Conte: I'll make double trophy gesture at every presser and name no-trophy teams

Napoli manager Antonio Conte spoke to the media after his side were knocked out of the Coppa Italia quarter-finals by Como on penalties.

Matches like this can often be decided by moments of chance. In your view, how much did the non-red card decision for the foul on Hojlund impact the game? We saw you were furious on the touchline…

Conte: Alright, but I don’t want to go over this again. Let’s stop fixating on refereeing matters, because this season these discussions have become truly tiresome. It’s boring to keep talking about this, so let’s draw a line under it and focus on the game itself.

What I will say is this: just as we as coaches must train hard and improve our players, Rocchi (the referee designator) must also improve the performances of the on-field referees and VAR officials, so they do better than they have this season. Because everyone is complaining, to varying degrees. I’ve observed this week… well, I won’t name names, but managers of other teams are also complaining. So, it is what it is. Let’s try to look forward, and hope they improve in the future, show more courage, and don’t rely too much on other decisions.

Coach, I have a statistic for you: you’ve conceded your 11th penalty of the season tonight, far more than last term. What can you improve in this area? What does this number mean to you, and what does it represent?

Conte: It is indeed a statistic. Some of these penalties, like the one tonight, were correctly awarded, but others are highly debatable, even deeply controversial. Regardless, 11 penalties are 11 penalties.

Occasionally, people might think we’re the team that has conceded the most penalties in the league. The strangest thing is that we’re also one of the teams against whom the fewest shots are taken. There’s nothing to say—we have to be more careful with our arm movements in the box, and avoid giving away those little things that can lead to us being punished.

There’s clearly a sense of disappointment after missing a set objective. How deep is that regret, given you couldn’t compete at your best for trophies, and without solutions or chances to turn things around?

Conte: Listen, we’ve been sailing in extremely difficult waters for a long time. And things haven’t gotten better—they’ve gotten worse, because our injured players haven’t fully recovered and haven’t returned. That includes Romelu (Lukaku). Romelu isn’t in good physical shape right now. Let’s be clear: this isn’t the Lukaku everyone knows.

On one hand, there’s bitterness because with such a packed schedule, I don’t have more weapons, not even a little extra strength to call upon. But on the other hand, I also feel a sense of satisfaction, because in such a critical emergency, we’ve truly given everything, dug out every bit of potential. In the end, you fight until the end, you fight against everything and everyone.

Don’t forget that Como have 41 points in the league. They fielded a full squad tonight, and they’d had a full 10 days of rest with no matches before this game. We played just three days ago, and picked up more injuries after the Genoa game. Despite that, the match went to penalties. If it had gone to extra time, we would have been the ones to go through—we deserved to win. But they advanced, so congratulations to them. So there is frustration and regret, because it feels like we’re fighting with our hands tied, forced to keep searching for solutions under limited conditions.

You saw two new faces tonight: Giovanni and Alisson (Santos), who joined in the January transfer window. The club told me we could only do zero-cost deals in this window, so these two lads came in and will try to help us. That’s the club’s decision, and as manager, I will fully cooperate and try to get the maximum out of the resources I have—even if, as I repeat, the situation is not positive.

Earlier, someone asked me if we can still fight for the Scudetto now that we only have one game a week. I said: if we only have 10 players left, changing the frequency of matches won’t turn things around. We have to put on our helmets and fight—and we’ve been wearing them for a long time. We have to thank these players and try to do our best until the end of the season. When the season ends, we’ll all sit down, make a proper assessment, and figure out what positive things we’ve done.

Don’t forget: we won the Serie A title and the Italian Super Cup in two years. I’m not sure who else can boast those two honours. Then we’ll see where we end up this season, whether we can qualify for Europe—Champions League, Europa League, or Conference League. After that, everyone will take stock, and we’ll draw up a list together to see what to do next.

Good evening, coach. Honestly, I think there are two positives to highlight tonight: one is another excellent performance and goal from Vergara—the lad has been giving his all to help the team, and you once said he had to help the side and follow instructions, which he’s clearly done very well. Also, physically, Napoli’s second-half display was very important, because Como had 10 days’ rest, while you played three days ago. I think the difference in physical output was clear in the second half…

Conte: I repeat: amid all this misfortune, I see many positives. Because if these players didn’t have this resilience, this fighting spirit, this desire to defend the Scudetto, and this strong sense of belonging, this season would have been a disaster from every angle—I can promise you that. But instead, we’re still out there fighting.

Tonight we faced a full-strength Como side, and everyone is praising their performances—they have 41 points. We played three days ago, lost more key players to injury for this game, yet no one noticed that disadvantage on the pitch. Two new players came off the bench for their debuts, and you know it takes time to integrate into a tactical system. So there are indeed many positives.

If you ask me: “Did you get knocked out of the Coppa Italia?” Yes. “Did you get knocked out of the Champions League?” Yes. What can I do? All that’s left is to play well in the league, do our best, and keep doing what we can. I want to thank the fans, because they’re understanding and appreciating the effort this team is putting in. The manager, the staff—everyone is pulling together to try to keep the team at the top, even if the outside world doesn’t see it that way.

Having said that: two trophies in two years—Serie A and Super Cup. So from now on, every time I attend a post-match press conference, I will sit here, make this gesture, and start listing all the teams that, as a certain manager put it, have zero trophies!