New Chelsea manager Antonio Conte has revealed he could have quit football after being implicated in a match-fixing scandal.
The former Juventus and Italy coach was accused of failing to report an attempt to fix a game in 2011 while in charge of Siena, and a comprehensive investigation that spanned five years finally cleared his name in May.
"The story is a bad story for me and I don't accept this," Conte told the Daily Telegraph. "I fought a lot against this story and I risked myself [by going to] a judge.
"I could have chosen another way, it was very easy for me to go to finish a problem and then pass the time, finished, no?
"In Italy when you have this type of story in the past five years... [you are] finished. No, no. I wanted to be judged.
"In my heart the story was very bad for me, my family. I saw in that moment a bad situation, many people who wrote bad things without knowing the reality."
Conte has introduced a strict day-to-day routine for his squad at their Cobham training base.
"I prefer to have breakfast together with the players and then the training session," Conte added. "Then in the afternoon it is rest and time for the players, for me and my staff to study the opponents and study our training session.
"To improve and to prepare. After the training session, video analysis is big for me.
"This is very important because through the video you can see very good things and the bad things and the possibility to show players how to improve. Not because I want to find blame, only to improve them.
"I think in my experience as a footballer this is very important. Sometimes 20-30 minutes of video is more important than three, four or five training sessions."
Success with the Blues might be dependent on the clarity of his message and Conte is eager to improve his knowledge of his new language.
"I also have to improve my English a lot," he said. "When we go back to London, I will start taking lessons. I think it's very important to find the way to explain, to speak."