Carlo Ancelotti: The Beautiful Game of an Ordinary Genius

by Aleesandro Alciato

  I live with the threat of being fired. After I left Sacchi’s Nazionale—the Italian national team—I became a real coach at A. C. Reggiana, in Serie B: after just three months, they were ready to fire me. There’s always a first time. By the seventh week, we were in last place, three defeats and four draws; no one was doing worse than us. We were a ship of fools, and the captain was me. As if that wasn’t enough, I was disqualified from Federation standing because I didn’t have the proper certificate to coach a team. I found my assistant coach, Giorgio Ciaschini, while leafing through the pages of the Almanacco Illustrate del Calcio—the Illustrated Soccer Almanac. The fitness coach was a retired discus thrower, Cleante Zat. The team boasted the French player Di Costanzo, jocularly known as the poor man’s Maradona. He recalled El Pibe de Oro in the way he took penalties; otherwise, he was definitely a poor man’s player. I was in lovely company. I had even been jeered by my fellow townsfolk; it was more or less like being repudiated by your own family. I blame it all on the Reggiana–Cosenza game. We were winning 1–0; there were only nine men left on the Cosenza team after two sendings off. We kept jogging up to their goalposts in a vaguely festive, Christmasy fashion. We were so generous and good-hearted that we argued over whose turn it was to score; nothing like it had ever happened.

  “Please, be my guest.”

  “No, my dear fellow, go ahead.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. After all, today is your birthday; you should score.”

  Di Costanzo pipes up: “Can I score?”

  His teammates, in chorus: “No, you only know how to take penalty kicks.”

  Just a few seconds before the end of the game, on the last play, their goalkeeper gave the ball a tremendous kick, and it flew all the way up the pitch into our area. Three players all leapt into the air at the same time: from our team, Gregucci and the goalkeeper Ballotta, who was already an old man, even back then, and, from their team, Cristiano Lucarelli, who was already a Communist, even back then. Two out of the three collided in midair: Ballotta and Gregucci. Lucarelli scored, kicking into an empty goal. The score was 1–1, and objections flew in every direction.

  We went out for the eighth day of the championship after a week in training. I had two choices: either win or be sent home with a boot in the ass. This was the dancing bench (if it wasn’t dancing, it was wobbling seriously), first edition. The decisive match was Reggiana–Venezia, and it was decisive for our opponents as well. There were lots of people who assumed: “Today is Ancelotti’s last day.” Wrong. Just fifteen minutes into the game, we were already winning, 3–0. They were not just wrong, they were dead wrong. By December, we were in first place, and by the end of the season, we’d been moved upstairs to Serie A. From jeering and catcalls to triumph: while waiting for the specialists, I had pulled off the first Italian miracle.

  And we triumphed in spite of the terrifying January market. We were fielding the 4-4-2; the central midfielders, Mazzola and Colucci, seemed unreliable at first because they were still young. So we decided to intervene. We still needed to improve our strikers, and the general manager, Dal Cin, had reassured me: “We’ll do great things together. It’s a promise.”

  One day, right after the Anglo-Italian Cup, I walked into my little office. There, waiting for me, was Nando De Napoli, a former teammate on the Italian national team at the World Cup of 1986: “Nando, what a surprise! How are you?”

  “Fine, Carletto. How are you?”

  “Doing great, Nando. You should have called me. I didn’t know you were in the neighborhood. If I’d known you were coming, we could have had lunch.”

  “Oh, yeah, well …”

  “By the way, Nando, what brings you to this neck of the woods?”

  “I’m your new midfielder.”

