Shaun Wright-Phillips has had a pop at Antonio Conte for seemingly playing in a ‘restrained’ way at Tottenham Hotspur by claiming that Jose Mourinho got the sack for ‘doing the exact same thing’.
The former Chelsea winger thinks Tottenham are ‘parking the bus’ under Conte, after it was suggested that the Italian might be holding the team back this season, in order to keep them fresh for when they return from the 2022 World Cup.
Football’s biggest tournament is set to kick off next month, and given that it’s slap bang in the middle of the season, no one really knows how it will affect the performances of teams and players this season.
Will that extra, heavy and intense workload wear down players come April, March and May time? What will it also do to a team’s momentum or even lack of it?
Plus the confidence of players for when they return from Qatar? Some would understandably be flying high because their team has either overachieved or won the whole thing, if they are lucky.
But there will be others who have been knocked out early and will need picking up.
Either way, when it was suggested to Wright-Phillips by European football expert Miguel Delaney, that people in Italy think Conte is holding Spurs back, in their style of play, because he is conserving their energy, he issued the following response, as he told Premier League Productions (17/10/22 at 2:35 pm).
“You say restrained?” laughed Wright-Phillips. “He’s just parking the bus. Mourinho parked the bus and got the sack for that, doing the same thing, basically.”
MOURINHO AND CONTE SIMILARITIES
There is no doubt that there are similarities between Conte and Mourinho, both in their style of play and their ability to get the absolute best out of their forward players.
Not only that, as Mourinho did during his days in north London, Conte won’t be shy of making his feelings clear about a player.
And if someone needs booting out, then he will show them the door.
Mourinho questioned the likes of Dele Alli and Tanguy Ndombele at Tottenham, and within months of Conte arriving, he booted the duo out.
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