Chelsea vs Manchester United: The story behind Mourinho and Conte’s bitter rivalry… unsurprisingly it was Jose who fired the first shot
The pair have been at it since Mourinho had a dig at Conte over the match-fixing scandal in Italy, with the super-coaches squaring up again at Stamford Bridge on Sunday
ANTONIO CONTE squaring up to Jose Mourinho is hardly a battle of physical heavyweights.
You’d even have them as underdogs in a two-man tag match against boxer Anthony Joshua.
Yet 42,000 fans will pack Stamford Bridge on Sunday and millions more will watch on TV with the latest chapter of a long running managerial feud as high on the billing as the football.
The mud-slinging and mutual dislike goes back to long before they came together as rival Premier League bosses, with its resultant friction.
Chelsea boss Conte has tried to keep the criticism on a professional level while Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho is an expert at bitching and no subject is off limits.
And no surprise, it was the Special One who fired the first shot during his outstanding two years in charge of Inter between 2008 and 2010.
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At the time, Italian football was recovering from the infamous match fixing scandal or "Calciopoli" from two years before.
Juventus were at the centre of the crisis and had been relegated, fined and had points deducted as punishment, while their big rivals Inter were in the clear.
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And Mourinho couldn’t wait to tell everyone "with the silence of everyone in Italian football, you built Calciopoli".
Conte, who had played 13 seasons at Juventus, was known as Mr Juve and was furious at the attack on his beloved club, delivered in the unusual passive aggressive style of football’s arch wind-up merchant Mourinho.
He would get his own back when coach at Juventus and having won the title declared: “I want to stay and build something for years. Not see my team break up."
This was a sideways swipe at Mourinho who won the 2010 title, Italian Cup and Champions League with Inter, then buggered off to Real Madrid. Ouch.
It’s not been forgotten and Italian football experts say that the seed of mutual dislike was planted then and has been taking root ever since.
The hostility only fully grew into the light last season when Conte and Mourinho finally came face-to-face on the touchline as Chelsea thrashed Manchester United 4-0 in the Premier League.
Prior to that, the pair had narrowly missed each other in the Italian league, when Conte was short-term boss of Atalanta in a match against Mourinho’s Inter in December 2009.
It’s quite fitting that both managers were banned from the touchline that day as a result of slagging off referees the week before. The powder was being kept dry for the future.
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The game finished in a diplomatic 1-1 draw and both coaches were gone from their respective clubs by the following summer.
Last season, Conte got his revenge by whipping the Chelsea fans into a frenzy as he stung Mourinho with that Sunday afternoon thrashing.
Mourinho whined: “You don't celebrate like that at 4-0, you can do it at 1-0, otherwise it's humiliating for us".
When Chelsea knocked Manchester United out of the FA Cup in a spiky contest March, the two men did not shake hands at the final whistle.
After which Conte raged: “We try to play football but for 25 minutes it was impossible.”
Even during the summer recess there was no truce as Conte told ESPN that after winning last season’s Premier League title, “We want to avoid the Mourinho season”, in a direct poke at how Chelsea imploded following the 2015 title success under Mourinho.
Then Mourinho got nasty and when this was put to him retorted, “I’m not going to lose my hair talking about Antonio Conte" - a brutal dig at Conte, who has had hair replacement.
Just over two weeks ago, Jose took an unprovoked swipe in a clear but clever dig at Conte by saying: “I could cry and cry about injuries but I don’t.”
Referencing Conte’s recent moans about his fitness issues - but without actually naming him.
It was enough to sting the normally placid Conte into an immediate return of fire as he said: “If that was meant for me, then a lot of time Mourinho has to see what is going on at Chelsea."
In other words, butt out Jose.
