Forget Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola - Antonio Conte has proven himself the cream of the Premier League crop

The Blues have soared to the title, with Conte the mastermind behind their ascent back to the pinnacle of the English game

by Stan Collymore

           King Conte celebrates the Blues win at West Brom (Photo: PA Wire)

Chelsea's coronation as Premier League champions on Friday confirmed what most of us have known for a while now.

That Antonio Conte has been the cream of the crop of the ­super-­managers who arrived in the top flight or were ­reintroduced to it last summer.

Conte has won the title with a fairly modest spend, compared to Jose Mourinhoat Manchester United and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.

And the fact he has been able to motivate players, who showed last season what moody devils they can be, is further proof of just what a great manager he is.

Eden Hazard has not put a foot out of place all season and Conte quickly nipped the Diego Costa ­situation in the bud when the move to China and fallout with a coach reared its head in January.

The Italian could even have found himself in a tricky situation with Willian not getting the same game time this time out as he did in the last campaign, but he has dealt with that very well too.

Conte has seemingly gone into a dressing room, which can be a volatile environment, and said, “Trust in me, believe in me and I will give you ­success”.

The players have bought into that and been rewarded for doing so.

That is the Holy Grail in ­football management and he has now backed up his achievements with Juventus in a different country.

Conte’s adaptation has been ­superb and, with an FA Cup Final against Arsenal still to come, there is a chance things can get better still.

After six Premier League games, the ­rumour mill ­suggested he might be sacked, but he made a decisive change to a back three.

He helped David Luiz prove me wrong in that back three, because I did not rate him as a defender in a two, but have to take my cap off to the way he has played this season.

And, as for Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso, would Mourinho, Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp have turned them into wing-backs with the kind of ­success they have had?

Doubtful, I’d say.

Conte’s achievement means he has now earned the right to go to Roman Abramovich and say, “Give me the resources to make a really good dent in the Champions League”.

Because they would be the most likely of the English teams to go a long way in that competition.

What I also like about Conte is the fact that he doesn’t come across like Guardiola, as someone who is ­brooding and borderline spiteful.

He comes across as a guy who gives out rollickings in the dressing room and on the training ground, but who also has the air of a diplomat.

He has a humour that only Klopp comes near when it comes to press conferences. Next season, he will have another ­tournament to ­contend with, but, as long as he gets in the players he wants, he will handle that.

And I can’t see him ­wanting a revolution, with six or seven bodies coming in. He will, more likely, bring in a couple of players and what I would like is for him to try a couple from the academy too.

He proved at Juve that he can help grow young players with Paul Pogba. And Chelsea’s Nathaniel Chalobah, and Ruben Loftus-Cheek have had ­opportunities this season.

If you ask fans which clubs they hate most, United and Liverpool have been up there, but Chelsea as well because they are seen as ruthless, quite louche, a cheque-book club.

But Conte has softened my attitude towards them and many more will feel the same if they start to bring more young players through.

Time will tell if that proves to be the case, but, as they prepare for a party at Stamford Bridge tomorrow, the signs are very positive for the future.

SOURCE: mirror.co.uk

Chelsea to offer Antonio Conte new deal and £200m war chest

Antonio Conte has had a dream start to his Chelsea career. Photo: Reuters

by Matt Law

Roman Abramovich is poised to make Antonio Conte the highest-paid manager in Chelsea's history and bankroll a £200m summer spend as reward for winning the Premier League title.

Chelsea are also confident that Eden Hazard will sign a £300,000-a-week contract after holding positive talks with the Belgian over his future in the days leading up to Friday night's title success at West Brom.

Conte, who has suggested he will stay at Stamford Bridge, wants to add greater depth and versatility to his Chelsea squad for next season, so he can swap between the 3-4-3 formation that has been so successful and his favoured 4-2-4.

Owner Abramovich is expected to grant Conte his wish in the transfer market and also reflect the going rate for top managers in an improved new contract.

