Nothing is final for Ancelotti, likely coach of the national team – 06/20/2023 – Sport

Nothing is definitive for Carlo Ancelotti, 64. In his first job as a coach, he made the little Reggiana reach Serie A in Italy, in 1996. He considered the job very stressful and assured that he would retire after three, at most four years.

Almost three decades later, the coach has a verbal agreement with the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) starting in 2024. It is a job that he has always promised to reject. He has always considered it unlikely to manage a national team because he dislikes “working five days a year.”

“He is technically and tactically very good, but the difference is the way he deals with people. The biggest difficulty in football is making a squad with 30 players and different interests converge to a greater interest. And Ancelotti knows how to do that”, says Kaka.

The Italian was his coach when he won the 2007 Champions League and, shortly afterwards, he was the last Brazilian to be voted the best in the world.

In a sport where the coach’s job is, more and more, to manage human relationships, Ancelotti was one of the first to realize that the era of the authoritarian professional, who considered his word the law, was in the past. In 2010, upon arriving at Chelsea-ING, he was amazed at the powers given to the coach.

“It’s not my style to impose. I like to convince players of what they are doing. That takes more time,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

More than his tactical ability, it is this characteristic that made him considered by the president of the CBF, Ednaldo Rodrigues, for the 2026 World Cup cycle. The perception that it is necessary to have a winning name capable of managing a full changing room of stars, with their egos and their particular preferences.

“Ancelotti is a guy I admire a lot for the respect with which he treats everyone. It’s a pleasure to work and be polished by him”, said Rodrygo, a striker who is led by the Italian at Real Madrid and could be in the national team again.

It is impossible to say that the style does not work. Two-time Champions League champion as a player, he won the tournament four times as a coach, a record. There were two achievements for Milan (2003 and 2007) and two others for Real Madrid (2014 and 2022). He also won the national league in six different countries: Italy (Milan), England (Chelsea), Germany (Bayern Munich), Spain (Real Madrid) and France (PSG).

To his athletes, Ancelotti usually says that nothing in football is definitive.

He has already put this into practice. With blind faith in his tactical beliefs, he turned down the offer to sign Roberto Baggio while at Parma. He believed that his team’s way of playing would not fit the style of one of the biggest stars of his generation. For the same reason, he agreed to the sale of Gianfranco Zola to Chelsea. He now agrees that the stars need to have space and it’s the coach’s job to do that.

Perhaps Brazil lacks a Carlo Ancelotti player. A classic midfielder, sometimes seen as slow, he was a key player for Roma, who won Italy in 1983. He shared the midfield with Paulo Roberto Falcão, now tipped to join the CBF selections department. Already at that time, problems with his knees tormented him. They made him miss the final of the then European Cup (current Champions) between Rome and Liverpool, in 1984. From the tribunes he watched the English victory on penalties, the result that he considers the most traumatic of his career. But it was the period that shaped the personality of what would later become one of the most important technicians on the planet.

From the Swede Nils Liedholm he learned (and put it into practice) not to get too excited about victories and not to get depressed with defeats. At the end of the day, it’s just a game. This is a vision that may not go down well with the Brazilian national team, a position that the charge may be excessive, even more so for a foreigner who does not shout at the edge of the field, does not gesture, does not despair in a way that can almost be seen as out of place. of fashion.

“Fashion comes and goes. Class is permanent. Carlo is like a blue or gray suit [sempre cai bem]”, defines another Italian coach: Massimiliano Allegri.

If he really takes over the Brazilian national team, his challenge will be to learn Portuguese. In addition to Italian, he speaks Spanish and English.

Even for someone with so many titles on his resume, being the target of distrust is nothing new. In his book “Calcio totale” (total football, in Italian), Arrigo Sacchi tells that he had to convince the owner of Milan, the tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023) to buy Ancelotti, then 28 years old, from Roma. The coach assured that if the transfer happened, the team would be champion.

“Arrigo, how can I buy a player who has only 20% of his knee?”, questioned the boss.

“Michelangelo painted with his head, not his hands. I don’t care about his knee. I would care if his head wasn’t working.”

Berlusconi was thus convinced to hire the then point guard and now coach named Carlo Michelangelo Ancelotti.