For us—and in the end we went to take our prize. Climbing the stairs that lead from the pitch up to the stands was something I had only ever seen on television, I had always been curious to know what people think in that moment. I found out soon enough: “I have to lose weight.” Jesus, yes, I have to lose some weight. I felt like I was climbing Everest, I was huffing and puffing, out of shape, I couldn’t get enough air. But when I finally got to the top, I understood: it was like starting an ascent to heaven. To the sky. Which is the same color as our team shirts, and that can’t be a coincidence. Once they put the trophy—or perhaps I should say, the plate—in my hand, I hoisted it with enormous pride. Priceless, unique, and incredibly light. Magic seconds. And then an imperceptible sense of discomfort seized hold of me for an instant; but that always happens when I see an empty plate.
CHAPTER 2
Times Tables and Victory
Soccer is like having lunch with your friends: the more you eat, the hungrier you get. It’s the chef and the company that make all the difference; and I love the company of David Beckham. One evening, while he was playing for A. C. Milan, I invited Beckham to dinner in a restaurant in Parma. By the end of the evening, he refused to leave the restaurant. I kept insisting, and he kept pleading with me, “Please, one more course.” At one point I considered calling the police—handcuffs would certainly have stopped him from cramming any more tortellini into his mouth. In the end, I managed to convince him with these words: “Look, David, if we don’t leave this restaurant right now, I’m going to arrange another Spice Girls reunion tour.” Fourteen seconds later we were back in the car, hurtling back toward Milan, with the radio off. Open parenthesis: Let me say something about David. He was a big surprise to me, and a positive one. When he arrived in Italy, I expected to be dealing with a movie star homesick for Los Angeles, one of those players who thinks too much about gossip and fame and not enough about football. But I was wrong. He’s an impeccable professional, a workaholic, and an almost excessively well-mannered gentleman, with all the class of a very honest person. And then there’s the fact that he likes Emilian delicacies, which is obviously what matters most. Close parenthesis.
We never had time to go back, but one day I’ll return to Parma with my Chelsea players. And there’s only one problem to overcome as far as they’re concerned: the sun shines in Parma, so they’ll be disoriented, especially Lampard and Terry, the English ones … They’ll look up at that strange orange ball in the middle of the sky, scratch their heads, and ask in unison: “Uh, what’s that?” They’ll be frightened, even more frightened than they were when they heard Zhirkov singing karaoke. They’ve never seen the sun in their lives. I have, but in my first ten days in London, I came close to forgetting what it looks like. It rained. The whole time. Day and night, around the clock. I left the house in the morning like a small child strolling down Ocean Drive on his way to the beach in Miami, without a bucket and spade but wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and I’d come home in the evening like an Alaskan sleigh dog, without a tail but chilled to the bone. All the same, I got used to the cold weather, and I got used to my new life: the English were a crucial part of that. I can go wherever I want without being stopped on the street, that’s the exciting new change for me. I can go to the supermarket and the only people who come up to me are security guards, looking at my overflowing shopping cart and wondering, with a hint of suspicion, “Is this a robbery?” Other people recognize me but they treat me like one of them. They leave me alone, they respect my privacy, and nearly all the autographs I signed this year were for Italian fans, who nonetheless have a place in my heart and always will. It’s an attitude that makes up a part of a larger picture, the culture of football fans in England: people go to the stadium to cheer on their team; you know that if you make a mistake you’ll pay for it; there are kids in the stands, not guys with baseball bats. And a manager can live without as much pressure, there’s more leisure time—time to think, time to live your life, and time to work better.
