ANTONIO CONTE revealed he paid his respects to the Queen with his own personal visit to Buckingham Palace on Friday to lay flowers.
The Tottenham boss attended the late monarch’s home the day after her death with his brother Daniele, wearing a hat to blend in with the crowd.
Antonio Conte was speaking ahead of Tottenham’s clash with Sporting Lisbon
He felt it was important to “live this sad but special moment” to mark Her Royal Highness’ passing.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League clash against Sporting Lisbon, Conte said: “What happened in the last few days in England is something extraordinary.
“Honestly, on Thursday, we were all sad because we are talking about a person whose service for this country was outstanding.
“On Friday I went to Buckingham Palace like a normal person, because I am normal person!
“I did it with a hat on to live this situation because I think for sure we will remember this for the rest of our lives.
“To stay here in this moment and to live this moment here is for sure a sad moment, but at the same time it is a special moment because we are talking about the death of the Queen.
“She was 96 years old and honestly for me it was very difficult to believe she was dead, because in your mind you think that the Queen was immortal.
“To live this situation in London, in this specific moment, for sure I will keep this in my heart, in my mind for the rest of my life.”
Conte said it was right that the Premier League made the “important decision” to stop football at the weekend just gone to show respect to Her Majesty.
Spurs will pay tribute by holding a minute’s silence ahead of Tuesday’s clash at the Jose Alvalade Stadium and wearing black armbands throughout.
Conte admitted not playing Manchester City on Saturday has helped his side recover physically after a run of four games in ten days.
And it means he may not rotate his side this evening as much as he had planned to – though Richarlison’s hot form could see one of Dejan Kulusevski or Son Heung-min benched.
That would have seemed crazy last season but Conte feels it shows how far his team have come.
The Italian explained: “I think when you try to build something important, when you try to build something with ambition and try to be competitive and fight to win, you have to change old habits, otherwise it means you want to stay in balance and it means you don’t want to have ambition.
“For this reason all the players have to accept the rotation especially up front, we have four players.
“For me especially it’s very difficult right now to drop one of these four players, but I have to make the best decision for the team, also for the players.
“For sure I’m here to try to change the old habit. The old habit was that the players were used to playing in every game. What happened in this type of situation is that you don’t have great possibilities to win.”
Tottenham will come up against one of their former youth players on Tuesday in Marcus Edwards.
The winger, 23, left on a free transfer in 2019 for Portuguese side Vitoria de Guimaraes, before joining Sporting in January.
He has three goals and three assists in seven games this term.
Sporting boss Ruben Amorim said: “He has so much talent. He can get much better. He can even get to the English national team.
“He has to focus more on training and all that is around it. Football is not just matches, it’s everything in between. I trust him a lot. I know he can grow a lot.”
Likely line-up: Lloris; Romero, Dier, Davies; Emerson, Hojbjerg, Bentancur, Perisic; Kulusevski, Kane, Richarlison.
