Antonio Conte's departure leaves Tottenham facing a perilous end to the season

The Italian leaves Spurs with a caretaker manager tasked with holding on to a Champions League spot

Manager Antonio Conte has parted ways with Tottenham "by mutual agreement". AP

With 10 games left to protect a fragile hold on Champions League qualification, Tottenham Hotspur have parted ways with their manager Antonio Conte.

The departure of Conte had been signalled, mainly by the Italian himself, with his scathing remarks after a two-goal lead was let slip at Southampton 11 days ago, but if there is genuine relief among some of the Spurs players he criticised that he is gone, the weeks ahead look perilous.

For the remainder of a Premier League campaign in which six clubs are in a genuine tussle for two top-four spots – behind Arsenal and Manchester City – Spurs will be guided by an interim coach whose last senior managerial experience over a sustained sequence of matches was in Italy’s third division more than five years ago.

He is Cristian Stellini, elevated from his role as assistant following the weekend announcement of Conte’s immediate departure from North London.

Stellini is said to be liked and respected by players, as is his interim assistant, former Tottenham midfielder Ryan Mason, but the challenge facing Stellini is considerable.

Spurs sit two points above fifth-placed Newcastle United, but have played two matches more than Eddie Howe’s team. Liverpool, Brighton and Brentford, gathered just below Newcastle on 42 points to Tottenham’s 49, also have games in hand on Spurs, three games in the case of upwardly mobile Brighton.

All of which featured in Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy’s calculations as he last week weighed up whether or not to stick with Conte for the remainder of his contract, which was to expire in June.

He knew the bad-tempered press conference the Italian gave after the draw at Southampton had severed a bond with senior players. Conte called them, without naming names, “selfish players who don’t want to help each other, don’t put their heart [into matches]”.

He very pointedly offered no solutions. “This season compared to last? We are worse in this aspect. When you are not a team you cannot improve. They [the club] can change the manager, a lot of managers, but the situation cannot change, believe me.”

It sounded like not just the angry first draft of a resignation letter, but a bitter warning to any successor.

Quiet, amicable departures have never been Conte’s style as an elite club manager, but nor has quitting without a medal to endorse his work. Not since his brief stint at Atalanta in 2009-10 has Conte left a top-division club without having gained a league title while there.

At Juventus there were three Serie A scudetti in as many seasons, at Chelsea a Premier League crown in his first experience of English football, and at Internazionale he in 2021 delivered a league title after the club had gone 11 years without one.

That record guarantees Conte will have attractive offers now he is back on a managerial marketplace that looks suddenly better stocked than it did five days ago, when Bayern Munich were abruptly preparing to replace Julian Nagelsmann with Thomas Tuchel.

Spurs and Levy had been monitoring Tuchel. They have a past interest in Nagelsmann, which they are reopening as they look for possible long or even medium-term replacements for Conte, who became Tottenham’s fourth departing manager in the space of three-and-a-half years, his exit full of echoes of when Jose Mourinho was asked to leave on the eve of a League Cup final appearance in 2021.

Tottenham, who have not won significant silverware since 2008, lost that final under the caretaker charge of Mason; Mourinho, like Conte, lasted just over 500 days as Spurs manager. Like Conte, he left the premises without a medal. It is the only managerial job of the eight Mourinho has held in the last 20 years that finished trophyless.

Southampton v Tottenham player ratings

Those precedents, ominous though Conte made them sound, are understood not to put off Nagelsmann, who at 35, and with a Bundesliga title – with Bayern – and a Champions League semi-final – with RB Leipzig in 2020 – already on his CV, is keen to work in the Premier League.

So is Luis Enrique, the former Barcelona manager, who left the Spain national team job in December. A return for Mauricio Pochettino, who left Spurs after five largely exhilarating years there in 2019 and has been free since quitting Paris Saint-Germain last summer, would appeal to many in the Tottenham fan base.

And the brochure Levy presents to any candidate has huge attractions: a magnificent new stadium, and one of the most admired centre-forwards in the world, in Harry Kane, who just as the final details of Conte’s departure were being agreed on Sunday was extending his record as the England national team’s all-time greatest goalscorer.

Persuading Kane, whose contract expires in 2024, to remain at the club he grew up with is a Tottenham priority.

Guarantees of Champions League football and a coach with the capacity and ambition to lead Spurs to silverware will be key factors in Kane’s decisions about his future.