Carlo Ancelotti: The Beautiful Game of an Ordinary Genius

by Aleesandro Alciato

  Now, years later, I regret how it went. I was wrong to be intransigent. Over time, I learned that there is always a way of allowing a lot of great and talented players to work together and get along. At Parma, I still thought that 4-4-2 was the ideal formation in all cases, but that’s not true. If I had a time machine, I’d go back and of course I’d take Baggio. I could have handled the situation very differently. All of this, of course, caused problems for me. I was branded a coach who was opposed to attacking midfielders, and that wasn’t entirely unfair. For that matter, the year before, I’d turned down Zola as well. Ancelotti, the anti-imagination. Give me anything, but not another number 10. The truth is that I was afraid of moving into territory that I thought I knew too little about. It was a lack of courage, but I made up for it in the years that followed. I found a new source of courage, in part because I went to coach Juventus. And I really couldn’t bench Zidane.

  CHAPTER 16

  Montero and the Avvocato, Both Crazy About Zizou

  It felt more like a court of law than the locker room of Juventus F. C. The place was teeming with lawyers, all eager to defend Zidane; this is my first memory of the biancineri. When I think back to Turin, Zidane comes to mind. The Dream Player was presumed innocent, no matter what, and that presumption was defended ferociously by his incredibly expensive team of lawyers: Gianni Agnelli and Paolo Montero. Agnelli was the Avvocato, full stop—Italy’s national “Lawyer”—while Montero was a lawyer without a law degree, but ready to take on all comers. An odd couple. United in the name of Zizou, a fiery comet that fell to earth from the starry sky, a poster that stepped down from the wall. Welcome to the world of mortals, Our Lord of the Soccer Ball.

  They were his shadows, they were his guardian angels, they never left his side. Agnelli was crazy about him; Montero was just plain crazy. When they looked at Zidane, they saw a pure and glowing light, a traffic light that was permanently green. A right of way to extraordinary transport, and he was certainly extraordinary; too bad for us if he often showed up late.

  One day, during my first year on the Juventus bench (a year that began in February 1999), we were scheduled to leave for an away game, and Zidane hadn’t arrived yet. He’d vanished, and his cell phone was turned off. I waited for a while, then I made a decision: “Let’s go.”

  “But, Carletto, how will he catch up with us?”

  “That’s his problem.”

  From the back of the team bus, Montero jumped to his feet, marching up the aisle toward me. “Coach, we need to talk.”

  “Sure, Paolo. Let’s get this bus on the road, and then I’m all ears.” He marched up to the driver and crossed his arms. “No, that’s exactly what we need to talk about. No one is leaving here without Zidane.”

  I took a few seconds to think it over. I evaluated the situation with a certain mental clarity: “Okay, here I am, facing a homicidal maniac who is staring furiously into my eyes as he clenches and unclenches his fists. Given the choice between the good and the not-so-good, he has always sacrificed the good: he aims at the ball, and he kicks your leg; he aims at your foot, and he kicks your leg; in fact, when he aims at your leg, he kicks your leg.”

  “OK, Paolo, let’s just wait for him.” The important thing, after all, is your health, right?

  Zizou showed up ten minutes later, apologized for being late, and the bus pulled out.

  Zidane was the greatest soccer player I ever coached—the sole inhabitant of a very different planet. Before every match, the Avvocato came into the locker room, said hello to Alessandro Del Piero, and then went straight to Zizou. He was head over heels in love; he took Zizou aside and had a little chat. It was a scene that I witnessed dozens of times. Often, Agnelli was accompanied by his grandsons John and Lapo Elkann; they would appear, greet the team, and go talk to Zidane. They were just like their grandfather. Then it was Moggi’s turn: where’s Zidane? And Giraudo: where’s Zidane? And then Bettega: discreetly, in a private corner of the locker room, because he was shy.

