Antonio Conte Is More Than a Match for Jose Mourinho and Deserves Greater Credit

A bite is usually enough to keep a fisherman interested. A landing net can be as empty as any forlorn dream just so long as there is a bite. That's what keeps them casting. Antonio Conte is not biting.

If Jose Mourinho plans to catch him off guard ahead of Manchester United's trip to Chelsea on Monday night for an FA Cup quarter-final, he'd stand about as much chance strapping on a pair of waders and using his hands as he would dangling a verbal hook in front of his rival's face. The Italian is impervious to cheap bait. 

Conte has handled Mourinho just as he has every other facet of his debut campaign as Chelsea manager, impeccably. 

Last month, Mourinho accepted it would be difficult for his Manchester United side to catch his former club in the title race, primarily because of Chelsea's "philosophy of playing."

He added, per The Independent: "They score one goal and they win. They defend a lot. They defend well. ... They don't care what people say, what people think. They just want to win."

Jimmy Connors would struggle to deliver a better backhanded compliment.

In Mourinho's first title-winning season at Chelsea in 2004/05, they won 11 of their 38 games by a 1-0 scoreline. In the absence of a cavalier, this is essentially a roundhead attacking a roundhead with a mallet made of two parts hypocrisy and one part (misguided) righteousness. It's the same mallet he tried to beat Conte with for having the temerity to gee up the Chelsea crowd when the two sides met in the league.

Chelsea are only really pragmatic in the sense they are relentlessly effective. There's nothing humdrum about the way they play. They have conceded the joint-fewest goals with Tottenham Hotspur and been outscored only by Liverpool. They have scored 18 more than Manchester United and let in two fewer. This isn't a victory of science over art, far from it. Chelsea marry the two.

Mourinho's criticism is risible, as he will well know.

Conte met it with a perfect putdown, per the BBC. "He's playing," was a two-word retort that ensured not even a ripple disturbed the water. He killed the story as his side supposedly kill games when one-nil up. Mourinho must have felt like a kid told by his mum to stop showing off in front of friends. 

Likewise, Mourinho's repeated laments over United's busy fixture list in comparison with Chelsea's has only elicited a wry grin from Conte. There is a reason why his side are so light on matches this season. 

To watch Conte's touchline theatre on a matchday, it wouldn't be hard to imagine him diving into battle with a rival manager with the same fervour he does with the crowd. Herein lies the paradox. Away from the field, he is respectful, engaging and genial. And he has less than zero interest in playing games. It will be killing Mourinho that he can't get under Conte's skin. 

Silverware may already have been deposited in the club's trophy cabinet, but Mourinho takes United to the capital as underdogs. United's 17-match unbeaten run domestically since losing 4-0 to Chelsea in October is unmatched in any of Europe's top five leagues. It is a measure of how far they have come under his tenure. How Chelsea have played all season under Conte is how far they still have to go. 

United taking six points from the six games they have played against fellow top six sides this season does not bode well for Monday. Neither does Thursday's 3,750-mile trip to south Russia to play FC Rostov in the Europa League on a graveyard of a pitch.

The media's obsession with Mourinho and how he is reigniting United's fire seems to have relegated Conte and Chelsea to a side story. They have become the support act that is better than the headline band.

Conte inherited a Chelsea team that finished 16 points behind Manchester United last season. They are now 17 points ahead of them. That's a positive swing of 33 points in 27 matches (United have played one game less). Had Mourinho done the same at Old Trafford, it is debatable who of Fleet Street or the club would get a statue up first.

That's less a slight on Mourinho, who is making a good fist of turning around a juggernaut that had been going in the wrong direction since the moment Sir Alex Ferguson retired and more a cap doth in the direction of Conte and the frankly remarkable job he's doing at Chelsea. It's not Claudio Ranieri remarkable, but as debut seasons go in English football, it's not far off the very best of them.

