We know Antonio Conte well

"He second does not arrive". He is Antonio Conte. Then there is her, the reality that is the definition of sport, the one who tells you that you can also come second. O third. Or tenth. Or sometimes not even arrive. And here comes the third wheel: the management of the fear of not making it. The frustration of not winning. Or worse, frustration at the idea of ​​failure to win.

Conte is now Inter's coach. No one knows the final position of his first championship on the Nerazzurri bench. Nobody knows if in the Champions League the round of 16 will be grabbed or if it will be Europa League and if it will be a Caporetto. Conte is (was) a great coach, he is (was) a magnificent motivator, he is (was) a perfect catalyst. The standings in the league after eleven days of anti-Juve, the early days of the Camp Nou and Dortmund are part of the many small businesses he is capable of together with his troops. But the pats on the back and compliments coaches like Conte if they do very little. They are not even a reason for stimulation. Rather. And so there is a great little psychodrama to manage. For him and for those who gravitate around him.

I'll tell you, Conte is even one of the most sincere people on the circuit. Which, however, does not make it better or worse than any chronic liar who knows how to look also at the common interest. I mean: Conte is sincere, but he is with himself and for himself. And being honest in expressing one's own thoughts or feelings does not automatically put you on the side of reason. It does not mean that you are right. Nor are you doing the right thing. But Conte, for Conte, is always right. Even when "the vein closes" – as his friends say – and dissects everything that, from his point of view, is kept inside. Things that concern the professional sphere, where the capacity for self-control in the long run makes the difference in the management of business relationships. The point is that this professional sphere for Conte often tends to coincide with the personal sphere. And the private couch and the public megaphone become the same thing. And white turns black. And the reason for certain outputs is not understood by anyone.

Here the short circuit is triggered. At Juventus Conte he made a masterpiece, he turned on an off engine, he slipped a road that had not yet been built, he put the signage on it and got to the end, from where he could from his point of view, until he probably had feared to be second. But he didn't do it alone. That the Juventus company has in turn made a masterpiece with him, a posteriori, and not because today it is so interesting to look at the Inter home, is the fact that the heart had not allowed us to see. We are more lucid thanks to all those who came later. And we believe, in our own small way, we too can be sincere. Antonio Conte will never be a normal coach, he will always be one of the best. Even when he is overturned in the Champions League or throws into the air a Europa League that could have a precise meaning or does not shoot at goal against Germany or catches the anonymous season after having amazed against Klopp and Guardiola. But he does not accept it. He gave everything, which sometimes – we are human – is not enough.

This is what resizes it, even more than the complaining and guilty aspects of the story. In addition to forgetting that in football, the football that he knows so well, the coach is the figure that in the good and bad weather of a dopopartita of many puts his face even for others. The coach, for how the system proceeds, represents the team world more than any other. Those who work with him, those who work for him, those who run for him, those who support him. This is why so many people in these parts have not forgotten the first day together. But even less the last one.