This hatred of losing and obsession with winning is something that links the great managers – the attitude that it’s not acceptable to lose. You train how you play, and that mentality is carried from the manager down through the squad – it rubs off on everyone. I’ve seen it first-hand with some of the best and it’s not a good place to be when you’ve lost. It could even be a small-scale game. I remember games in training a couple of days before a match, where it’s relaxed and you might be on the losing side, 2–0 or 3–0, and Carlo would come in the dressing room after and quietly tell us that it was not acceptable. ‘We don’t lose,’ he’d say. ‘We take the same mentality of the weekend into training.’
Carlo always used to say that your attitude and mentality doesn’t impact only on the first team, but on the reserves too. They will know that the mentality within that group of twenty-five players, not just the starting eleven, is that it’s not acceptable to lose, and this creates a legacy. Wherever I go I carry Carlo’s mentality with me, and now it is me who is leaving the legacy.
When you come over to the first team, the mentality is that you do not lose, whether it’s a five-a-side game in training or a competitive match, and that legacy still remains. You look at Lamps, he has left and eventually I’m going to go, but you’d like to think that the legacy we’ve all left remains. I’d like to think that, regardless of anything, that’s the attitude within the club.
The other thing the great leaders have is a big-game mentality. Carlo, Mourinho – they’re both big-game managers. In England, anyone can beat anyone, but when you play those top teams – the Manchester Citys, Liverpools, Arsenals and Manchester Uniteds – you get a sense of how important they are from the manager. Two days before a game we’ll touch on it, then the day before we’ll touch on it slightly again, with that little bit more detail. We’ll talk about their special players. Let’s say Rooney, for example. ‘He likes to get the ball in between the midfield and defence,’ Carlo would say. ‘So if you go in tight on him that creates space behind for the centre forward, who likes to go that way, so we let Rooney have it.’ He’ll walk you through what needs doing, and again it’s that little attention to detail. Not thirty or forty minutes, because that’s not what players want. Short and sharp conversations, with the group and with you as an individual. ‘Tell me, what’s your job?’ he’ll say, and it’s all about the detail.
Being able to pick that whole group of players up, to run through brick walls, play through injuries – it’s a testament to Carlo. I’ve seen players play through injuries, taking injections to get them through it, when they shouldn’t really have been out there at all, because they wanted to perform for Carlo Ancelotti. In all of my time as a player, I know that, once you strip everything back, it comes down to this: you go that extra mile for people who care about you as a person.
Those special touches, when he asks questions like, ‘How’s your dad? I heard he’s not been well,’ they mean a lot. You think, ‘Bloody hell, how do you even know that?’ He knows because he genuinely cares, and he takes the time to care. That’s what makes him the very best. He is, for me, the ultimate.
6. Responsibility
Decision-making
Making decisions is an inevitable part of being a leader in any industry. In order to make progress every day, decisions need to be made about the training, the players, who is in the team, the opposition. Within a game, decisions have to be made quickly and confidently. Shall I make a substitution? Do I need to make a tactical tweak? If they’re not made fast, it can be too late. Time is always moving on during a match and there is no room for indecision – it can kill you.
I am convinced that ‘getting things done’ in a job is integrally linked to the speed and focus with which decisions are made. The clearest example of decision-making in my industry can be seen on the pitch. I am always impressed by the manner in which the top players are differentiated from the rest primarily by their decision-making and its effect upon the team.
Take the true greats – the likes of Maradona, Pelé, Cruyff. If you were to watch a film of them playing and pause it just before they made their pass, you could ask a hundred coaches where they should play the ball and they would all say the same thing: ‘It should go there.’ When you press play, the film will show the ball going exactly there. Great players invariably play that ‘correct’ ball – they make the right decision. Naturally, everybody wants to score, but if somebody else is in a better position, they make the right decision to pass. It’s these decisions that, over the course of a match, decide who wins and loses.
Players have to make these decisions in an instant; examples from today’s game are Ronaldo and Ibrahimović. Players like Ibra will always make the right decision for the team, not only in the game but also in training. Many say that it is nature, not nurture, that gives these players this ability – but we know it can be trained. When I trained Cristiano at Madrid he already had this ability, but if you look at him in his early days at Manchester United you see a different, more selfish player at the start. Sir Alex and his staff trained him to be a team player. That’s the difference between an engaged player (who is fully committed) and an aligned player (whose commitment always works for the greater good of the team). You need them to be both.
My decisions are not made in split-seconds, like the players’, though I do have to make quick and important calls during a match. More generally, I have to make strategic, tactical and operational decisions. Strategically, we have to play good football. By ‘good football’ I do not mean any particular style of play, but rather that we have to be efficient both offensively and defensively. We have to understand the basics of what works when we have the ball and what works when the opposition has the ball. Deciding on one without the other will not succeed over time. Maybe it will work in one game, but not in the long run. This is the difference between league football and cup football, and it is why the challenge for the coach is always to win the league. Of course, for the owner it might be to win the Champions League, as it was at Real Madrid for me, and so the coach has to think in a different way to achieve this goal. This is why winning a treble – domestic cup, league and Champions League – is so difficult. Even when it has been done, I still can’t believe that it is possible.