  That was when I started to get a little lonely. Everyone was ignoring me; they all came to see Zidane. Sometimes even the fans ignored me. For instance, one morning at Turin’s Caselle Airport. We were returning from Athens, we’d just played an embarrassing Champions League match against Panathinaikos, and there, waiting for us as we got off the airplane, was a small mob of young men who weren’t especially interested in paying tribute to our athletic prowess. As Zidane went past, they shoved him. That marked them for—well, maybe not for death, but sudden and certain punishment. Montero witnessed the scene from a distance, removed his glasses and, with an elegant gesture that struck me as incongruous, slipped them into a case. It was handsomely done, but it boded badly for the young men. A few seconds later, he was running at top speed toward the little cluster of hoodlums, fists flying. Backing him up was Daniel Fonseca, another willing brawler. In my mind, I imagined a boxing announcer right behind them, hovering just outside the ring: “And that’s a right, a left hook, another left hook. Technical knockout, that’s a TKO. Zinédine is safe. I repeat, Zinédine is safe.”

  Oh, the beating those poor guys took. They left a few on the ground. The problem was that a few hours later, we realized they were soccer hooligans, and vicious ones at that. In fact, they came to pay a call on us in the days that followed.

  Ours was a team that was always ready for a battle. A single spark was enough to unleash an inferno. Paolo Montero, Daniel Fonseca, Edgar Davids: the Ivy League, present and correct. If they caught a whiff of a brawl, they would rush in without thinking twice. One time, at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome during halftime, the whole team was already down in the locker room. We heard angry voices outside, the sounds of an incipient brawl. Montero shouted, “Where’s Zidane?” (he really was sort of fixated …) and bolted out in person to see what was happening. He rushed into the fray, only to discover that it was just a crowd of Roma players, angrily quarreling amongst themselves. They looked up to see a furious Montero bearing down on them, ready to mow them to the ground, for absolutely no good reason. Paolo Montero adored Zizou, and, for that matter, I adored Paolo, who was pure of heart and stout of spirit. He could easily have been a convicted felon, but he had a code of honor all his own. And a mission, for which he was willing to fight: “Keep your hands off Zidane.”

  Zizou’s son, Enzo, was just as amazing as his dad. He’d come to the stadium and imitate his father’s fakes. He never missed a move. He was a genius and the spitting image of his dad. I am increasingly certain that I coached a supernatural being: supernatural in every way, in his remarkable talent and in his great humility. Zidane is the soccer player who, in my life, produced the greatest array of chills, thrills, and sheer enjoyment—a living spectacle who put on an amazing show every single day. The best description of him that I ever heard came from José Altafini: “The way he used his foot, it was as if he were spreading butter on a slice of bread.” He had one shortcoming: he never scored all that many goals, he didn’t spend a lot of time in the penalty area. He seemed to be allergic to that section of the field, but he was an absolute master of all the others. Training was a thing he loved—a thing we all loved. He invented, and we watched openmouthed. I watched because that was my job; his fellow players watched because you can’t stop an artist. You just admire his work.

  Edgar Davids was one of the first players I talked to in my capacity as coach of Juventus. I liked him a lot, and I told him so immediately: “I like the way you play, your aggression, your determination, your decisiveness. It’s clear that you never yield the initiative, that you’re a fighter, a battler.” I went on to catalog his physical endowments, his skills, and his natural gifts. He just stared at me and never said a word. More than stare, he glared at me, like I was a turd he’d accidentally stepped on. He listened, closemouthed. Finally, when I stopped talking, he enunciated a concept: “You know, I can play soccer, too.” True, though technique was never his strong suit. He loved to work hard, but he hated to run, so every day I had
to invent specific new training exercises with the ball. It was like giving medicine to a child: if you just give him a spoonful, he’ll spit it out. If you hide it in a spoonful of Nutella, the odds are better. Before you could get Edgar to do something, you had to explain the reason why—which advantages and benefits it would bring to him. He was a perfectionist, and even a bit of a pain in the ass.