Conte's current deal is worth £6.5m a year, less than Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger and Jurgen Klopp are paid. Mourinho earned £7.5m a year from his last contract at Stamford Bridge.

Inter Milan are willing to pay Conte £12.5m a year to quit Chelsea, but Abramovich will offer the 47-year-old the biggest salary for a manager in the club's history and ensure he leapfrogs Klopp and Wenger in the earnings list.

Chelsea are adamant Real Madrid target Hazard will not be sold in the summer and are understood to have told the 26-year-old that he can achieve all of his ambitions at Stamford Bridge during an encouraging meeting.

With the club willing to hand him a £300,000-a-week contract, Hazard gave Chelsea further reason for optimism by giving an interview in which he claimed he could win the Ballon d'Or with his current employers.

Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who has also been linked with Real Madrid, is also likely to be in line for a new improved contract this summer. The Belgium No 1 said that he expected to stay at Chelsea. "I am committed to Chelsea," he said,

In the wake of Friday's success, Courtois also said players' morale had dropped so low last year that they felt they were "laughed at" following Chelsea's disastrous title defence, and that this latest Premier League win had restored their reputations.

In a stark assessment of the depths of their 2015-16 title defence, Courtois said that he and his team-mates recognised they had come to be regarded as "a joke" and felt that the accusations of laziness were unfair.

"They said we didn't want to play anymore, they said we were lazy, that kind of stuff, and it's not true. We tried to win our games, but last year was just an off year, especially for a team like Chelsea and the players who were here. Everybody is used to playing for trophies and last year that was not the case, and everybody's pride was hurt. I think that's why we wanted to bounce back this season."

Chelsea already have £60m in the bank from the January sale of Oscar and, together with the return of Champions League football, the club can afford to give Conte the funds to significantly boost his squad.

Striker Romelu Lukaku, who Everton value at £100m, is a top target, along with Southampton central defender Virgil van Dijk and Monaco midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko. Conte is also looking for a full-back and a wide player to allow him to play a 4-2-4 when he so wishes.

There will be departures this summer, with captain John Terry going and back-up goalkeeper Asmir Begovic likely to leave, while defender Nathan Ake is also keen to play regular first-team football.

Major doubts also remain over the future of striker Diego Costa, who Chinese Super League club Tianjin Quanjian are confident of signing.

Asked whether he could guarantee he would be Chelsea manager next season, Conte replied: "Yeah, yeah. But we started to do our work, and we have to improve in the next season and to find the right solution. We work only nine months together and I think if you continue with these players you can improve a lot. I think the club wants to fight to win every competition and we have the same ambition, and for this reason we try to keep the best players."

Former Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard is confident the club will fight off Inter Milan's interest in Conte and believes this could be a new "golden generation" of Blues players if the current squad is kept to together and added to.

"We've all heard the stories about Inter Milan wanting Conte and I am sure the club will want to put that to bed as soon as possible," said Lampard.

"They [Chelsea] will want to reward him for this - as all top teams do. There's talk about Hazard, about Costa, about Courtois. But you can't win titles or go into the Champions League without having top players who can make the difference.

"This year, players like Costa and Hazard have made that difference, so Chelsea will be desperate to keep them."

SOURCE: independent.ie

Former WH official: Obama did not record private meetings

By Jim Acosta and Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN)President Barack Obama did not record private meetings in the White House, a former White House official tells CNN.

"We obviously didn't record private meetings," the former official said. "The Obama White House didn't secretly record private meetings"

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

1:26 PM - 12 May 2017

 
•  23,08623,086 Retweets
 
•  

The White House press office had a stenographer in meetings with journalists in order to have an independent transcript of the interviews, a common practice, the former official said.

"None of that was hidden," the former official said. "The stenographer sat in interviews with a tape recorder and sometimes even a boom mic -- the same stenographers would tape and transcribe press briefings and gaggles. Journalists who interviewed President Obama would have been familiar with that."

On Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted a warning to former FBI director James Comey, whom he fired earlier in the week, saying he "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press."

