Carlo Ancelotti | Real Madrid manager

No. He is one of my favourite managers, maybe my favourite after Sir Alex actually. The man is just the perfect mix of cool and dignified.

Having said that, he is perfect in a very specific setup. He needs to be at a club where tactical input is limited to big games and the main requirement on his man management and establishing the perfect environment. AC Milan of the '00s and Real Madrid are the perfect examples of that. Chelsea when they were still playing with the blueprint of Mourinho were also perfect that. A group of veteran winners who have very high pedigree and who need a gentle hand to guide them through it. But put him in an environment where he needs to build a tactical foundation and coach a team to play in specific patterns and not since his days at Parma in the '90s has he displayed any excellence in doing that. In fact, just remove the pedigree side of it with clubs who are used to CL success and he does underwhelm like he did at Bayern, Napoli and Everton. Maybe he would have been perfect for us right after Sir Alex when we still had winners and veterans in the squad and our success was recent enough that we still commanded the required pedigree and personality. But now we need a lot of work from the ground up and he is just not suited to that.

But his Real Madrid of today is hardly a group of veteran winners. He's actually transforming the club with the help of Florentino, he is changing old guard one by one with younger and more exciting players. He's practically made Vinicius, Rodrygo and a few others a world class stars, they were hardly in that bracket before him.
 
No. He is one of my favourite managers, maybe my favourite after Sir Alex actually. The man is just the perfect mix of cool and dignified.

Having said that, he is perfect in a very specific setup. He needs to be at a club where tactical input is limited to big games and the main requirement on his man management and establishing the perfect environment. AC Milan of the '00s and Real Madrid are the perfect examples of that. Chelsea when they were still playing with the blueprint of Mourinho were also perfect that. A group of veteran winners who have very high pedigree and who need a gentle hand to guide them through it. But put him in an environment where he needs to build a tactical foundation and coach a team to play in specific patterns and not since his days at Parma in the '90s has he displayed any excellence in doing that. In fact, just remove the pedigree side of it with clubs who are used to CL success and he does underwhelm like he did at Bayern, Napoli and Everton. Maybe he would have been perfect for us right after Sir Alex when we still had winners and veterans in the squad and our success was recent enough that we still commanded the required pedigree and personality. But now we need a lot of work from the ground up and he is just not suited to that.

Perfectly put.
 
But his Real Madrid of today is hardly a group of veteran winners. He's actually transforming the club with the help of Florentino, he is changing old guard one by one with younger and more exciting players. He's practically made Vinicius, Rodrygo and a few others a world class stars, they were hardly in that bracket before him.
A good chunk of the squad is under 25. Not veteran winners by any stretch of the imagination.
 
It doesn't make much sense really. If the perfect environment is "Chelsea when they were playing under Mourinho's blueprint" then why wouldn't Bayern Munich post-Guardiola be an equally perfect environment? Those players had more pedigree than Chelsea's. It's obviously more than that.

The drop in results for Ancelotti came after appointing his son Davide as assistant manager, Davide was probably too young and inexperienced at the time to do a good job but he's grown into it.
 
Last edited:
@Bosnian red and @Iker Quesadillas You do have a point about current Real even though I can argue that they still have plenty of seasoned veterans who understand the club and do for Real what Ramos, Casillas and co. used to do. I think what I am trying to convey here is that Real are not a club that play with a specific culture of playing style. Their most successful managers this century have been Del Bosque, Zidane and Ancelotti and there is a clear pattern among the three. The culture comes from the president and the name of the club, it's a winning culture pure and simple and a manager with a strong playing identity almost disrupts that for them. They need managers who facilitate rather than impose and there is no one better in world football than Ancelotti at that.

My argument about Chelsea is that they also at the time were a club where they needed a manager with minimum tactical input of their own, hence the relative success of Grant, Hiddink and Di Matteo and abject failure of the ones who tried to have a pro active way of playing like Scolari and Villas-Boas. At Bayern, the noises at the time complained that he is too laissez-faire with basic simple training when it was a team that was accustomed to the exact opposite under Van Gaal and Pep who are the ultimate micro coaches. I realise this might be not the most coherent explanation but my point is that the likes of Ancelotti work within a specific environment in terms of club culture whereby it is dictated by forces other than him whereas it's veteran players or just a club that is vastly bigger than any manager. Ask him to build or build on a rigorous regimented playing style and he just hasn't shown any inclination to do that since the '90s with Parma.