And, in my case, time to win. In the Premier League, we began in grand style, encouraged by Abramovich’s request (“I want Chelsea’s style of play to be recognized around the world”) and by the formation that I brought with me from Italy: 4-3-2-1, the Christmas tree. The first few times, no one got it—not the sports journalists, not even the coaches of the opposing teams. For a while, it was a walk in the park, I was enjoying myself enormously, and the 3-1 that we stuck to Sunderland in the second game of the season felt almost like a physical pleasure. It was like running downhill: our confidence grew, and the players were happy, too, because they were trying something new—they weren’t bored. I would change the way we played depending on Anelka’s position. Things went great until December, when our opponents started to figure out how to beat us, and our winning streak started to flag, which was inevitable anyway. We lost to Manchester City, and we drew with Everton, West Ham, and Birmingham. It’s normal not to win every match in a season; when people said we should never lose a game I wanted to laugh, but it made me laugh just as hard when they said we’d never bring the trophies home … We recovered and we started running again at our own pace, and without giving away too many secrets. For one simple reason: there aren’t any secrets—or maybe just one.
A times table. Like the ones they give you in elementary school, when you learn to count and do multiplication. You slide beads on an abacus, you count sheep before falling asleep (to tell the truth, I always counted lambs, they’re tender and easier to digest), and over time the arithmetic filters into your mind. We did our calculations right after we were catapulted out of the running for the Champions League by Inter, then Champions of Europe, at a moment in the season that was so precarious it could easily have slid into disaster. In the past, Chelsea had always had a hard time recovering from roundhouse punches like that, so the day after our defeat we all gathered in the locker room of our training grounds in Cobham. The venerable old men all spoke—Terry, Drogba, Cech, and Lampard (another magnificent example of English leadership; when I see him on the field, it makes me happy). I was proud of us in that twenty minutes, we understood that we had lost a great deal but that we could win much, much more. I was very clear in what I had to say: “The Premiership and the FA Cup are still ours for the taking. Only six teams have managed to pull off a double in 140 years, but boys, it’s our turn now.” The plan—and it wasn’t exactly a secret plan—was to deflect attention from the Champions League and focus our energies on a new target. “We’re eleven games from the end of the season, and if we play them well we can go down in history.” At that point, we pulled out our times table. Numbers and statistics, written so clearly that no one could possibly misunderstand. There were only a few numbers, simple, fundamental sums that we needed to keep in mind. The number of training sessions remaining: 50. The number of days we could still devote to achieving our objectives: 60, more or less. The number of games left to play: 11.
The first game was against Blackburn, and to tell the truth, the final score of 1-1 did sort of scare me. Then we exploded like an atomic bomb: 5-0 against Portsmouth, 7-1 against Aston Villa, 2-1 away to Manchester United. All magic numbers that made our times table look pretty special. Our success at Old Trafford was the one that got us the League title, even though in the end Ray Wilkins and I were forced to drink to our victory alone. As is the tradition, a few minutes after the final whistle we went to Sir Alex’s room to drink the usual glass of wine. We walked in, and silence reigned. He sat there staring at a television screen; the set was tuned to a horse race, his greatest love. We were strictly relegated to the background, to some place beyond and behind the background. We stood awkwardly for a while without saying a word, uncertain what to do, and finally did what we had come to do: we drank a glass of wine, to our own health. Bye-bye. Even though I won each of the three games I played against him that season, I still consider Ferguson to be a master of soccer, a teacher in my life, an example I have always looked up to, a colleague to em
ulate, and in fact, in some ways, unattainable. (Unattainable in the sense that I don’t have a passion for racehorses.) Before heading back to Stamford Bridge, we took on Aston Villa in the FA Cup: 3-0. Then in the League again: 1-0 at Bolton, we took a beating from Tottenham, we gave 7 to Stoke, then 2-0 against Liverpool, and 8-0 against Wigan. We became Champions of England, I was a foreign king in a friendly country. A slightly tipsy king, if you want to know the truth, because I’ve only seen as much beer in one place as there was in our locker room a few times. The boys were dancing to rap music; I gave it a try too, but without much luck—I have a hard time rhyming credibly in English. I wasn’t thinking all that clearly, and that was when I decided to make a little speech to my team: “Carissimi signori, the time has come for you to start learning Italian. We’re colonizing you now. I train Chelsea Champions, Capello is the manager of the National Team …” Obi Mikel, Joe Cole, and Drogba (who is a machine on the field), Malouda (the player who most impressed me with the way he improved) all gave me their approval, in their way: “Oh, you’re right, Carlo, e che cazzo …” I must have missed something, apparently. Eccheccazzo sì—Italian for “what the fuck”—they knew Italian better than I did. Couldn’t they have told me before?
