Antonio Conte Signs new Chelsea Contract to End Speculation over Future
Antonio Conte Signs new Chelsea Contract to End Speculation over Future
Antonio Conte has signed a new two-year contract with Chelsea, the club have announced.
There had been speculation that the Italian manager was growing increasingly frustrated with the club’s transfer policy, but his new deal illustrates a determination to stay and build on a successful first season.
Conte said: “I am very happy to have signed a new contract with Chelsea. We worked extremely hard in our first year to achieve something amazing, which I am very proud of. Now we must work even harder to stay at the top.
“The Chelsea fans have given me so much support since I arrived here one year ago and it is important we continue to succeed together.”
Meanwhile, there was a period not so long ago when Chelsea could have looked at Monaco’s midfield and congratulated themselves on their foresight, since Tiemoué Bakayoko was being kept out of the French club’s starting lineup by another youngster who was on Chelsea’s books and still is.
Mario Pasalic, a Germany-born Croatia international six months older than Bakayoko, has belonged to Chelsea since joining from Hajduk Split three years ago but has yet to contest a single game for them. Instead, like most of the speculative investments in Chelsea’s vast player portfolio, he has been rented out to others via a series of loan moves, including one the season before last to Monaco, where for the first several months of the campaign he was regularly chosen ahead of the player on whom Chelsea have just splurged a fee that could rise to £39.7m.
That is not to say Chelsea would have been better advised to put more trust in Pasalic, who may leave Stamford Bridge for good this summer. Rather the point is to underline that it is never easy to know how young players are going to develop. At 22 Pasalic is a handy player who did well again on loan at Milan last season and looks likely to have a fine career. Bakayoko, meanwhile, has become more than that, a deft monster who can stomp or glide through top‑class midfields and could be heading for superstar status. That evolution owes much to Bakayoko’s slightly tardy awakening and the influence of a former Chelsea midfielder, Claude Makelele.
Back when Pasalic was getting picked ahead of him, Bakayoko seemed to be at risk of being written off at Monaco. The club, who are among Europe’s shrewdest recruiters and developers, bought the player as a 19-year-old from Rennes for around £6m in 2014 but a year later the manager, Leonardo Jardim, had become exasperated by the midfielder’s failure to progress. That feeling began to form pretty fast after the player’s infamous debut in August 2014, when Jardim surprisingly selected Bakayoko to start against Lorient ahead of the club captain, Jérémy Toulalan, only to rescind the vote of confidence after 32 minutes and haul off the floundering, furious teenager.
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