You can argue why can't we do what Real do and who said we need to follow in the footsteps of City, Liverpool and Arsenal who have a very different profile of manager. To that, I say that I believe Real are unique. No club can attract the calibre of players they can. Other clubs buy world class players. Real have dibs on the ultmate game changers in the game. No other club can have the ego and confidence that comes with winning 14 CLs and English clubs don't have the luxuary of playing in La Liga with one competitor each season. For all these reasons, I just feel it's foolish to try and replicate them. Only Real can do what Real do to that level of success which is why you see the pattern of their most successful coaches this century from Del Bosque, Zidane and Ancelotti and all of them share a lot of similarities in their track record. They're three of the best coaches ever in my opinion but they also have a specific set of skills that makes them far from the perfect fit for a lot of other jobs. Jobs at the highest level are more about the fit than some all encompassing evaluation of overall quality in my view.
 
@Bosnian red and @Iker Quesadillas You do have a point about current Real even though I can argue that they still have plenty of seasoned veterans who understand the club and do for Real what Ramos, Casillas and co. used to do. I think what I am trying to convey here is that Real are not a club that play with a specific culture of playing style. Their most successful managers this century have been Del Bosque, Zidane and Ancelotti and there is a clear pattern among the three. The culture comes from the president and the name of the club, it's a winning culture pure and simple and a manager with a strong playing identity almost disrupts that for them. They need managers who facilitate rather than impose and there is no one better in world football than Ancelotti at that.

My argument about Chelsea is that they also at the time were a club where they needed a manager with minimum tactical input of their own, hence the relative success of Grant, Hiddink and Di Matteo and abject failure of the ones who tried to have a pro active way of playing like Scolari and Villas-Boas. At Bayern, the noises at the time complained that he is too laissez-faire with basic simple training when it was a team that was accustomed to the exact opposite under Van Gaal and Pep who are the ultimate micro coaches. I realise this might be not the most coherent explanation but my point is that the likes of Ancelotti work within a specific environment in terms of club culture whereby it is dictated by forces other than him whereas it's veteran players or just a club that is vastly bigger than any manager. Ask him to build or build on a rigorous regimented playing style and he just hasn't shown any inclination to do that since the '90s with Parma.

You can argue why can't we do what Real do and who said we need to follow in the footsteps of City, Liverpool and Arsenal who have a very different profile of manager. To that, I say that I believe Real are unique. No club can attract the calibre of players they can. Other clubs buy world class players. Real have dibs on the ultmate game changers in the game. No other club can have the ego and confidence that comes with winning 14 CLs and English clubs don't have the luxuary of playing in La Liga with one competitor each season. For all these reasons, I just feel it's foolish to try and replicate them. Only Real can do what Real do to that level of success which is why you see the pattern of their most successful coaches this century from Del Bosque, Zidane and Ancelotti and all of them share a lot of similarities in their track record. They're three of the best coaches ever in my opinion but they also have a specific set of skills that makes them far from the perfect fit for a lot of other jobs. Jobs at the highest level are more about the fit than some all encompassing evaluation of overall quality in my view.

Yeah, good points there, I do agree with all this.
 
The drop in results for Ancelotti came after appointing his son Davide as assistant manager, Davide was probably too young and inexperienced at the time to do a good job but he's grown into it.
To expand on this, his son was in fact one of the main points of stress between Ancelotti and the players at both Bayern and Napoli. The bigger problem in both cases though, came from who he followed - Guardiola/Sarri - how good those two had been, how beloved they had been by the players, and how different Ancelotti was from them in terms of training methods. Napoli are also constantly a bad game or bad interview away from internal disfunction because of their president - at Napoli the definitive and fatal break that cost him the job was caused by De Laurentiis himself

It's frankly a riot that of his last 4 clubs, Real Madrid is the least disfunctional :lol:
 
It's weird, I still don't really rate him despite all the recent success
 
If you consider Guardiola and Klopp as absolute no-gos. A sacked Ancelotti is the best manager I believe we can realistically get.
I also firmly believe Man Utd need a manager who is a proven winner and already established as a world class successful manager. Getting a De Zerbi / Potter would be a disaster IMO
 
It's weird, I still don't really rate him despite all the recent success
He's not rated because he doesn't play the possession high press game that everyone is obsessed with nowadays. And his success? It's not recent. He's been doing it for 20 years were he won the Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Premier League and La Liga twice. He's also won the Champions League four times.
 
He's not rated because he doesn't play the possession high press game that everyone is obsessed with nowadays. And his success? It's not recent. He's been doing it for 20 years were he won the Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Premier League and La Liga twice. He's also won the Champions League four times.
For me its not that as I still rate Mourinho and Simeone. Ancelotti leaves me feeling the way I do about Zidane
 
If we’d gotten him after Sir Alex then we would have won the league the next year and had a better chance at the rebuild.

No idea if he’d succeed now. Is he motivated enough for what we need, which is open heart surgery. He’d definitely get us playing better but we’d still be massively limited.

Top to bottom we need ripping to pieces and rebuilding
 


He's without a doubt a great manager, and arguably in that group of the greatest managers the sport has seen...but how is this "ridiculously insane"?