So, strategic decisions should be long term. However, the pressure from the owners and the fans is for today. To that extent the strategic decisions become strongly influenced by the owners. I might, such as when I was involved in what I thought would be a big project and long term at Paris Saint-Germain, want to buy or promote from the academy a certain type of player for the long-term benefit of the team, but I have to listen to the owner, who might want a player from the outside, or a young player to be promoted for commercial reasons. I have to listen to this and accommodate it. My decisions, therefore, tend to become more short term and mostly tactical, about how the team that I have can deliver the goals that the owner wants. When you spend a long time at a club, such as I did at Milan, with the security that brings, you are more able to be involved in implementing strategic decisions, while at the likes of Real Madrid decisions must by necessity become short-term and tactical. Ultimately, it is the owner who owns the brand and sets out the policy and the strategy. In one way we are lucky in football because we mostly have very clear ownership. I look at companies like Volkswagen and see complex ownership, and maybe that’s why it’s in so much trouble with the emissions scandal.
Tactically, you have to use the team at your disposal so that all the component parts, the players and the staff, are able to be efficient in the way I have described as good football. The tactical decisions become part of the longer-term strategy in this way. My job is to create a system of play using the characteristics of the players and to make the players as comfortable as possible with that system. I believe that, in general terms, the best system is 4-4-2 because it creates the most balanced team, certainly defensively. It mirrors the shape of the pitch, a rectangle. But, as I’
ve said, the players are the most important. If it is better for Ronaldo not to play as a second forward, OK, let’s try 4-3-3. At the end at Real Madrid, we were able to switch, during the game, from 4-4-2 defensively to 4-3-3 offensively.
Operational decisions are the day-to-day choices I must make. For me, the most important of these involve the players, because it is only with the players that you are able to build the system. If I have to explain to a player why I decided to leave him out of the team, then I must handle this properly. If I decide to reduce the training workload after a testing series of fixtures, then I must do this also.
There comes a point with decision-making, particularly in those you make day-to-day, when you need to know where you can adopt a little bit of flexibility and where you have to be strict. You have to decide where, for you personally, it is OK to be flexible. If I decide to have training at midday and the players come to me and say, ‘Why don’t we train at eleven? It’s better for us then, because we have time to go home and have lunch with our family,’ what difference does it make to me? However, once we have agreed on a time, then I have to be strict. It’s easier when the players make the decisions, the rules, to hold them to these rules. Former England rugby coach Clive Woodward says the same. Get the players to agree to the rules at the outset, but then it is my job to hold them to their own rules. The negotiation and flexibility come in the decision-making, but the strictness is applied once the decision has been made.
One thing that I work on constantly and where I think I have improved with greater experience is my tendency at times to be too patient. Sometimes I can take a little too long to make the decision. I like to think coolly about such things, take in all the angles, but I can certainly overthink the situation. Sometimes I should use less rationality and more instinct. But then again, sometimes it pays to be patient. It is all about getting the right balance.
Early in my managerial career I made myself crazy trying to choose between two centre forwards for a big game. I was awake all night, thinking it through, tossing and turning, and still couldn’t decide. In the morning, the first person I saw at the club was the doctor, and he told me that one of the two centre forwards was sick and couldn’t play. I didn’t have to make the decision – it was out of my hands. I have, of course, got better at making these decisions with experience and, despite my sleepless night, learned a valuable lesson that day: I try not to announce who will play and who will be on the bench too early, because if you tell one player he’s playing and the other he’s not, and then something happens to the player you’ve picked, you have to go back to the first one. He might not have prepared as fully as he should because he thinks he will not play. It’s always a balance.
Getting decisions right or wrong seems an easy thing to quantify, but I don’t believe it to be so. When the results of my decision prove not to be good, does that mean it was the wrong decision? No. It only means that it turned out to be wrong. When I make a decision I always think that it’s the right decision at the time, otherwise why would I take it? I have no regret because, with the information at my disposal, I did what I thought was best. I can’t change it. While it is important to look back and analyse where things have gone wrong, it is vital not to dwell unnecessarily on them. This will kill you.
When we were preparing for the Champions League final in 2007 against Liverpool I had to decide between Alberto Gilardino and Filippo Inzaghi for the striker’s position. The players and the club made it clear they thought Gilardino was the one, but in ten games of Champions League football he had only scored two goals. Inzaghi, however, had an excellent record in European competition. He had scored many Champions League goals. So, I took a decision to put Inzaghi in the team and he scored two goals in the final.