Just one defeat in 21 Premier League matches (18 wins, two draws, one loss) does not suggest Chelsea will have too many hiccups between now and the campaign's close. A Chelsea double is probably more likely than a United treble.

It's each and every United game that has become an island, though; an entity in itself that religiously sees every nook and cranny exhaustively canvassed. In the background, Chelsea keep on winning pretty much every week to polite if subdued fanfare. How routinely they are winning matches has become so taken for granted there's a chance the Premier League trophy could be presented to them in the dressing room.

Perhaps football is just like life in that the process—or the journey, to borrow a glib phrase—is the interesting part. When you get to where you want to be, maybe it only becomes intriguing to others again when you start to fail.

Chelsea tightening a 10-point lead at the Premier League summit this week with 11 games left to play was met with barely a shrug. Conte won't lose sleep over it. Still, given in August very few gave Chelsea more than a puncher's chance of winning it, as the potential for civil war in Manchester became a nationwide obsession, maybe now is the time to concede we all got it wrong.

There's little doubt Mourinho will believe Conte inherited the champions elect, despite the fact when he left Chelsea, they were 16th and collectively looking leggier than Elle Macpherson. Even famed man-manager Guus "favourite uncle" Hiddink could only tease sporadically decent performances out of them in the second half of a campaign that finished with Chelsea in 10th place. 

Mourinho's fixation with inheritance tax is legendary. He likes to tax any praise his successors receive. Every manager that has ever followed him owes a debt of gratitude. If he were Pete Best, he would have spent his entire life claiming to be the most important Beatle. He'd argue the guy who dropped off the stone for Michelangelo's David deserves at least as much credit as the artist.

In fairness, it seems implausible a manager could fully make a side his own in the space of the seven or so months Conte has been in charge in west London. Effectively, though, he did in six matches. Conte's Chelsea side is no more Mourinho's than his Manchester United side is Ferguson's. 

Rare is it a football match proves to be both the beginning of the end for one manager and the start of a remarkable chapter for another. With each passing game, Arsenal's 3-0 victory over Chelsea on September 24, 2016, looks to be precisely that. If ultimately it's the hope that kills us, this was the result that unbeknownst at the time flatlined Arsene Wenger's relationship with Arsenal supporters. 

For Conte, it was like when a husband boxes up his wife's belongings having finally accepted she's not coming back. Mourinho's favoured 4-2-3-1 formation was slung in a black bag and left at the gate for the bin men. In the fallout, John Terry and Branislav Ivanovic were effectively resigned to history. They were Mourinho's long-standing captain and vice-captain, respectively. A line in the sand was drawn. 

Many saw a second-half shutout against Arsenal when he employed three at the back in a 3-5-2 as being little more than a rebound fling. Now it looks more solid than most marriages.

A change in formation was unquestionably important, but it tells only half the story. As Brian Clough once quipped: "Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes."

Watching Conte celebrate a dominoes win as he does a goal would be a thing of beauty, though probably unadvisable given the cardiac issues it could engender among elderly players.

A majority of Conte's charges were at the club under Mourinho. Very few are the same. Most are much happier. Of those that regularly start under Conte, only N'Golo Kante, Marcos Alonso, David Luiz and Pedro were not at the club for Chelsea and Mourinho's last title win in 2014/15.

It's less pronounced than what Pep Guardiola has done at Manchester City, but essentially there are parallels with how Conte has asked his players to buy into a wholly different way of playing and working. He has said as much, when discussing with Sky Italia (via The Telegraph's Matt Law) the blind faith he holds dear:

"I have blind faith in what I do. We had won the first three games, but I didn't like the performances. It was a delicate time, but not dramatic.

"Looking at last season, when Chelsea had practically the same players, you cannot immediately transform from ugly ducking into a swan. At the end of the day we found our balance. The blind faith in my ideas helped. I made some strong choices."