  Alessandro Del Piero was less than happy when I first met him. When I got to Turin, he was trying to return to active play after the injury to his knee. He’d lost speed and reflexes, but I never lost confidence in him; he wasn’t an amazingly productive player, but he was, and remains, invaluable. I could never do without him. I always thought that, even a few years later, when Capello was training Juventus but largely overlooking the team’s captain. Ale, to use his nickname, is a born leader, and you can never overlook him. That’s all I have to say on that matter. That first year, I had him play when he was in conditions that would have convinced another coach to bench him (Capello, for instance, would have put him in the stands, or else sent him home, suspended, without dessert). I felt that I had to help him; he deserved it. From a professional point of view, he has always been serious and determined. In human terms, he is a rare and priceless individual. In terms of technique, he’s a thoroughbred. He has an essence that is hard to pin down, difficult to define in its beauty.

  When I became head coach of Milan, I wanted to take him with me, and I even made a few tentative efforts to do so. But Del Piero is Juventus, and Juventus wasn’t for sale. The Avvocato used to call him Godot, because everyone always waited for him but he never got there. Ale hated that joke. It made him angry, but he couldn’t say so, because Gianni Agnelli was … Gianni Agnelli—an icon with an idea that was beginning to buzz around in his head. He wanted to bring Paolo Maldini over to Juventus. It was one of the rare occasions in which the Avvocato allowed himself to be swept away, putting a defender ahead of the rarer magic of the striker. Usually he was enchanted by goal-making artists. He wasn’t alone in that tendency. A short while later, I would become acquainted with a chairman who—if he could have had his way, excuse me, His way—would have fielded eleven strikers, with the proviso that he could always fire me if he thought the team was unbalanced.

  The Avvocato’s dream—in that case, at least—never came true. Maybe that was why it was such a sweet dream for him. Maybe the times when he felt a yearning for Maldini were when he got in his car and had his driver head over to see us on the field. Or, I should say, to see him—Zidane. His perfect consolation prize.

  CHAPTER 17

  If You’re Looking for Feelings, Please Apply Elsewhere

  As a pig that couldn’t coach, I never really liked Turin. It was too gloomy, a couple of galaxies away from my way of life. Back off, posh guys—here comes the fat boy with a bowlful of Emilian tortellini. Juventus was a team I’d never really loved. In fact, it’s a team I’ll probably never love, in part because of the welcome that some higher intelligence reserves for me every time I come back there. It’s always been a rival team; even when I was a little boy, I was an Inter fan right down to the marrow of my bones (hmmm, makes me think of beef broth), and completely obsessed with Sandro Mazzola.

  Suddenly, I found myself on the other side of the barricade—in a sense, on the other side of myself. As a result of a purely professional decision. Unfortunately, I have always had a serious defect: when I coach a team, I become its number one fan. It doesn’t happen to everyone; I’m willing to bet money on that. But I always get drawn in emotionally. I am overcome with an all-consuming passion, a momentary crush. It’s not that I’m a company man; I’m just an old-fashioned romantic. I respect the culture and the history of the clubs I work for. I think that’s the right way to approach my work. A person ought to do it; a person has an obligation to do it. You can’t just show up at a club one day and start issuing orders.

  At Juventus, orders were issued by the Triad, and they always took good care of me. They took very good care of me. True, they fired me after just two and a half years, but that’s another matter. As long as I was their coach, Moggi, Giraudo, and Bettega made me feel like I was the best coach in the world. With their words and with their actions. Their behavior was impeccable, as far as I was concerned.

  I find it inconceivable for a club to question a coach’s actions during the season. It’s a baffling, counterproductive way to work. When I was with Juve, I knew that I enjoyed the respect of the top management, even when things weren’t going well. There were harsh meetings, I saw more than one player on the verge of tears, but even at times like that they treated me like a king. They were always there, at training and during matches; they lived with the team, they knew everything about everyone. Absentee executives aren’t helpful, and they understood that.

  Juventus was a completely new environment for me. Very different. I never really felt comfortable. I was a cog in the machine—just another employee in a huge corporation. If you’re looking for feelings, please apply elsewhere. On the job, everything went smoothly, but outside the workplace, nothing. I saw Moggi every day, we were neighbors. I lived downstairs from him, on the Via Carlo Alberto. Of the three members of the Triad, I was closest to him. He liked me, he cared about me, and the feeling was mutual. I still talk to him occasionally; the same goes for Giraudo. But Bettega basically vanished into thin air.

