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The second match of the round of 16 will be a duel between Tottenham and AC Milan. Antonio Conte is back on the Spurs bench again and tonight he will have perhaps the most important match of the season. The Italian asks the team to be consistent.
Pressure can sometimes be a big problem when you play at a club like Tottenham. "If you want to win or achieve some targets and have a good position in the Champions League or in England in the Premier League you have to be stable,"-Antonio Conte said, as quoted by eurosport.com
"And this stability is lacking this year.
I always talk about it with my players. It is very difficult to keep concentration, it is very difficult to stay focused all of the time.
It is not an easy task being so focused. We are working on that, playing under pressure all of the time is good for some players and bad for others.
Sometimes players feel motivated, other times they feel so much under pressure that they can't perform.
Maybe for a period they have a good performance and then they collapse all of a sudden if they feel too much pressure.
We are working on this, we want to make our players more resilient."
Antonio Conte on Italy and England
Conte talked about the differences between Italy and England. Antonio believes that the situation is completely different in Italy and that the players are used to pressure.
Much less is said about it in England. "I think that the pressure is different between Italy and England.
In Italy you speak about football from Monday and you finish on Sunday. You speak only football and then you have a lot of TV that speaks football and putting a lot of pressure.
You are born in this way and you grow in this way, with this pressure, and you are used to living with this type of situation.
In England I think that there is an atmosphere that brings to enjoy football without a lot of pressure, because football is a sport and in Italy sometimes football is not only a sport, it is a war between the teams and the fans."