Antonio Conte in 'fresh dispute' with Chelsea over desire to hire an Italian assistant manager over a British coach

Conte hopes to replace England-bound Steve Holland with another Italian coach, but has met resistance from the club who want to maintain their approach of hiring British talent

Antonio Conte wants to bring in an Italian assistant manager (Getty)

The conflict behind the scenes at Chelsea between manager Antonio Conte and the club’s hierarchy appears to have taken another twist after it emerged that a dispute has developed in who will be the next assistant manager at Stamford Bridge.

Current No 2, Steve Holland, will leave the club at the end of the season as he joins up with the England set-up to assist Gareth Southgate, leaving Conte without an assistant manager ahead of the 2017/18 Premier League campaign.

The 47-year-old manager is believed to favour hiring a foreign coach to join his set-up, but The Times reports that Chelsea would prefer to hire another British assistant and maintain the stance that has been employed throughout the Roman Abramovich era in hiring homegrown coaches to serve under foreign managers.

Steve Clarke, Ray Wilkins, Paul Clement, Eddie Newton and Holland have all been hired as assistant managers since the Russian billionaire took over the club 14 years ago, and the Blues are not willing to ditch that approach in order to allow Conte to bring in an Italian, leaving the two parties at loggerheads.

The move is due to the club wanting to have someone in place with an understanding of both the club and English football in the event that Conte either leaves or is sacked, something that has been a regular occurrence under Abramovich.

The report adds that an initial disagreement arose when Conte first came to Chelsea over the size of his backroom staff, though the club were willing to let him bring in six Italians including his brother, Gianluca, to join the existing staff members of Holland and fitness coach Chris Jones.

Previous reports suggest that Conte does not share the same transfer targets as Michael Emenalo and Marina Granovskaia, the club’s respective technical director and director that handle the majority of negotiations between Chelsea and a player’s representatives.