The only man to have won the Scudetto with three different clubs didn’t even come close to lifting the Champions League. Only once did they reach the quarterfinals and that was 13 years ago with Juventus, who were defeated 4-0 on aggregate by the eventual winners, Bayern Munich.
Since then, they have been eliminated twice in the group stage (with Juve in 2013-14 and with Inter in 2020-21) and were eliminated in the round of 16 with both Chelsea (2017-18) and Tottenham Hotspur (2022-23).
In total, they have won just 17 of the 49 games they have managed in the competition and are now about to fall at the first hurdle for the third time in six attempts after a disappointing 1-1 draw with 10-man Copenhagen left Napoli with just eight points from their seven games in this season’s Champions League.
“It’s a result that hurts me and should also hurt my players,” Conte said. Sky Sport Italy last week. “The game was there to be one and reach the play-offs. We could have a thousand excuses, but tonight they don’t fit, because the game was going very well.
“We were in total control, with 11 men against 10, so even if you are missing 10 players and you feel tired, you have to win these games. You just have to do it. But we didn’t do it, so obviously our level at the moment is not suitable for this competition, and we all have to accept the blame, because in a situation like this you have to take the result home.
“There’s not much more to say, we just have to be mad at ourselves, because it was a golden opportunity, and maybe we didn’t realize what was at stake. It was like we were riding a bike downhill and somehow we managed to ride it up by ourselves.”