Early murmurs of discontent over being pushed so hard in training have been quelled by the fact Chelsea's players to a man appear as though they have been fitted with a third lung. Even Cesc Fabregas looks like he owns a pair.

A back three comprising Gary Cahill, Cesar Azpilicueta and Luiz has largely been immaculate after some inevitable teething trouble. Conte's coaching has to be applauded, again, given Cahill's disastrous performance against Arsenal was at the time the rule rather than exception. Azpilicueta was a right-back turned left-back turned right-sided centre-half and David Luiz was David Luiz. 

It seems an aeon ago since Chelsea's decision to buy the Brazilian back shocked the football world almost as much as the fact Paris Saint-Germain were willing to pay £50 million for him in the first place. Back in Manchester, the foundations of the Lowry Hotel shook with laughter when Mourinho, the man who sold him, learned of the news. It wouldn't be a surprise if Luiz made the shortlist for the PFA Player of the Year. 

At wing-back, Alonso and Victor Moses have had compilers of the PFA Team of the Year in a wild panic. To deviate from 4-4-2 would surely be sacrosanct, but how could either be left out? Under Mourinho's tutelage, Moses spent more time out on loan than he did at Cobham.

Nemanja Matic's form and morale was so low in those final few months with Mourinho the worms below the playing surface at Stamford Bridge had to put out an injunction against the Serb from violating their personal space.

It's hard to say whether he has quite matched the levels he hit during 2014/15, given the Kante effect made Danny Drinkwater look like Andrea Pirlo last season, but the improvement nonetheless is remarkable. Back then, Matic forever looked a misplaced pass away from bursting into tears. This term he has seven assists. 

The same could be said of Pedro. For the duration of last season, he had a bit of the Fernando Torres about him—legs looking as shot as his confidence. Now he's jostling with Moses to be the Premier League's most improved player, a matchbox magician justifiably keeping the ever-excellent Willian benched.

Moving him inside to vacate the space Alonso and Moses buccaneer into has freed both Pedro and Eden Hazard from the shackles of defensive duties burdened on them by Mourinho. It's a decision that has lit the blue touch paper for the Belgian, who genuinely seems grateful not to be expected to spend half his time tracking opposition full-backs.

There's no doubt Mourinho played an essential role in his development and made him a more complete and disciplined player. In the end, though, he held him back. To allocate serious defensives duties to Hazard is akin to having Lucian Freud at your disposal and asking him to paint the bathroom ceiling. In this respect, Conte is a disciplinarian with an appreciation for the finer things in life. Even if Oscar may disagree.

Hazard's metamorphosis from moody malevolence to masterful magnificence is matched by Diego Costa. Chelsea's raging bull is no longer the bloated Jake LaMotta of his latter years. He was as much a menace to himself as everyone else last season. Instead, Conte has somehow managed to temper Costa's temper while retaining in his striker a controlled nastiness. He's back to his fighting weight, and 19 goals in all competitions look set to help Chelsea to a second title in his three seasons in England.

Costa's brief flirtation with the Chinese Super League in January saw Conte demonstrate acumen for crisis management Wenger can only dream of. Alexis Sanchez would probably be lowered into the ground wearing his Bayern Munich smirk had Conte been his coach. At the time it looked like Costa having his head turned might derail Chelsea's season. It was dealt with in the space of a single game, for which Costa was dropped.

Sky Italia ran a set of quotes that were later refuted (h/t Goal, via Yahoo Sport), but whether apocryphal or otherwise, they fitted Conte to a tee. Whatever he said, it clearly worked.

"I was very clear with him and raised my voice, and the player understood. Now everything is perfect," he reportedly said, echoing another Clough line on dealing with dissenting players. "We talk about it for 20 minutes, and then we decide I was right."

In the buildup to the EFL Cup final, Mourinho joked Conte should be careful what he wishes for, given the previous three Premier League-winning managers have all now been axed in light of Ranieri leaving Leicester City. 

One suspects Conte will be just fine. At least until next season anyhow.