Ever since Tottenham hired Antonio Conte the media have been going full throttle linking anyone and everyone with a transfer to North London.
The fact that Conte is Italian and came from Serie A to Tottenham has had the hacks putting two and two together and not always coming up with the right total.
A quick look at the players that Conte signed when he was Chelsea manager does confirm that he is likely to dip into the Italian market for new recruits, but to what degree?
A total of 12 players were signed by the 52-year-old when he was at Chelsea and it has to be accepted that a good number did come from Italian clubs.
These are the players that Conte signed when in charge at Stamford Bridge and the clubs they came from.
Alvaro Morata – Real Madrid
Tiemoue Bakayoko – Monaco
Danny Drinkwater – Leicester City
Michy Batshuayi – Marseille
N’Golo Kante – Leicester City
David Luiz – PSG
Antonio Rudiger – Roma
Davide Zappacosta – Torino
Marcos Alonso – Fiorentina
Olivier Giroud – Arsenal
Emerson – Roma
Ross Barkley – Everton
That breaks down to 4 from England, 4 from Italy 3 from France and 1 from Spain.
In better words, 33% of Conte’s signings were from Italy, the same percentage as English based players.
It is understandable that any manager will sign players that he is familiar with and Conte is clearly familiar with players based in Italy and that showed when he became Inter manager with the number of players he signed from the Premier League.
In conclusion, we can expect a good number of Italian based players to sign on at Tottenham, however, we are just as likely to see the same sort of numbers emanate from France and England if Contes record at Chelsea is anything to go by.
