To PSV! Conte: McTominay may not play, De Bruyne will improve our level

At the press conference before the Champions League match against PSV in Naples' away game, Naples head coach Conte attended the press conference. He discussed McTominay's injury, the team's rotation, goals for this season and developing a new role for core player De Bruyne.

What is the situation with McTominay? Can he play?

Conte: McTominay did not train yesterday and only participated in part of the training today. A lot of it depends on him and if he feels like he can play this game we'll be happy. Otherwise, we will resort to another solution.

With Hoylen absent, Luca or Ambrosino will start. What changes will this bring?

Conte: We must strive to always field a balanced lineup. Especially tomorrow, we will play against a team that won the Eredivisie last season and always surprises in the Champions League. We will try to field the most reliable lineup. As for whether to do this or that in the end, we always strive to do our best. By the end of the 90 minutes, any one of us can say that the other one should have been brought on.

Compared with the previous season, the start of this season was slightly lacking. Do you expect more from new signings?

Conte: This is a completely different season from the previous season, when we started in an unfavorable position after finishing tenth. There was no Champions League, no other competitions. It's a completely different season and we can't make comparisons or consider it worse than the previous season. It's just different, with different tournaments, different players, different lineups. We need to be patient and the new boys need to settle in: a lot of this season will depend on how well they integrate. We must remain calm, confident and patient. You know, if you score a goal here you become a phenomenon, if you don't score you become a parallel import. This is Italy.

This is international practice.

Conte: No, especially in Italy, this kind of extreme evaluation is simply different.

What is your goal in this Champions League?

Conte: In this Champions League, we must work hard to let everyone understand who we are and where we are. We didn't play in Europe last season so this is a new thing for us. We are in a competition that brings together the best of European football, but we have to be ambitious to understand our place in it.

Don’t be overly excited and don’t belittle yourself. We got a red card in Manchester and we successfully won against Sporting CP. We have to take it game by game and, of course, we didn't have much luck at the beginning of the season with injuries. But we cannot use this as an excuse, we must go the way we should, especially relying on new players, they must help us in this Champions League journey.

Has De Bruyne changed his role?

Conte: I always try to understand the player. The evolution he is going through is to participate more and more in the team's games. I saw he was committed, he loved playing football and he elevated our level. For me, De Bruyne today is not in his previous position, but in this new position that we have set for him, showing his qualities in an important way because he is now more involved. He can also score goals unexpectedly when coming from the back, and he is also a player who can provide us with creativity alongside the playmaker. That's how I see it, and I could be wrong of course, but I believe we're building a new character for him. And I saw that he was very happy.