We each pulled out our times tables. We realized that there was still a problem left to solve, the result of the FA Cup final. From which I cherish one memory in particular: Prince William saying hello before the game, with the teams already lined up on the field at Wembley. I introduced the players to him, one by one, and after that he simply said, “Good luck.” For a minute I wanted to reply with a question: “Will you introduce me to your grandmother?” But I didn’t have the courage. I have an abiding veneration for Queen Elizabeth, I don’t know her personally but whenever I see her on television I find her fascinating as a person. I’d like to meet her, though I don’t know how I could arrange it. It’s not like I can call Buckingham Palace and ask to be put through. “Hello, excuse me, this is Carlo Ancelotti—you know, the one who eats too much. Could I speak to Elizabeth, please?” It’s just not done. So all I can do is keep winning, and hope that she notices. With her grandson watching, we won the Cup, beating Portsmouth 1-0 after hitting the goalposts five times in the first half.
There are days when it feels like I’m living a dream. I would make the same decision—to coach Chelsea—a hundred times, the same decision every time. Even if getting knocked out of the running for the Champions League against Inter is a regret that will always be with me. Against Inter, not against Mourinho. In Italy, we said plenty of harsh things to one another, we didn’t particularly like each other (read this book, you’ll understand …), but ever since I’ve been in England my point of view has changed. He made history at the club where I work, his archive of training sessions and exercises has been useful to me more than once, and so he deserves total and rapt attention. We decided to call a truce—a truce signed and agreed before the first leg of our match in the Champions League, in Milan. We met in a corridor at the San Siro, and we made a pact: “No more bickering, no more controversy.” Six words, a handshake, and in ten seconds we had an understanding. People often ask me: why did you get knocked out of the Champions League against Inter? Answer: it was a matter of details. There aren’t any other truths, there’s nothing else to be said. I don’t think José and I will ever be friends, but now we have a real and reciprocal respect. When I won the Premiership, he wrote me a text message: “Champagne.” When he won the Scudetto in Italy, I sent him a text message back: “Champagne, but not too much.”
No matter how you look at it, it always comes back to food and drink. Chelsea Football Club, with lots of bubbles. My new life. And the taxi cab where it all started.
CHAPTER 3
Summoned for a Meeting with Abramovich. It Begins.
I have to say, this taxi driver is starting to make me uneasy. He’s staring into the rearview mirror, but what he’s really doing is monitoring my expression. He’s looking for answers, answers I can’t give him, at least not yet. I’m traveling incognito, rushing headlong into some kind of illicit affair, or at least that’s the impression I’m giving. It feels odd—unlike me. The coach of the A. C. Milan team on an undercover mission. My heartbeat is normal; that’s probably because my mind is busy. Working, thinking. And even, every so often, playing.
Here I am, 007 on a top-secret mission for myself. Sitting behind a driver with the face of an assassin. Perhaps it all makes sense, all things considered, because in a way it’s my life that’s at stake. My future. It’s as if I’m riding in a time machine, not a taxi cab: from Milanello to Stamford Bridge, from yesterday to today, from one (red and black) devil to another, one I don’t yet know. Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m in Paris, and this taxi is taking me to my appointment with Roman Abramovich, the self-made Russian billionaire and, more importantly—as far as I’m concerned—the deep-pocketed owner of Chelsea Football Club, who’s looking for a new coach.
