Napoli Must Learn The Dark Arts To Retain Serie A – Conte

Napoli manager Antonio Conte has said that his players were too scared during their damaging 1-0 defeat to Udinese on Sunday. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, his squad must develop more fight and learn the dark arts of time-wasting to manage difficult moments, else their lack of character away from home will derail their Serie A title defence.

Conte added that his players retreating into their shell and inviting pressure onto themselves exposes a psychological fragility that must be gotten rid of.

His words, “The approach was there. Udinese never had a shot on goal [in the first half], we created a couple of chances that we could have exploited better.

The second half started with this long throw-in, there were some approximate clearances and we risked conceding a goal. From then on there was a bit of fear, you could see it because in the first 20 minutes of the second half two goals were disallowed, they hit the crossbar, we were a little bit too worried and fearful.

We will certainly have to work a lot from this point of view. I always tell the boys: we must be good especially in negative moments, when on the pitch you have to take a breath, use a bit of experience and craft, manage situations in which we must improve.

I told the guys too, we have to be good at managing these moments, because they [the opponents] manage them. With a bit of experience, a bit of malice, wasting time on the pitch too.

After that, [you must] not lose courage, not get overwhelmed by the fear of conceding a goal. Because then if the attitude is this, you call the goal upon yourself and we called it upon ourselves. There is work to be done in this aspect.

I have nothing to reproach these guys for, who are giving everything in an emergency. It is inevitable that if I go to analyse some situations, especially away from home, we have to be better at managing it, talking more, bringing out character. Because there, beyond the footballer, the person must make themselves heard.

Perhaps it is the most difficult aspect to work on: on a psychological level you try to work and find the right way, but many times there are footballers who have charisma and personality and we from this point of view must grow and can grow. They are excellent guys, I would like to help them grow from this point of view too because the whole team would benefit from it.”

WOW.