The arrival of Carlo Ancelotti to the Real Madrid bench marks a line of continuity with his predecessor, Zinedine Zidane, a technician with a calming profile very different from that of José Mourinho, the other coach who was replaced by the Italian in his previous white stage.
When Ancelotti landed at Real Madrid for the first time back in 2013, the entity chaired by Florentino Pérez needed a painkiller after several seasons with Mourinho at the helm of a team in conflict and involved in controversial days that found their zenith in the series of clashes with Barcelona.
The Portuguese coach managed to get Real Madrid to fight for the Champions League again (without winning it) after several courses stalled in the round of 16. He played three semifinals without a prize, although he did get a meritorious League and a King’s Cup, beating what is possibly the best Barcelona in history.
However, Mourinho left a hobby and a divided dressing room. Basically, Real Madrid had become an angry, sharp-clawed team in need of a break. So, Florentino Pérez, chose the best possible coach for that task: Carlo Ancelotti.
“Carletto” took years to achieve a wish that was about to come true in 2006, when he signed a contract with Real Madrid. This is how he told it in his book “I prefer the Cup”, where he narrated that frustrated attempt to end up on the merengue bench.
Seven years after that first failed attempt, fate once again met a club that needed European success and peace with a coach who already had both.
When he first came to Real Madrid, Ancelotti knew what it was like to win the Champions League. He did it a couple of times, with Milan in the 2002/03 and 2006/07 seasons. In that sense, it was a success. In his first season at Real Madrid, he won the tenth European Cup after beating Atlético de Madrid in Lisbon.
Nobody can object to anything about it. There are those trophies. However, his numbers, in general, have been contradictory since he began his career on the bench in 1995/1996, when he promoted Reggiana to Serie A in Italy after finishing the championship in fourth position.
Since then, that player, who was part of the great Milan of the late 80s and who did so much damage to Real Madrid of the Quinta del Buitre, began a coaching career with great successes that erased some failures. One of his achievements was entering the club of people who won the European Cup as a coach and footballer. His name is inscribed together with Cruyff, Rijkaard, Miguel Muñoz, Trapattoni and Guardiola.
La Reggiana was the first of the ten clubs that he has been in charge of. He was never without work, practically chained one after another, and after his first experience in the Second Division he made the leap to Parma, where players like Gianluigi Buffon, Enrico Chiesa, Fabio Cannavaro, Dino Baggio, Hernán Crespo or Thuram lived in the same dressing room.
With that team he was runner-up in the league in his first year and sixth in the second. In his European debut, in UEFA, he did not pass the first round, eliminated by the Portuguese Vitoria Setúbal. He had no better luck in the Champions League, where he stayed in the group stage. Nor in the Cup, eliminated in the first phase by Pescara and in the semifinals the second year by Milan.
That irregular background did not prevent his signing for a great, Juventus, who, without Marcelo Lippi on matchday 21 of the 1998/99 season, welcomed the new Real Madrid coach into his bosom. Until the 2000/2001 season, despite having one of the best players in the world, Zinedine Zidane, he did not get a title.
He was a two-time runner-up for the Scudetto, reached the semi-finals of the Champions League to be eliminated by Manchester United, and in his final year he was not able to leave the group stage behind. In UEFA, they suffered their first major blow when Celta beat Juventus 4-0 in the round of 16 after losing 1-0 at Delle Alpi in the 1999/2000 season. Years later, Deportivo would repeat the feat of the Spanish team.
However, after five seasons without titles, Milan turned to him to start a relationship that would bring good returns to the “rossoneri” team. Between the 2001/2002 academic year and 2008/2009 he achieved a Cup, two Champions Leagues, two European Super Cups, a Club World Cup and a Scudetto. In addition, he was able to win a third European Cup, but was stopped by Rafa Benítez’s Liverpool in the final.
His relationship with Milan ended when his time at Chelsea began. There he inherited a team from José Mourinho, just as he did when he managed Real Madrid for the first time. The traffic was not bad and in his first year at the English club he won the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Community Shield. A triplet that was not repeated in the 2010/2011 academic year, where he did not win anything and packed his bags to go to Paris.
Runner-up in the French League in his first year, he managed to get Paris Saint-Germain to lift the league after decades. Then came a Copa del Rey, a Champions League, a European Super Cup and a Club World Cup at Real Madrid before packing his bags after his second season.
Since then, he has added to his record a Bundesliga and two Super Cups at Bayern and two careers without titles at Napoli and at Everton, the last club he served before the new call from Florentino Pérez. This time, unlike eight years ago, Ancelotti will have to pacify practically nothing.
Rather, you will need to renew. Perhaps, his profile as a quiet man, is perfect to close the stages of white players that marked an era and that, surely, no longer have a place in the new Real Madrid project that begins in the figure of its president and continues in the of a man who will not raise his voice to undertake the reforms necessary for Real Madrid to regain stripes. EFE. (JL).