Conte welcomes the midfield selection challenge.
N’Golo Kante was a part of that magic Leicester City Premier League season last year. In fact he was an integral cog in the machine and was as good as Riyad Mahrez or Jamie Vardy, overall a stand-out player for Claudio Ranieri’s side.
Now he has joined Chelsea for a sum of 32 million pounds and gives manager Antonio Conte options to choose from for his starting 11.
‘N’Golo is an important player and for this reason we bought him. I can’t wait to transfer my idea of football to him and find a different solution,’ said the former Azzuri boss. ‘The players in a great team like Chelsea must know there are many players that can play. It’s important for me to have a good choice to try the best solution game by game.’
With Conte already rejecting an offer for Nemanja Matic from Juventus, saying that ‘Matic is an important player for me, a very important player. In my idea of football he is an important player and he knows this,’ he goes on and says ‘I am delighted with his attitude and behaviour and I see in him a great commitment.’
However, with players like Fabregas, Oscar and now Kante all expecting first team matches regularly, one must wonder how will the Italian manage to satisfy all his players without losing them to other teams for regular first team football with comparatively less competition.
‘It’s very difficult for all the teams to try and buy the players. Now, we are starting to speak about 100 million, 120m, 95m, and these prices are incredible.’ said Antonio Conte when asked what he thought about Higuain becoming the third most expensive signing after Juventus bought him for an incredible 75 million pounds from Napoli. ‘This season we are seeing a crazy market. It’s incredible… I don’t know if this situation can continue.’ Maybe the Italian is right, and maybe United may break that with a 100 million pound signing of Paul Pogba. And to think, they once had him warming up their benches…
