COMMENT: What if Antonio Conte became the successor of José Mourinho on Chelsea's bench? It's a chance, with very strong rumours these days.
Surely Conte has a personality close to the Special One: a drill sergeant, someone who knows how to raise his voice to keep the locker room in the palm of his hand. Both are men full of charisma and success achieved. So, from this point of view, nothing to doubt about this possible choice.
But on the other hand there are two issues:
The first one is: "Does Antonio Conte want to go back to a club bench?". The answer cannot be taken for granted. Of course Conte is a club manager - in a certain way loaned to a national team, because he has the spirit of a man who needs to be on the training ground each and every day to be with his players, to forge his team, to work on every little aspect of the building of a squad; so it's sure that, sooner or later, he will leave the Italian national team to go back to a club.
But he is a winner, a man who wants to show what he's able to do; a man not used to leaving a mission without having reached a victory. So there's a chance that he could decide to keep working with Italy until Euro 2016 and to try to win it.
He is working well with the Italian national team, he's trying to bring a new mentality to the Azzurri and new young players: but he needs time to carry on with his job, not having the chance to have daily sessions with his players.
The second issue is that if he decided to leave the Italian national team, he would have lot of offers and I would not be sure that he would choose Chelsea. For example, Roma seem very interested in trying to bring the most winning trainer of Italian football in the last few years in order to win something themselves. It's a club which could match his ambitions.
ASHLEY COLE COULD STILL MAKE ENGLAND RETURN
Let's talk about Ashley Cole. Mine was an easy prediction when I wrote that the chance to see the former England left back wearing the Manchester United jersey was something like a joke.
But there's still a chance that Cole, out of Roma's squad since the start of the season, will come back to Premier League: Aston Villa needs someone to replace the injured Jordan Amavi. Even New York City FC are interested in Ashley Cole. Let's see what happens.
What will of course happen to him is that he's becoming a father for the first time. Or would we do better saying "papà"? The mother is the Italian model Sharon Canu.
Greetings to papà and mamma.
LURE OF ITALY NOT ENOUGH FOR MANNONE
Vito Mannone between England and Italy: the Italian goalkeeper, no matches played in this season with Sunderland, all spent on the bench as second choice to Costel Pantilimon. Bournemouth and Reading are planning to make an offer to take him; but Hellas Verona are trying to obtain a loan from Sunderland.
It seems that Mannone would prefer to remain in UK.
