For an insight into the mindset of Antonio Conte, the survival mode that he has adopted during this most traumatic of seasons, look no further than when he was given his gallbladder surgery diagnosis at the end of January.
The Tottenham manager was in excruciating pain and, until he was told what was causing it, his mind ran with dark possibilities. Conte, remember, had recently lost three close friends - Gian Piero Ventrone and Sinisa Mihajlovic to leukaemia; Gianluca Vialli to pancreatic cancer.
"Previously, it happened a lot of sad news... [so] when they said to me that I had only surgery for this reason, I was happy," Conte said, breaking into laughter. "Because you never know when you are not in a good condition what will happen."
It could have been worse. It was an emergency operation but this particular one tends to be OK. "I discovered after my surgery that many, many of my friends had the same surgery," Conte said. "For me, the difference was that I had an emergency surgery, it was not programmed [planned]. For this reason, I needed more time, maybe, to recover well."
This story is from the March 08, 2023 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the March 08, 2023 edition of The Guardian.
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