Conte humiliated on return to Italy as woeful Blues are taught a lesson (2024)

FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life England must have felt like home to Antonio Conte.

Normally, Chelsea’s manager cannot wait to scarper back to Italy whether to lounge on the beach in his budgie smugglers or watch his beloved Juventus.

So it must have felt a little strange last night when he couldn’t get onto a private plane quick enough to fly him back to Surrey to contemplate a disastrous night in his career.

Conte watched his English champions dissolve before his eyes on the very night he wanted to show them off as he returned to his mother country on the first working trip since leaving to become Chelsea manager.

At the very start and with only a few brief respites in between, his team was run ragged; the defence abysmal and the spirit visibly sagging until they ended 90 nightmare minutes As a dishevelled mess.

This was Arsenal all over again. The game just a few weeks into Conte’s reign last season when his tactics were trashed by an identical scoreline, although he insisted later he never once feared the sack.

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Yet the last time Chelsea lost this heavily in Europe the board moved swiftly and didn’t give the manager any time to think, axing Roberto di Matteo the very next day. And they were European champions at the time.

Conte’s stock is a bit higher than his predecessor but odd as it sounds, there’s been a spanking waiting to happen for Chelsea lately, despite winning three games on the spin before the wheels came off last night.

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They were trailing to Watford, were wobbly against Everton and failed to cash in on a sackful of chances against Bournemouth on Saturday.

Conte needs another rethink and quick about how to get his team buzzing again because there is a distinct problem in his team and in just four days’ time he has to take them to face Manchester United.

He can no longer point to injuries – his favoured get out clause. N’Golo Kante is fit again, leaving only Victor Moses in the treatment room.

The big question was whether Conte should have started his little midfield leader Kante for a key match in a tough European group.

The answer came less than a minute into the game when Roma took a surprise lead and Chelsea made an unwelcome little piece of history with the fastest goal they have conceded in the Champions League.

From right in front of the goal and 20 yards out Stephan El Shaarawy smashed a shot past Thibaut Courtois.

That’s prime Kante country. And the pint-sized warrior’s absence left a massive hole in every sense in Chelsea’s defensive capabilities without him there.

A curling ball in from the left from former Man City defender Aleksandar Kolarov was perfect for his old City team-mate Edin Dzeko to nod the ball back into the yawning gap right in front of the box with Courtois stranded like a startled, gangly goose.

El Shaarawy swept past the dozing Marcos Alonso and with the outside of his right boot planted a shot into the net, wheeling away in joy, ignoring the Chelsea player’s daft attempt to claim handball.

Often an early goal stings the losing team into life but Chelsea were ragged for a fair chunk of the first half, with a lack of composure and a string of mis-placed passes that again underlined the significance of not having Kante to mop up in the middle.

The rag-tag play at the back was counter-balanced by Eden Hazard up front, the only Chelsea player who seemed to grasp the urgency of the situation.

He threatened Roma first in the fourth minute and again after twenty minutes shooting straight at the keeper.

Four minutes later he turned deftly turned and shot from the edge of the area. Had he picked anywhere else it was a certain equaliser.

Maybe that’s why defender Federico Florenzi chose to rake his studs down the outside of Hazard’s right ankle in a bid to nullify Chelsea’s only threat.

With their best player still limping Roma struck again with more horrendous defending to blame.

Antonio Rudiger, a Roma player until the summer, stopped in his tracks and watched a cross from Radja Nainggolan sail over his head and into the box – clearly thinking his keeper had it covered.

But there was El Shaarawy again on the run leaving the awful Ceasr Azpilicueta in his wake to turn another shot past Courtois.

Even Conte gave up then. No trademark histrionics, just hands stuck in his pockets. The game was up.

By the end he had substituted his captain and the whole team went into meltdown. Cesc Fabregas passed straight to Kolarov under no pressure and he passed to Diego Perotti who raced into the box and struck the final blow.

Perotti missed another great chance to make it four as did Kostas Manolas which would have truly humiliated Chelsea.

Unless he can plot a path out of this, Conte might be thinking of Italy as home again very soon – permanently.

WHAT THEY SAID

Chelsea goalie Thibaut Courtois: "We knew Roma would start with intensity, we had to equal it.

"In the second half we dropped our fighting spirit and mentality. It cannot happen. On Sunday (against Man Utd) we have to show we can fight.

"It's hard to say what the problem is. This season every game is a hard game for everybody.

"We have to find that balance, that mentality of clean sheets and not conceding easy chances."