The President's controversial tweet about Comey and 'tapes' isn't the first time he has leveled remarks on the subject of having private conversations monitored.

In a series of early morning tweets in March, Trump accused Obama of tapping the phones in Trump Tower at the tail end of the election, saying in one message: "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

When asked to clarify Trump's tweet about Comey on Friday afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the tweet was "not a threat," but he did not rule out the possibility that the President is taping his calls.

"The President has nothing further to add on that," Spicer said. "The tweet speaks for itself."

Trump also refused to elaborate on the tweet when asked about it in an interview on Fox News.

"That I can't talk about," he said. "I won't talk about that."

"All I want is for Comey to be honest," Trump added. "And I hope he will be. And I'm sure he will be -- I hope."

A source tells CNN that the former FBI director is "not worried about any tapes" of conversations between him and the President.

If Trump is recording his conversations in the Oval Office, he would appear to be the first president to do so since Richard Nixon.

CNN's Chris Cillizza, Pamela Brown and Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.

Related Article

Donald Trump threatened James Comey via Twitter. This is not a test.

By Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Washington (CNN)Just 72 hours after his shocking decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to warn Comey not to share the contents of their private conversations.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!," Trump tweeted at 8:26 a.m. ET, the final missive of an active morning for the president that included four other tweets in which he, among other things, said that it was unreasonable to expect his staff to be completely accurate and floated the idea of eliminating the daily press briefing altogether.

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

1:26 PM - 12 May 2017

 
• 23,08623,086 Retweets
 
• 68,67968,679 likes

Where to begin.

First, the facts. What we have here is the President of the United States openly threatening the recently-deposed FBI director to stay silent. At issue, primarily, is the claim made by Trump that Comey told him, on three separate occasions, that he was not under investigation. That would represent a major breach of protocol on Comey's part and would raise serious questions about conflicts of interest -- the same sort of questions that led then Attorney General Loretta Lynch to recuse herself from the Clinton email investigation after former President Bill Clinton boarded a plane to talk to her.

Comey has yet to speak publicly about Trump's claims but his allies, without their names attached, have described the idea that he would have told the President that he wasn't under investigation as "literally farcical," according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Trump seems very interested in keeping Comey silent. Which raises all sorts of questions. Does Trump know Comey knows things that would undercut his assertions about either their conversations, the ongoing Russia investigation or something else? Does Trump really believe the best way to keep Comey quiet is to publicly threaten him? If so, why?

Then there is the fact that Trump insinuates that he did -- or could -- tape conversations with Comey, giving him a way to prove, theoretically, that he is telling the truth (and Comey isn't) about their conversations.

The last president who taped his conversations was a guy named Richard Milhous Nixon. (Regular taping of phone calls made by the president has been largely verboten since then; read this amazing piece by Yahoo's Olivier Knox on that.) It didn't end all that well for Nixon if you remember.

That Trump would invoke the specter of Nixon at the end of this week is truly startling. His dismissal of Comey led to a slew of comparisons to Nixon's firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had been appointed by Congress to look into the Watergate break-in. Less than 24 hours later, Trump did a surprise photo-op with Henry Kissinger, who served as Nixon's Secretary of State.

I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Truly.

It's not clear from the wording of Trump's tweet whether he actually was taping conversations with Comey or simply using the idea of doing so as a sort of Sword of Damocles to hang over the head of the former FBI director. Either way, it's very strange, to say the least.

It's difficult to see a strategy in all of this. Trump spent Thursday directly contradicting the story his staff had constructed about why Comey was fired. He spent Friday morning insisting that he is so active that his staff can't be expected to know or tell the whole truth in the daily press briefing and threatening the former FBI director into silence.

While all of Trump's presidency -- the entire 112 days of it -- has had a lurching, zig-zag feel to it, the last 72 hours -- and, especially, the last 24 -- feel even more erratic and unpredictable. Where can Trump possibly go from here?

SOURCE: edition.cnn.com