  I pretended to smile, but inside I was sobbing. I turned around, and standing behind me was Di Mauro, who was young, I guess, once, but that was years ago, when I was playing for Roma. I didn’t ask him what he was doing there. I had a feeling I already knew. Another new player. Oh, thank you, Signore Dal Cin, you’ve really done wonders here. Both of them trained for a while, but I could see that it was hard on them, they couldn’t keep up with the pace of Serie B. Both were at the end of their careers; both were recovering from injuries. One day, I decided to put them on the field, in an away match against Delio Rossi’s Foggia, a team that didn’t just run; it flew. They moved down the field a thousand miles an hour; we couldn’t keep up with them even in our imaginations. De Napoli and Di Mauro were the pair of thinkers on the Reggiana team. Everyone knows that thinking takes time. Too much time, in some cases. While our reinforcements were clearing the rust out of their brains, the fanatics from Foggia were clearing us off the field, 3–0; it’s been nice to know you. The next day, De Napoli came back to my locker room and practically went down on his knees: “Please, don’t send me back out there. Those guys were crazy, they ran much too fast for me. I’m just a little old man.”

  Mazzola and Colucci suddenly became reliable; they were suddenly the right age, too. They started to play again, and they took the team all the way up to Serie A.

  I have positive memories of that time. It was a happy time. It was the beginning of my career, but I expected that in my first year of coaching I would run into a lot more problems than I did. The players were fantastic. They helped me whenever they could, from the first day to the last. So did the team owners. It was a Reggiana with no famous names but with some exceptional people. Gregucci, Di Mauro, Ballotta, Mazzola, Simutenkov, Paci, La Spada, Di Costanzo, Pietranera, Gandini, Tangorra, Colucci, Schenardi, Tonetto, Cevoli, Caini, De Napoli, and Strada. Thanks, boys. In twelve months, I had already experienced everything: fear, whistles, catcalls, joy, the bottom and the top of the rankings, a near-firing, followed by a resurrection, a bad market, and even a poor man’s Maradona. An incredibly rich experience. And a useful one, because, for the first time, I felt as if I should thank Capello, the gruff old guy who never let me play. In the meantime, he had also refused to accept the position of coach for Parma. He had come to an agreement with the team, but, at the last minute, he pulled out. With him gone, Parma called me. A team in Serie A. The Via Emilia—the Roman road that runs across northern Italy —is a sweet place for me: a return to my origins, to the city where I grew up as a player, where I’d played in the youth league. I was born in Reggiolo, but I lived in Felegara. So Parma was my second home.

  I found myself in the middle of a transfer campaign that had been planned and executed by others (it’s something that happens …). I was coaching players I didn’t know, footballers that I’d never even heard of: Thuram, Crespo, Chiesa, Verón, Rivaldo, and Cafu. Then there was Bravo, coming from Paris Saint-Germain, Amaral, and Zé Maria (José Marcelo Ferreira). Well, I knew who Rivaldo was, but I didn’t know the others. To make it worse, they wanted me to send a kid out to play goalie in Serie A, a child, a goalkeeper who was still green behind the ears. I thought they were joking, but they were dead serious. “Carletto, look; he’s a good goalie. He can block anything.”

  “Fine, fine. What’s his name?”

  “Gianluigi Buffon.”

  “And who is he?”

  The new team drafts were decided by Sogliano and Cavaliere Pedraneschi, the son of the Cavaliere Pedraneschi who, when I was just fifteen, came out to my small town to recruit me as a player for Parma after I had been rejected by Reggiana and Modena. I owed a debt of gratitude, through family connections, to the cavaliere, and he was just the first in a long series of mentors and benefactors. That is why I never objected to their recruits, which had in any case lost Verón at the last minute (who had been requested by Sampdoria in exchange for Chiesa), Rivaldo (who was asking for too much money and was replaced by Strada, whom I had coached when I was in Reggio), and Cafu (who decided at the last minute that he couldn’t leave Palmeiras, a Brazilian club owned by Parmalat, the dairy company that also part-owned Parma).

  “All right, I’ll make do with what I’ve got in the clubho
use,” which is to say, with Apolloni and Minotti, who were playing for the national team, Cannavaro, Bucci as goalie, and Zola. There was also Crippa—a tough player, for real.

