Inter Milan’s current manager, Antonio Conte is of the opinion that he lost his job as a Chelsea coach due to his failure in the transfer market. The Italian manager came in charge of the team in the 2016/17 campaign where he won the Premier League title in his very first season for the Blues.
But the following season saw his team finishing fifth place- one short of securing the UCL for the next season. Then came Maurizio Sarri who was sacked again to get replaced by Chelsea’s legend and current coach, Frank Lampard. Conte believes that Lampard has all the qualities to excel as a Chelsea coach.
As per The Telegraph news, Conte has said that his inability to land in Romelu Lukaku and Virgil van Dijk cost him the job. The striker and the defender were the prime targets of the Blues as they won the Premier League.
“It was a pity that it didn’t happen and Romelu is showing with Inter that my idea was right and also Van Dijk has shown with Liverpool that my idea was right for the club,” said Conte.
“For sure, it would have been a different story if I was the coach of Romelu,” he said. “Romelu is an incredible player and he has a lot of space for improvement.
“In one year at Inter, he had a lot of improvement because he wants to learn and I think I am a teacher. But he can continue to improve to become one of the best strikers in the world.”
He urged the Chelsea board to specifically sign the duo as they would improve the team significantly. But that didn’t materialize despite the club having several talks with those two players.
"I asked for two players and we [Chelsea] were very, very close.
"One was Romelu Lukaku, the other was Virgil van Dijk, and these two players were very, very close. I always said that with these two players we would improve my team by 30%".
– Antonio Conte via @TeleFootball pic.twitter.com/oCoWe47e03
— Simon Phillips (@SiPhillipsSport) November 17, 2020
The Italian manager is of the opinion that, had he signed both those players, Chelsea would have ruled the Premier League for many seasons. He said Van Dijk has shown that he’s world-class while Lukaku has been proving that he is still a goalscoring threat at Inter Milan.
