Dogmatic Antonio Conte faces fresh test of Champions League credentials with Spurs

Tottenham Hotspur manager Antonio Conte will on Tuesday take charge of a Champions League match for the 37th time. It’s a relatively small tally when you consider Conte has been an elite coach for more than a decade. A point of comparison: Pep Guardiola will be overseeing his 150th European Cup game on Wednesday.

Lose at Eintracht Frankfurt and Conte’s record in the competition will stand all square: as many losses as victories, and an overall win ratio of around one in three. And the comparisons with other elite coaches are not flattering for the Italian.

The precocious Julian Nagelsmann, 35, has managed in a similar number of Champions League fixtures, and already built up a win percentage of over 50. Admittedly, Nagelsmann is in his second campaign coaching Bayern Munich, but the majority of his assignments in Europe’s principal competition were at Hoffenheim, who never won under him, and a sometimes erratic RB Leipzig.

Conte has meanwhile managed Juventus, Chelsea and Inter Milan on midweek Uefa nights, usually as the proud bearer of a league title he guided them to.

The contradiction between his domestic expertise, and a career freighted with gold medals with different clubs from different countries, and the limp catalogue of early exits from Europe has long been a puzzle.

Conte is a builder of confidence in players and squads, a nurturer of drive and stamina, but when it comes to the European Cup, in which he reached four finals as a Juventus player, Conte teams again and again hit a wall.

Granted, his Inter did go all the way to a losing Europa League final in 2020, but that was after they had been relegated into that competition in the autumn.

SPORTING RATINGS: Antonio Adan 7 – The goalkeeper only had to make a