As Harry Kane doubled over on the verge of throwing up and Son Heung-min struggled to stand up, a silver-haired 62-year-old was satisfied with his day’s work.
Gian Piero Ventrone, an Italian fitness coach with a fearsome reputation that has followed him through several decades in football, was brought to Tottenham Hotspur by Antonio Conte and tasked with pushing the players as far beyond their limits as humanly possible.
When he took over at Tottenham eight months ago, Conte worked out the best way to transform a club lacking the transfer and wage budgets of Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea was to make his players bigger, stronger, fitter, more robust and resilient, who could run faster and harder and longer than anyone they faced.
Unparalleled fitness has always been a major facet of Conte’s approach to management, alongside his intricate tactical acumen and strong man management. During a Juventus training session in the 2011-12 season in which they won Serie A unbeaten, Conte told his players: “You want to win the title? You’ll have to spit blood right to the very end of the final match of the season.”
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Newcastle eye Chelsea and Benfica stars, Everton deal held up, Glazers resist Man Utd takeover11 August, 2022Yet at his other title-winning projects – at Juventus, Inter Milan and Chelsea – Conte already inherited a squad capable of winning trophies that required reshaping. When he arrived at Spurs, he knew he would have to push his players harder than ever to bridge the gap to the top and turn them into the early unlikely Premier League title challengers they have become.
So in came Ventrone, who had been a coach at Juventus when Conte was a midfielder in the mid-90s but had not previously worked with him as a manager. And the pre-season just gone was his first opportunity to truly beast them.
The players had already trained for 90 minutes during an opening training session at Seoul’s World Cup Stadium before Ventrone unleashed his trademark drill: 42 lengths of the pitch, or a mere 30 for those returning later due to international duty. It was around 30 degrees, but felt more like 35 due to the humidity.
Ventrone earned the nickname “The Marine” at Juventus and the Spurs players have come to understand why. His other quirks include adding the Bell of Shame to the bleep test, which players must ring when they want to stop the gruelling running drill, as extra incentive not to give up. And he has been known to play Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries out of loud speakers during intense exercises.
His mottos are said to include “work today to run tomorrow”, “victory belongs to the strong” and the marvellously brutal “die but finish”. When Zinedine Zidane joined Juventus in 1996 he asked France team-mate Didier Deschamps if Ventrone’s sessions were really as extreme as rumours suggested. “I didn’t think they could be that bad,” Zidane said later. “I was often on the verge of throwing up at the end.”
To attune players’ bodies to this kind of intensity, Conte has had a nutritionist at every club he has managed. He famously bans ketchup and mayonnaise – as he has done at Spurs – and even insists he can tell when a player has had forbidden fast-food the night before when he checks their numbers with the nutritionist. At Tottenham that is Hannah Sheridan, who previously worked with Olympic athletes at Birmingham’s High Performance Centre.
What Conte did last season, taking a club on a downward spiral and qualifying for the Champions League, was enough to convince Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman, to back Conte in the transfer market. Seven players arrived in the summer for around £100m.
Destiny Udogie, the teenage Udinese defender, is expected to complete a £15m transfer next week to make him the ninth player signed since Conte arrived last November.
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And it has been noticed that all of the signings are at least 6ft tall, while smaller players – such as Giovani Lo Celso, Sergio Reguilon and Bryan Gil – have not been in the manager’s plans. Meanwhile, Ryan Sessegnon, who is 5ft 8ins, impressed Conte by his strength work in the gym over the summer.
These are all pieces of the Conte masterplan. Equally, introducing so many new players has potential drawbacks. Some can take a whole season to learn a manager’s style and tactics. The Tottenham squad, however, have noted how seamlessly new arrivals fit in.
It is thought one reason is the multiple languages spoken by players – Eric Dier, a popular dressing room figure who has been revived under Conte, speaks several – helps ease players in. It is also believed to be down to Conte’s upfront approach. New signings know exactly what they are getting themselves into.
They know Conte prefers regular double sessions and plenty of time around the training ground. That he will not suffer fools gladly. That his man management approach is tough but fair and honest.
“When Conte speaks, his words assault you,” Andrea Pirlo, who played under Conte at Juventus, wrote in his book I Think Therefore I Play. “They crash through the doors of your mind, often quite violently and settle deep within you. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve found myself saying, ‘Hell, Conte said something really spot-on again today’.”
Meanwhile, Romelu Lukaku, who won the title with Conte at Inter Milan, recalled how his manager told him early on that a lot of attacks would come through the striker, how he would have to learn to play with his back to goal and bring players into the move. Conte said if Lukaku couldn’t play that way, he was out.
“To learn how to win is basically pushing the barrier,” Lukaku added. “Every trainer has a different way of coaching, but with Antonio we really learnt how to go to the red zone. That was it.
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Like Dier, Ben Davies is another Spurs player reignited by Conte’s arrival. Davies was close to leaving the club before he thrived in the left centre-back role and ended up signing a new contract in July for three more years.
Conte’s system – in either a 3-5-2 or 5-2-3, depending how you look at it – is very much his own creation, and is admired by leading managers. It is a seemingly defensive system that, under Conte, is able to control matches and attack in devastating fashion.
City manager Pep Guardiola greatly respected that Conte put his own marker on the game. “Many teams started to play five at the back,” Guardiola once said. “World football copy and paste it.”
If Conte is able to copy and paste what has made him a title winner at four clubs he will deliver a Premier League trophy that has eluded all the Spurs managers who came before.
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