No one else knows, but we’ve already had one meeting, a couple of weeks ago. It was in Switzerland, in a grand hotel in Geneva, not far from the city center; I’d tell you its name, I really would, but I swear I can’t remember it. I must be getting old. Charlie Stillitano organized the meeting; he’s a friend of mine who works in the world of soccer in the United States. He knows Peter Kenyon, Abramovich’s chief executive at Chelsea. As soon as the soccer season ended, apparently, Kenyon said he wanted a meeting with me. No sooner said than done. I was vacationing on the lake, sunning myself in the fresh water, soaking away the bitter taste of Milan’s failure to qualify for the Champions League. Abramovich came to see me, which is a good sign, but … the guy certainly has a lot of bodyguards! They met me and ushered me in to see the Big Boss and Kenyon; the welcoming committee was rounded out by another executive, a lawyer, and an interpreter. We all sat down, got comfortable, and said our friendly hellos. Then we began to talk. About soccer: nothing but soccer, all soccer, all the time.
For sticklers about dates, it was May 2008. Abramovich wanted to know everything about me, about the way I work, about my philosophy. He was looking for a team with a clear identity. As he told me: “Like Manchester United, Liverpool, or Milan—certainly not my Chelsea.” As he talked, my curiosity grew. He was nothing like the monster described in the press. Quite the opposite. The first thing that struck me was how shy he seemed to be. The second thing was what an expert he was on soccer: he knew the game inside out. The third thing was his ravenous appetite for success: “My dear Ancelotti, I want to win. I want to win everything.” In fact, he immediately reminded me of someone, another team owner, if you follow my drift … After all was said and done, I came away with an excellent impression of him. The hour flew by, an hour’s conversation in which he never once mentioned money. “Goodbye, look forward to meeting you again soon.”
And now here we are. The Hotel George V, a luxurious place just a short walk from the Champs-Elysées, with a magnificent terrace overlooking all of Paris and, for that matter, today at least, London. I thank the cabbie-torpedo-psychoanalyst as I get out of the car, I give him a generous tip—better safe than sorry—and I proceed toward my top-secret destination. Abramovich and me, Act II.
This has to remain a secret, no one can know about it. That’s one thing everyone agrees on. I’m wearing sunglasses, I scan the street with the expression of a well-trained secret agent: check, it’s all clear, no photographers loitering outside the hotel lobby. Just a few blocks from here, yesterday, they caught Massimo Moratti having lunch with José Mourinho—the chairman and the future coach of Inter. I can’t let that happen to me. Nope, the coast is clear, no one looks suspicious, I can go in. What a magnificent lobby, what a luxurious atmosphere. What … the fuck? No, it can’t be. I can’t believe my eyes. Clear across the lobby, in a secluded corner, is Federico Pastorello, an Italian soccer agent, and a close personal acquaintance. Do you know the sound of the buzzer when a contestant gets something wrong on a quiz show? Well, as I’m standing
there in the lobby of the Hotel George V, that’s the sound that’s echoing in my ears. And beneath it, a tiny little voice that sounds a lot like my own, whispering: “asshole.” No, listen closer. That’s “Asshole.” With a capital ‘A.’
Now what do I do? I hide. Over there, on the far side of the lobby, there’s a little sitting room, an alcove, that’ll be perfect. If I move fast, I can just duck in. Whew! I’m safe. No, I’m not. I hear the buzzer, I hear that tiny familiar voice. Maybe I’m being featured on an episode of Candid Camera—there sits a close friend and colleague. Another Italian coach, in fact, who works in a city that is dear to my heart. I laugh. “So what are you doing here?”
“No, what are you doing here?”
I laugh again. This port in a storm, this chance refuge is starting to seem crowded. For a brief instant, I feel as if I’m at the supermarket. All of us here for a meeting with this chairman, but the merchandise on display is us. A waiting room for the two of us, or maybe for three, or a hundred, who knows how many of us there are. Awareness dawns, I feel a chill, but still, I’m here to meet with him. I step downstairs. He’s waiting for me in a grand meeting room, designed for a much larger crowd. Sitting around the table are the same people who were there in Geneva.
I want to make one thing clear from the start. “I have a contract with A. C. Milan, I’m perfectly happy there. If I wind up working with Chelsea, it can only be if Milan is in agreement.”
Again, the topic is all soccer, all the time. The inevitable question: how would I change the way Chelsea plays, if we were to come to an understanding?
Carlo Ancelotti: The Beautiful Game of an Ordinary Genius Page 2