If anything, his league record is very underwhelming. At PSG and Bayern, he had no real title challengers and winning the league was the bare minimum. The Premier League with Chelsea was a good achievement, even though I won't forget that offside goal from Drogba at Old Trafford. And it's not like these two latest league titles at Madrid were won over an incredible Barcelona or Atletico side.
 


He's without a doubt a great manager, and arguably in that group of the greatest managers the sport has seen...but how is this "ridiculously insane"?

If anything, his league record is very underwhelming. At PSG and Bayern, he had no real title challengers and winning the league was the bare minimum. The Premier League with Chelsea was a good achievement, even though I won't forget that offside goal from Drogba at Old Trafford. And it's not like these two latest league titles at Madrid were won over an incredible Barcelona or Atletico side.


i think its just because hes won the title in the 5 'big leagues'
 
It took him so long to win another league title after Milan that his league record was questioned quite a bit.
 


He's without a doubt a great manager, and arguably in that group of the greatest managers the sport has seen...but how is this "ridiculously insane"?

If anything, his league record is very underwhelming. At PSG and Bayern, he had no real title challengers and winning the league was the bare minimum. The Premier League with Chelsea was a good achievement, even though I won't forget that offside goal from Drogba at Old Trafford. And it's not like these two latest league titles at Madrid were won over an incredible Barcelona or Atletico side.


Yeah the ‘insane’ part of his record would be the 4 maybe soon to be 5 Champions Leagues. 6 league titles with the clubs he’s had over 25 years is par for the course at best. Pep has 11 leagues in 10 fewer seasons at top clubs.
 
No. He is one of my favourite managers, maybe my favourite after Sir Alex actually. The man is just the perfect mix of cool and dignified.

Having said that, he is perfect in a very specific setup. He needs to be at a club where tactical input is limited to big games and the main requirement on his man management and establishing the perfect environment. AC Milan of the '00s and Real Madrid are the perfect examples of that. Chelsea when they were still playing with the blueprint of Mourinho were also perfect that. A group of veteran winners who have very high pedigree and who need a gentle hand to guide them through it. But put him in an environment where he needs to build a tactical foundation and coach a team to play in specific patterns and not since his days at Parma in the '90s has he displayed any excellence in doing that. In fact, just remove the pedigree side of it with clubs who are used to CL success and he does underwhelm like he did at Bayern, Napoli and Everton. Maybe he would have been perfect for us right after Sir Alex when we still had winners and veterans in the squad and our success was recent enough that we still commanded the required pedigree and personality. But now we need a lot of work from the ground up and he is just not suited to that.

Well said, Don Carlo is my favourite manager after SAF, just a good man manager that is unfazed in the biggest games, who can bring those big personalities together much like SAF. Right after SAF, I think either Mou or Carlo would've helped us win another title or two, perhaps not now. Got to appreciate managers like Carlo though, in this era where possession football has become the meta, he's found an answer to teams via counter-attacking and solid defence.
 
It took him so long to win another league title after Milan that his league record was questioned quite a bit.
And rightfully so. Regarding his longetivity and the teams he had at his disposal, his league record is good but not great.
 
And rightfully so. Regarding his longetivity and the teams he had at his disposal, his league record is good but not great.
True but a bit lazy. At milan they competed in a fixed league, and then later the club just didn't care for the league while letting the squad got older and worse. At chelsea was there 2 years. PSG, 18 months. Bayern 15 months. In Madrid he lost two absurdly strong and competitive title races, the first by eventually punting on the league in favour of the CL, the second because of injuries. Now has 2 leagues in 3 years since his come back. All in all, he's no Guardiola, but it's still a pretty great record
 
True but a bit lazy. At milan they competed in a fixed league, and then later the club just didn't care for the league while letting the squad got older and worse. At chelsea was there 2 years. PSG, 18 months. Bayern 15 months. In Madrid he lost two absurdly strong and competitive title races, the first by eventually punting on the league in favour of the CL, the second because of injuries. Now has 2 leagues in 3 years since his come back. All in all, he's no Guardiola, but it's still a pretty great record

Where have we heard that before, not caring about the league? :angel:

Plus he's probably the only manager who gets credit for winning a title at Bayern/PSG. Not even Pochettino (or Tunnel) gets this

I'm not even saying it is a bad record, but it's a lot of nuance and explanation that we don't grant his peers in this conversation
 
Ancelotti's 'bad' league record is largely due to his time at Serie A, which was earlier in his career.
 
Lets be the next Everton and get his service. 1 or 2 years shouldnt be too bad to stabilize the club. He also looks like someone who doesnt mind inputs from other directors. He can work with Perez, that says it all.

The problem is... Madrid might keep him.
 
Somebody credited Guardiola for winning league titles at Bayern just a few posts back.

It is crazy that you could remove his titles at Bayern and he'd still outpace Don Carlo, in fewer years

And let's not speak about the quality of teams the latter has managed, from Milan to Madrid and in between. Case could be made that he could have done better?