Italian Prankster Gives Antonio Conte a Manchester United shirt signed by Jose Mourinho

Conte looked bemused as he was presented with a United shirt

Antonio Conte’s pre-match press conference was hijacked by an Italian prankster who tried to present the Chelsea boss with a Manchester United shirt signed by Jose Mourinho.

The Italian’s otherwise uneventful media briefing took a sudden turn when the ‘journalist’ grabbed a microphone and began showing Conte a video clip on his iPad. At first he appeared to find the whole thing rather amusing, though his mood changed when the reporter tried to hand him the United shirt – with his name on the back – that had been signed by Mourinho.

Watch the weird exchange below (from 10:40)…

Conte rejected it and looked incredibly unimpressed, with Chelsea’s press officer finally intervening and telling the man – who raised his fist in the air – to sit back down. The prankster appears to have been continuing a ruse that began a month ago in Manchester, when an Italian TV crew snuck up on Mourinho outside the Lowry Hotel with a United shirt to sign.


However, unbeknownst to Mourinho, the shirt had Conte’s name on the back. Unlike Conte, the United manager did see the funny side and laughed off the joke before heading inside the hotel, where he has lived ever since taking over at Old Trafford.

He did not appear to find the spectacle particularly amusing, however

Conte watched the clip of Mourinho signing a shirt with his name on

The prank appears to have been a ploy by an Italian TV station to get one over on Mourinho after he engaged in a war of words with Conte. Mourinho had suggested that the Italian behaved like a clown, with Conte responded by calling him senile, and the Special One got the final blow by bringing up the match-fixing allegations that Conte was cleared of while at Juventus.