus, first six matches at Chelsea, intermittently at Tottenham – he soon goes back to what he knows.
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But Conte doesn’t mind that. If your defence sits deep to soak up pressure, aided by two more defensively-minded midfielders, being outnumbered in midfield becomes less of a problem.
Conte has repeatedly railed against accusations that he is a purely counter-attacking manager. In 2017, when at Chelsea, he said he “never, ever, ever trains for the counter-attack”. Fast forward five years and Conte was using Instagram to make the same point, posting a still image of Spurs pressing Manchester City high up the pitch with the caption “Counter-attacks!?! Maybe not…”.
So let’s just say that counter-attacking potential is a useful byproduct of the system, if not its principle aim. Sunday provided a perfect example. In the first half against Newcastle, Spurs had 65 per cent possession but barely troubled their opponents until the goal. After half-time, they had 57 per cent possession and ran riot. Watch the fourth goal again: Kane, in his own half, plays a pass on the turn. Five seconds later, Son Heung-min scores from 10 yards out. Pure counter-attacking bliss.
After that win, Matt Doherty, who has been rejuvenated under Conte, discussed the manager’s demands for the position: “The way the manager wants the wing-backs to play, he wants us to defend at the back post and be at the back post at the other end.” That presents the requirements as physical or staminal as much as technical. They are facilitators at both ends of the pitch, the new water carriers.
If that advocates that any player who fits that staminal profile could flourish as a Conte wing-back, there is evidence to back it up. At Juventus, Asamoah excelled on the left having played ostensibly as a central midfielder for Udinese before his move.
De Sciglio and Candreva, Italy’s Euro 2016 starters, played as full-back for Milan and right winger for Lazio respectively in the season prior to the tournament. Moses was transformed from forgotten winger to first-choice right wing-back at Chelsea. Even at Tottenham, Conte has used four different wing-back combinations in their last seven matches without having an obvious impact upon their output.
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Italy scored more than once in three of their first eight competitive matches under Conte, and even then only twice against Norway, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. Chelsea famously had a poor start before the formation switch, eighth after six league games. The same is true at Tottenham. Conte was merely waiting for his players to learn what was expected of them.
The system works so well at Tottenham because the wing-backs can be either potent or latent threats. The recent productivity (in terms of goals and assists) from Doherty, Emerson Royal and Ryan Sessegnon is important not because they always will contribute in that way, but because it tells opponents that they can. If opposition full-backs have to cover that threat (or risk being punished if they don’t) it creates space centrally for one of the most in-form – and versatile – front threes in European football.
Kane can drop deep to become a playmaker knowing that Son can still stay central. Dejan Kulusevski can stay high up the pitch knowing that the right wing-back will cover him or drift centrally knowing that the same player will overlap; Son can do the same on the right. Or all three, plus the wing-backs, can push forward on the break because there are still five players behind them to mop up trouble.
Some statements of the bleeding obvious: Tottenham are not yet complete under Conte. They are not yet heavy favourites for a top-four finish. They are issues with the squad and Conte may not even have his preferred wing-backs yet. But there is certainly a system, one to which the players are responding and one in which the manager has always had faith. And with Conte, that’s always been more than half the battle.
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