To me, this was the right decision, even if he hadn’t scored, because it was my decision. I am the one who must live with the decision, so I want it to be mine. If I had any regrets, it would be if it wasn’t my decision. After all, I get paid to make these kind of decisions, and sacked if I get them wrong.
If you asked me how I came to this decision, even after considering it all rationally, I would have to say that in the end I trusted my instinct, despite what everyone around me was saying. Sometimes you make a decision and there’s not always a logical reason for it. It’s just a gut feeling. It’s not always easy to explain to the players either.
If I have to choose between Ronaldo and a player fresh from the academy to play on the left for Real Madrid, the decision is easy, and it’s also easy to explain to the player from the academy why he does not play. However, if I have to choose between James Rodríguez and Ángel Di María, it is not so easy. I cannot say one player is better than the other, and even if I thought this, I cannot say this to them. It will likely come down to instinct. If it’s just my feeling on the day, then I have to do my best to explain that it’s what is best for the team. The player left out won’t be happy, of course, but he will accept it. Players are never happy if they’re not playing.
I see myself as a pragmatist when it comes to making decisions. I have to accept that I must be willing to accommodate the strategies, policies and even the whims of the owners. I hope that I have been able to do this and remain true to my own ideals. Managing the conflicting ideas and egos of talented players and owners is one of the core attributes of a quiet leader. It is my guiding notion that it is simply rational to concentrate only on those things you can affect. Those that are out of your control must be rejected for consideration.
Naturally, I have my own views on the strategic, tactical and operational decisions at the team level, and I must also acknowledge that I will rarely be involved in the strategic decisions concerning the organization. All such team decisions are, for me, intimately related to maintaining the relationships with the players, which is central to quiet leadership.
Anger and Setbacks
Anger is a natural reaction when things don’t go as we want, or when players don’t behave or perform as we would like. A leader must be careful about exhibiting anger. While it can be a useful tool for some, for many it can result in a loss of control and professionalism, which will always be counter-productive. I am not someone who is angered easily. I find that remaining calm helps me understand and analyse a situation. Anger is instinctive, but you must try to control it intelligently, and only in that way can it be used effectively. I like to use it as a motivational tool. Despite myself, I get angry sometimes, of course. The players say I revert to speaking Italian when I go crazy.
The only thing that really makes me angry is when the attitude of the team is not right. Not the performance – the attitude. I remember one game when we were 2–0 up at half-time. We were comfortable, but I was angry because it didn’t matter that we were winning. The attitude was not acceptable – not professional. If we had continued in that way we would have ended up losing, so I got angry with the team to let them know what I thought, and they went out and played well. We scored early and everything was easy from then on.
The attitude is key, even if you’re winning. You cannot always control the result, but you can control your attitude, and this is why it makes me angry. On some days you might be able to have a bad attitude and win, or a good attitude and lose, but you’re going to win more games with the better attitude.
I tend not to get angry when players make mistakes. They might miss penalties or make errors in the game, which can be disappointing, but it happens. If the attitude is right, then OK, put it behind you and move on. However, players being disrespectful or behaving unprofessionally – these are signs of the wrong attitude and this makes me angry. I refuse to accept it and the players should not accept it from one of their teammates. The players remember the occasions when I get angry because it happens rarely. If I was to get angry every single day, they would not remember and it would not be effective on them.
Even after that infamous night in Istanbul, in the Champions League final against Liverpool that we lost, it was not
right to be angry because the attitude had been perfect. The quality of the game we played on that day was the best I’ve coached in a final. It is a prime example of how a manager can control almost all aspects of the game – strategy, tactics, motivation, the opposition team – but the only thing you cannot control is the final score. There is a randomness in football, in life, which you cannot eliminate from any analysis of the game. Over time, however, you can do everything in your power to eliminate as much of the noise in the system as possible.
Of course, I cannot say that it was not a massive disappointment to lose the final but, looking back with the gift of hindsight, I would not have done anything differently. Everyone thinks that we stopped playing after the first half, but it’s not true. We played well – even in extra time. Liverpool played well for six minutes out of a hundred and twenty and Milan played well for a hundred and fourteen minutes. When the first Liverpool goal went in we were playing so well that I thought we would score even more goals; after the second I thought about making a change to strengthen our defence but the third goal went in so quickly that we did not get the chance. After that crazy six minutes we dominated the play again and we could have scored several times. Even in extra time we could and should have scored more, but it was not to be.
The atmosphere in the club was solid – the president and Galliani, they never had a doubt about us. The club protected me and were very supportive from above. Everybody was hurting, though, funnily enough, not so much the players. Not because they do not care, but because it was the last game of the season and they went off on their holidays where they could deal with the disappointment in their own ways. When we came back for the next season we had a fresh start, and that result, rather than create poor morale, was a motivator for us. I’m sure that defeat helped us win the Champions League in 2007, when we faced Liverpool again in the final.
Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches Page 14