Whether Diego Costa leaves Chelsea in January or July, Antonio Conte will find someone to replace the striker. The Italian's playing career taught him that everyone, no matter their quality, is expendable. That attitude has been carried into management.
"Go to China," as Conte was reported to have told Costa during a training-ground contretemps last week, was an entirely characteristic rebuke from someone whose demure media appearances belie a personality riveted by steely ruthlessness.
Though Chelsea publicly insist that Costa was dropped for the win over Leicester because of a back injury, Conte coped without him (thanks, in part, to an unlikely brace from Marcos Alonso) and used Eden Hazard as the central forward of three as the league leaders won 3-0 on Saturday. If Costa is allowed to depart this month, then another way would have to found for the foreseeable future. It is nothing Conte hasn't experienced before. He spent 13 years from 1991 to 2004 as a hard-working Juventus midfielder, winning five Serie A titles and a Champions League and saw it firsthand.
In the summer of 1996, he was handed the captain's armband by coach Marcello Lippi after previous captain Gianluca Vialli, who had led the club to the Champions League title that May (beating Ajax on penalties in Rome), had been allowed to leave for Chelsea on a free transfer.
Vialli was almost 32 and had struggled with injuries, but more striking was the sale of his forward partner Fabrizio Ravanelli to Middlesbrough for £7 million. Yet Juve's managing director Luciano Moggi signed Alen Boksic and Atalanta's Christian Vieri to replace him, and the club won Serie A and reached the Champions League final again -- though they lost 3-1 to Borussia Dortmund.
The following season, both players were sold on at a profit: Vieri to Atletico Madrid and Boksic back to Lazio. Filippo Inzaghi, from Atalanta, and Uruguayan Daniel Fonseca, from Roma, were signed to replace them and the club won another Serie A, and reached another Champions League final (this time losing 1-0 to Real Madrid in Amsterdam.)
Even the greatest can be replaced. Conte spent five seasons playing alongside Zinedine Zidane before, in 2001, Real Madrid's then-world-record offer of £46m was deemed too good to turn down. In came Pavel Nedved from Lazio for £25m and Juve won the next two titles, and might have won the 2003 Champions League final had the Czech not been suspended against AC Milan.
The key lesson Conte learned from Lippi and Moggi that no player is irreplaceable, each has their price. So when he became Juventus coach in 2011, he employed much the same transfer pragmatism the club had used during its golden 1990s.
In the summer of 2013, midfielder Emanuele Giaccherini, sold to Sunderland for £6m and Alessandro Matri, the striker sold back to AC Milan for €10m, were cashed in to raise funds despite serving Conte well as Juve collected three consecutive league titles to begin a dominance of Italian football which now surpasses that of his playing days. Conte led the club's long-awaited recovery from 2006's Calciopoli scandal, where the club was relegated for match-fixing and Moggi was removed from his post and eventually jailed.
After two years as Italy manager from 2014-16, in which Conte, not blessed with a golden generation of Azzurri players, impressed in coaching his team to the quarterfinals of Euro 2016, he joined Chelsea, a club where sharp transfer practice is employed after the heady days of spending immediately following Roman Abramovich's arrival in 2003.
The manager's continued embracing of market forces was apparent in a willingness to allow the sale Oscar to Shanghai SIPG for £60 million last month, a deal Conte called an "incredible situation," while stating he had asked for a guarantee that the windfall could then be spent on reinforcing his squad.
The Costa situation has been played out with similar degree of calculation. Conte has a team to consider, rather than an individual, no matter his performances before that.
"It's important to respect our victory and our players after a good performance," he said at Leicester, facing down a barrage of questioning on the whereabouts and future of his dissident centre-forward. The replies were straight-batted, each implying that it was Conte's way or Costa would have to accept a place in exile.
Reports suggest the two may make peace, but a route to China looks closed off for the moment anyway, after Shu Yuhui, owner of Tianjin Quanjian, confirmed on Tuesday that his club had indeed bid for Costa, but the move had fallen through because of Chelsea's reluctance to sell and new restrictions on foreign players in the Chinese Super League.
If Costa stays at Chelsea for the rest of the season and the club's push for the title, then a summer exit appears likely. Over in Spain, former club Atletico Madrid and Barcelona are reported to be interested and Costa must be considering his next move.
But, for Conte, there will always be another striker to replace him.