  The idea was to fight for the Scudetto, but we’d started out badly. I didn’t know much. I could see Chiesa had enormous potential, but relations with Zola were becoming troublesome. I didn’t want to abandon the 4-4-2 formation, so I tried moving Gianfranco to the left side of midfield, even if that wasn’t his position. I hadn’t yet guessed that the pair of Thuram and Cannavaro had limitless potential. I’d gotten a few things backward, which was absolutely my fault. Then Zola left, we sold Amaral, and we acquired Mario Stanic. So things were finally under control. At that point, this is what my Parma looked like: Buffon in goal; a four-man defense with Zé Maria, Thuram, Cannavaro, and Benarrivo; in midfield, from right to left, Stanic, Dino Baggio, Sensini, and Strada; Crespo and Chiesa as strikers. I still stand by it today. I was no visionary; back then, they were completely unknown. An incredible team, I know, but it’s easy to say that now. In the first few months, we just couldn’t work together; we were five teams from the bottom. Cavaliere (another knight of labor …) Tanzi got a new idea: “Let’s get rid of Ancelotti.” The usual earthquake, the usual lightning bolts, the usual burning sensation. In practical terms, I was the first man in history with stigmata on my ass.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ancelotti: Anti-Imagination

  Maybe what Tanzi wanted was to take me to Parmalat. Print a nice SELL BY date on me, and sell me by the kilo—come to think of it, he would have made a good profit if he had. Carletto: best if consumed as soon as possible. Eat all you can.

  Christmas was coming. The ultimatum came after a draw with Atalanta. There was only one condition: don’t lose. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure not losing would be enough. Before the break, we had two away games, at Vicenza and at the San Siro, against Sacchi’s A. C. Milan. The first match went well; Benarrivo saved me with a slicing shot from outside the penalty area. It was a lot more than just the goal of that Sunday; it was the goal of the entire week. The match ended 1–1; it could have gone worse, but according to Tanzi it had to go better. He didn’t like us much in those days, but he couldn’t cancel the Christmas dinner that he’d already planned at his house, just a few days before we left for Milan. We exchanged gifts; the players gave me a set of luggage. We were guests of someone who would gladly have skipped seeing us entirely. “Buona sera, Cavaliere.”

  “Buona sera to you. Do you know that our team is doing badly?”

  Let’s say I’d guessed it.

  “Carletto, you should know that if you don’t win against A. C. Milan, I’m going to fire you.”

  “Well, Merry Christmas to you, too, Cavaliere.”

  I lost my appetite, and it was the first and only time in my life, I think. Beat A. C. Milan in their own stadium. Impossible, or something like it. Word got around, and even Tanzi’s closest advisers did their best to make him change his mind. “Mr. Chairman, we’re playing at San Siro. Wouldn’t a nice little draw be enough?”

  “We have to win. And win we will.”

  Unless I’m much mistaken, I’d heard that phrase once before. By the end of the meal, he had begun to believe that a single point would save me. And he hadn’t even had much to drink. Just a little two-percent Parmalat milk.

  I had a bad feeling. I wasn’t feeling optimistic. But I decided to take the initiative: the evening before the game, I asked the entire team to come to my room at the Hotel Doria. We opened champagne and we toasted: “To us.” We said goodbye; we all agreed that it had been good working together. Short but intense. A farewell celebration—a sad occasion. Despite my sense of doom, the adventure continued. We won, 1–0. At San Siro. Against A. C. Milan. On the eve of the season’s winter break. I always suspected that it was a sort of Christmas gift from Sacchi; maybe he thought that if I’d been fired it would have been a defeat for him too.

  After the holidays, we won 1–0 against Juventus too. In that season, we won eleven times with scores of 1–0. Eleven times. Because we had an unknown goalkeeper, Buffon. Two central defenders who weren’t anything special, Thuram and Cannavaro. An unimpressive striker, Crespo.

  Another round, and the same gift. Just like in Reggio Emilia, in Parma we were turning the league on its head. From the bottom to the top, at the speed of sound. We let the Scudetto slip out of our hands in the return match against Milan, 1–1, but more importantly in Turin against Juventus. We were ahead once again by 1–0 when Collina called a scandalous penalty kick against us. It was shameful. There had been a disagreement between Cannavaro and Vieri, a scuffle between the two of them: no justification for a penalty kick. Invented. An optical illusion. While Collina was walking back toward midfield, I was yelling at him from the bench: “Nice work! Good job! Great decision!” I said it again: “Nice work! Good job! Great decision!” He turned and walked toward me; I stood up, he pulled out his red card. I couldn’t believe it. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m ejecting you.”

