Paris. The biggest club game in the world is around the corner and tonight’s star is a 62-year-old foreman. Carlo Ancelotti has been counted and forced out and back more times than anyone else at the top of European football.
The Italian often seems to be the most humane of coaches, but this season in the Champions League it looks as if God has touched him at Real Madrid.
Ask any player who was with him and do it and he will say it Carlo Ancelotti something extra. Or anything else at least. A strange bird in the world of football.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic once said of the coach he played during the 2012/13 season at PSG – I’ve never seen a coach take the time to explain to every player on the bench why they weren’t allowed to start.
– Carlo like feng shui. It removes negative energy and brings order and harmony, as his wife Marianne once explained in an interview with Corriere dello sport.
Marcelo at the semi-final press conference in Paris:
In addition to understanding football well, he knows how to handle the dressing room. Everyone wants to be involved and feel important and this season we haven’t had any problems on this front. He always tells us the truth.
Carlo Ancelotti gave himself a key to his character a few days ago at a press conference:
– I’ve been in the football world since 1977, I don’t have the time or the desire to quarrel.
It’s rare to have a great coach
The European fate of Carlo Ancelotti and Real Madrid has appeared sealed several times this season. In the round of 16 against Paris Saint-Germain, when Karim Benzema scored a hat-trick in the second half and Real Madrid won with two goals in the 76th and 78th minutes. Against Chelsea in the quarter, when Real Madrid came back again and Benzema scored the only goal in extra time. In the semi-finals, where Rodrygo reduced in the 90th minute and equalized in the 91st minute, and Benzema – who else? The double match was decided by goals in the fifth minute of extra time. In at least two of their doubles matches, Real Madrid have held at least one full match – against PSG frankly, they’ve only played 30 minutes out of 180 – and it can of course get a little nervous trying to explain that kind of last-round second-round with coaching genius. But if it happens three times, it depends on something.
Before extra time against Manchester City in the semi-finals, Carlo Ancelotti asked Marcelo and Toni Kroos who they thought would replace him. It’s a very rare modern democratic backlash among team coaches, at least among the older generation and, dare I say it, an Italian born in the 1950s.
When I sat myself down with Ancelotti for an interview in the fall of 2012, he described his coaching philosophy:
I don’t think power is good when you have a relationship and build something together. I have an idea about football and the players should implement that idea on the field. If the relationship with the players is not good, it will be difficult to spread their ideas on the field.
Fans think in the middle of the season
Milan, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich. Addresses of all addresses. But the fever did not occur when Carlo Ancelotti was introduced to succeed Zinedine Zidane at the beginning of last summer. The coaching career was apparently in decline. The assignments at Napoli and then Everton seem to prove just that. However, Florentino Perez called and gave the Italian what he himself could describe as an “unexpected opportunity”. Real Madrid fans mentally prepared for mid-season, the turnaround after ZZ, and the football world looked the other way.
Away from the ambush, if you are now allowed to call up the coaching job at Real Madrid, Ancelotti has started working with his old Spanish club again. With Barcelona imploding and Atletico Madrid declining, they became increasingly favorites for the title during the fall.
In the spring, when it was fairly straightforward, they went out on a rollercoaster for the Champions League playoffs.
Football taught me to be more patient than I really am. Patience is an essential part of my job. In addition to the scale. “I don’t get excited when I win and I don’t get depressed when I lose,” Carlo Ancelotti said during his time at Napoli.
Barely holding today
It’s doubtful he will stick to that philosophy after the foolish spring in the Champions League. Real Madrid fans hardly do that. And after the end of the semi-final against Manchester City, the Spanish newspaper “Marca” put a headline: “God comes down and explains it.”
Carlo Ancelotti himself said that he prays to God, but not for football results because “God has the best things for him”. But as a loyal Madridist, you are more likely to be close to believing in the help of higher powers in the spring.
Tonight he’s leading the Champions League final for the fifth time, but Carlo Ancelotti isn’t the type to spend the day running when it’s time for a big game.
– For me, the hardest thing is three, four hours before kickoff. It’s physical nausea with which I’ve struggled a bit more this season: I sweated more and had a higher heart rate. Negative thoughts creep in. But thank God, it all ends when the match starts, he said that day.
At the press conference at the Stade de France the day before, Ancelotti said his team deserved to be where they are, but Liverpool’s match against Liverpool is a different story.
The team has shown great commitment, and the club’s history has helped us move forward in difficult situations. We deserve to be in the final, but if we deserve to win the title, we have to show it tomorrow.
