A video message of greetings from Antonio Conte at the Festival dello Sport in Trento. The theme was the 30th anniversary of Juventus’s last Champions League title — the 1996 final in Rome in which the club defeated Ajax under Marcello Lippi to claim the trophy that remains the most recent entry in the club’s European silverware cabinet. Words of warmth from the former Napoli and Inter manager for that squad and that group of men.
Conte was invited to attend in person at Trento. He declined and sent a video instead. The reason for his absence was stated without ambiguity: he is abroad, on holiday. “I would have liked to be there — but at the moment I’m not in Italy. I’m still enjoying a bit of holiday, given that this year I have the possibility of staying calm and resting.”
“The Human Value of That Group — and a Great Manager in Lippi”
On the 1996 Champions League and what he most remembers from the squad that won it: “It is good to celebrate 30 years of what was the most important success of that Juventus. What has stayed with me most from that group is above all the human value — with a great manager like Lippi at the helm.” The observation goes directly to the heart of what distinguished the championship teams of that era from what has followed: not merely technical excellence, but a collective human fabric strong enough to sustain and absorb everything the competition could demand.
“This Year I’m Resting” — and What Those Words Mean
The declaration that he is spending this season on holiday confirms what the Italian football world had understood but not previously heard from Conte himself in such direct terms: he does not intend to return to the dugout during the 2026-27 campaign. After two years at Napoli — delivering a Scudetto and a Supercoppa — he chose to step away at the end of the previous season and has remained a free agent throughout the summer and the opening weeks of the new campaign.
His words — questo anno ho la possibilità di stare tranquillo e di riposarmi — also carry an implicit message about what comes next. “This year” implies that next year may be different. The holiday has a natural endpoint. What follows it, and where, remains the question that Juventus supporters have been asking since the Sassuolo defeat — and to which the Calciomercato article’s conclusion provides the only honest answer: it remains to be seen whether Conte decides to return to work if a suitable opportunity presents itself. His Juventinità — the attachment to the club that saturated every word of Sunday’s video message — will have found its way into many bianconero hearts. The rest, for the moment, is rest.