  That much I had already figured out; I was hoping for a more complete answer. Thrown out for my first offence; I doubt that many other coaches in history have enjoyed that particular honor.

  After the game, I went to see him. I asked him why he’d ejected me. Chairmen of several teams hadn’t been able to do it. What made him so smart?

  “Well, I tossed you out because I read your lips. You called me an asshole.”

  “You’re wrong; I thought it, but I never said it.”

  I guess he really was good; he’d read my mind. When things weren’t going well, on the other hand, I tried to read my players’ minds, asking for their help. When things were really on the line, just before we drew with Atalanta, I summoned the whole team to meet in the locker room. It was an emergency meeting; there were some things to straighten out. I was very direct: “Look, if things aren’t working out between us, I think we might as well say it openly. If we can’t get along, there’s no point waiting for the chairman to fire me; if this meeting tells me that we don’t see eye to eye, I’ll go to Tanzi myself and tell him to find himself another coach. So please, let’s talk in a spirit of sincerity.” I have to admit, they were sincere. The first to speak sincerely was Alessandro Melli, who was open and honest: “I hope they fire you, so I can finally play some football.” I appreciated it; we were there to tell one another what we thought. He did the right thing; he certainly helped me to understand the atmosphere in that group. In general, though, the team wanted to hold it together, to work together. They agreed with what I wanted to do. I had a strong feeling that things would improve quickly—and they did. We made it to second place, which meant we had qualified for the first round of the Champions League. Not bad for our first year.

  The second year didn’t go so well. We tried to reinforce the team, but we achieved just the opposite effect. We got to the first round of the Champions Cup, in the Stadio Ennio Tardini, against Borussia Dortmund, coached by Nevio Scala. That’s where Crespo changed a city’s opinion: he scored and then he clapped his hands over his ears; I think he was the first player to do it. “Oh, heavens. Has he gone deaf?”

  I reassured everyone: “No, he’s just pissed.”

  “Now jeer at me if you have the balls,” he was suggesting—an unmistakable gesture.

  Crespo wasn’t well loved; he’d been jeered and whistled at frequently in his early times with the team. The fans didn’t like him. He was talented, a serious young man, but they just didn’t like him. Before that goal, it had been whistles, jeers, and cheers.

  In the match against Borussia, everyone was asking me to replace him. Just after the match began, some guy right behind the bench started screaming: “Substitute. Substitute. Substitute.” “Substitute, substitute, substitute.” Ma va’ a cagher—Oh, go take a crap. I kept him in, he scored a goal, we won, and I went to the press room: “I would like to inform the Parma audience that I will never pull a player off the field who is bei
ng jeered.” Whistles and jeers, but I wouldn’t substitute myself either.

  During my time in Parma I came in for a lot of criticism, especially in my second and last year. Everyone had an opinion, and they sort of tended to look down on me. Parma (like Reggio Emilia) was historically a farming town, then over time it became an industrial capital, losing the peasant culture that I love best. We lost a match against Fiorentina under Malesani; so Tanzi, in hopes of victory, hired none other than Malesani as next year’s coach. But without the Fiorentina team, which would have been a little too spendy.

  I wasn’t popular with the old executives of Parma either, especially because I’d decided against signing Roberto Baggio; they never forgave me. At the end of my first season with Parma, Roberto had already come to an agreement with the club, but he wanted a regular starting position, and he even wanted to play behind the strikers, in a role that didn’t exist in 4-4-2. I wasn’t willing to change my formation, and I told him so. I had just gotten the team into the Champions League, and I had no intention of changing my system of play just then. I called him up: “I’d be delighted to have you on the team, but you should know that I have no plans for fielding you regularly. You’d be competing against Crespo and Chiesa.” I’d been rigid; I wasn’t looking for conflicts or problems. He disagreed; I could already imagine his ponytail rising in protest. His answer was crystal clear: “I want continuity, I need to play all the time.” And, in fact, from A. C. Milan he went to Bologna.