  That Moggi—Lucianone, as he was known—was an important and influential person was common knowledge. Even a few referees seemed to be aware of it. One in particular. Everyone respected Moggi, and so, in effect, there could be a sense of intimidation at times. His strength, and later his downfall, was his public relations: he never said no; he would meet with as many as thirty people a day. He was outgoing and open-minded, which made him more powerful and more widely hated. The fact that he was with Juventus made him powerful, and that is why there were people who found him intimidating. They were all so many little lambs bleating in the presence of a ravening ogre, who wasn’t really an ogre after all. Neither an ogre nor a saint, no question about it.

  Gathered around him, Luciano had lots of little helpless lambs but not many Johnny Lambs, to use the nickname of Gianni Agnelli and his family. No, it was members of the Agnelli family that Luciano lacked. The important decisions all fell to Umberto Agnelli, the Dottore (the Doctor), who was more genuine than the Avvocato. The Agnelli I liked best was Umberto’s son Andrea, a person of great moral substance. A remarkable young man. He encouraged me, he helped out when he could, he told me not to worry when the victories weren’t coming in as we’d hoped. He was a point of reference.

  The family man, in particular, was Giraudo, though he too was capable of laughing and playing pranks. Once, we made a bet on the outcome of a match; I accepted the bet, even though he—how to put this—had a certain advantage. He often predicted the results of others … What was at stake? Oh, just dinner in a restaurant for twenty. I lost the bet, of course. Giraudo decided to exaggerate: “Carletto, we’re all going to a place that specializes in truffles.” Truffles? Affordable! The Piedmont Vacation Group, as we called ourselves, went on the road, from Turin to Castello di Annone, near Alba, the home of the white truffle. Among the starving masses we brought with us was Galliani, who at the time was a very, very close friend of the Triad. Add in Galliani, and it goes from a Triad to Four of a Kind. From poker to porker: None of them seemed to have eaten anytime in the past few months. They just kept grating truffle after truffle. They were eating truffles like they were popcorn. It never seemed to end. Instead of scratch and win, it was grate … and let Carletto pay. And that’s not even to mention the rivers of champagne, “the best champagne in the house,” as I seem to remember Giraudo telling the waiter—more than once. Everyone was sloshed on champagne: finally, a bubbly, cheerful Juventus. And while they were eating and drinking, I was calculating the check in my mind, trying to figure out how much I had lost on that (probably fixed) bet. At least two hundred thousand lire apiece, which, multiplie
d by twenty, added up to four million lire. That, it turned out, was optimistic: “Signore Ancelotti, here is the check.” Ten million lire. Ten. Million. Lire. I expected a receipt, but what they brought me was an ancient Greek scroll. A foot and a half of bill. I felt faint; I pulled out my checkbook, hating all twenty of my guests as I did so. Galliani’s tie had veered from purple to yellow, he’d guzzled so much champagne. Behind my back, I heard someone laughing. It was Giraudo. He could be likable, even though in public he was always serious, at times verging on arrogant.

  “It was a joke, Carletto. I’ll pay.” The future of my daughter and son, Katia and Davide, suddenly brightened. Their inheritance was safe.

  Giraudo and Moggi always made me the butt of their pranks. One day in Athens, in November 2000, they made me look like a dickhead, long before the Chosen One uttered the immortal phrase at Appiano Gentile: “I am not a dickhead.” We were in training, and one afternoon I dared to take a nap. The phone rang; by some miracle, I managed to locate the receiver, and I answered: “Hello?” “Wake up, Carlo, there’s a call for you from the Avvocato.” I stood up, snapping to attention, a rumpled, befuddled figure, and tried to regain my grip on reality. Over the phone came the refined accent of Gianni Agnelli, with his mushy pronunciation of the l’s and r’s in every word, including my name.

  “Hewwo, Cawwo, I just saw a fantastic pwayer from the Ivowy Coast.”

  Hold everything—stop the presses. Let me spell this out: the Ivory Coast. There is no national team on earth that I love more than the Ivory Coast, after the Italian team.