Conte: Napoli was wonderful but it drained all my energy

Antonio Conte has opened up on why he chose to leave Napoli after two seasons in charge, telling The Athletic: "Napoli was a wonderful experience. It required a lot of energy and it wasn't easy."

Conte pointed to the level of competition in Serie A to explain the toll the job took on him. "Having to face Inter, Juve and Milan isn't a walk in the park for clubs like Napoli, Roma or Lazio. So I really did use up a lot of energy," he said. The words carry weight coming from a coach who won that fight and brought the title to Napoli.

Asked about the present, Conte described a different, more distant phase of his career. "Now I'm at a stage where I just keep an eye on the situation. In the quiet periods, when I'm not working, the nice thing is that I can sit down and watch matches, study new approaches and be even calmer and clearer-headed as I try to adapt football's developments to my ideas."

The comments land at a far from ordinary moment for the Napoli side Conte left behind. Massimiliano Allegri now sits in the dugout, with a lower mandate than a title challenge: fourth place and a step forward in the Champions League. The team sit ninth with 7 points from 5 games, their worst league start in ten years according to Opta, and banners against the ownership appeared outside Castel Volturno (the training ground) after the draw in Florence.

Conte did not say a word about Allegri or Napoli's current situation — he only spoke about how much the two years in Naples had cost him in energy. But in Naples, the comparison makes itself: a coach who left a trophy in the cabinet and now watches matches with a clear head, against a squad still searching for its identity before Saturday's game against Frosinone.