Speaking to Off The Ball, The Sun’s Martin Lipton has been discussing Antonio Conte’s future at Tottenham Hotspur.
Lipton has been covering Spurs for absolutely years, and he is led to believe that Conte will not be at Spurs next season, but perhaps not for the reason you may imagine.
Indeed, the journalist says that Conte could leave Spurs due to personal reasons, stating that the manager now wants to be closer to his friends and family in Italy after experiencing numerous personal losses in recent months.
Conte wants to go home
Lipton was adamant that Conte will be leaving Spurs for personal reasons, stating that he can’t see any way that he’ll be staying.
“I can’t see any way that he’s at the club next season at the moment. For a variety of reasons, but he gave the primary reason in the press conference before the game. It’s nothing to do with the board, the players or transfers or any of that,” Lipton said.
“He fears that he’s getting old, he’s had a number of close friends die recently and he’s reassessing his life and asking ‘do I really want to be away from home any longer?’ and the answer is no. It’s a perfectly normal human reaction. He’s professional and he won’t leave now, but I don’t think his heart is in it right now because he feels he’s let people down by being away and he wants to go home.”
Can’t blame him
There should be absolutely no ill will from Spurs fans if Conte does decide to leave the club for this reason.
Put yourself in his shoes for a second. In recent months he’s seen close friends such as Gianluca Vialli, Sinisa Mihaljovic and Gian Piero Ventrone all pass away at young ages. Any human being would start thinking about their priorities in life at this point.
As Alasdair Gold has reported, Conte does go back to Italy for a few days after every single Spurs game to see his family, and you couldn’t blame him at all for making a permanent move back to his home country.
In all honesty, this is probably the right move for Conte to make, and good luck to him.
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