Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches

by Carlo Ancelotti

  Communication is key here – it is the basis of every relationship. What you say, how you say it and when you say it. Everybody has their own character and their own style of communication. There are players who need to be stimulated and there are those who prefer to delegate, while other players are foot soldiers who just want to execute orders. A manager has to take into consideration all these differences in personality and must listen to what each player thinks, because for players to give their all they have to be convinced about what they are doing. The manager has to be willing to listen and change his ideas if it means the chance of greater success. It is a lesson I fully embraced later in my career when I did things like change Andrea Pirlo’s position in the team and talk to Sergio Ramos about playing in midfield.

  Liedholm had such confidence in his own power that he gave the players a lot of responsibility. He was not strict in his tactics. He would give us some information, not a lot, and the players had freedom on the pitch, which, of course, created a better relationship with the manager. In this way he was creating new leaders. Falcao became a coach, I am a coach and Liedholm was our guide.

  He was never afraid to delegate, whether on the pitch to the players or off the pitch to the trainers for the physical preparation. Although he loved to be on the pitch he interfered only very rarely, if he saw something badly wrong. Even then it would not be with anger, but with care. It was a different style of training compared with today and he really loved to be on the pitch to teach the players about technical rather than tactical aspects. He loved to fine-tune the players, and with top players this is all that is necessary. He could stay for two hours just working on a technical exercise.

  He was always professional even when he was joking, which couldn’t always be said of the players, but that is how it was in those days. Now I can say that the players are more professional – they can sometimes see it as a job. When I started we just thought it was great to play and get paid. Life was good. It is important to remember this because, even today, ultimately the players just want to play.

  The big change today is a player’s status. Now they make their own choices, but when I played we were the property of the club. We didn’t know from year to year what was going to happen to us because it was not our decision – we were owned. I didn’t know if I would be able to earn more money in the next year or if I would leave the club. Now the players take more care of themselves and are closer to being masters of their own destiny. Because the situation regarding contracts and salaries is now so different from in the past, I have to recognize that players should be treated as individuals with a personal agenda.

  Would a manager like Liedholm manage successfully in today’s game? Yes, of course. He would adapt. He would understand that this new professionalism is more intense, that there is less opportunity for fun. On the training ground the players always work hard because it is their profession. For me, professionalism is linked to the intensity that you use when you train – physical intensity, but above all mental intensity. This is what the modern manager must deal with at all times when the players are working.

  Of course, today there are very different off-field pressures on both the players and the coaches. As a manager I cannot control the player when he is away from the club. All I can do is give information about the type of behaviour I expect, which is to eat sensibly, drink responsibly and get enough sleep – to live a normal life and be able to integrate with others. Everyone is entitled to a private life away from the club, but if a player does these things and works hard at his job, then I am happy with him.

  It was while I was at Roma that I was first asked to be a leader. Sven-Göran Eriksson had taken over from Liedholm and Agostino Di Bartolomei had left the club, so Eriksson asked me to be captain. I thought, ‘All I have to do is take the armband, talk to the referee, toss the coin, choose the way to play and talk to the press after the game; does this make me a leader now?’ I always thought the captain should set an example for the team, not in what he says, but what he does.

  Becoming captain didn’t change my idea of professionalism, of the right behaviour, but I did feel more responsibility, of course. It wasn’t so much with my immediate teammates – with them nothing changed. I was the same before and after getting the armband. The biggest change for me was with the younger players who came up from the academy. I could be a reference for them in the same way that Mongardi had been for me as a kid at Parma. Just as he had taken care of me, I tried to have conversations with the younger players and to take care of them as well. I remembered what had happened to me as a kid and I didn’t want our younger players to have the same bad experiences. I tried to give these young players both information and support and, of course, they didn’t have to clean the boots.

  Even in the short time that I was captain at Roma I started to realize the responsibility that came with being a leader. I began to understand that leading is not about how you see yourself, but how others see you. My responsibility was to be a role model. Every team has its rules, written or unwritten, and the first one who has to respect the rules is the captain. The manager would set the rules, but it was my job to show respect to them. With Liedholm, as I have said, there was flexibility, but with Eriksson it was more strict. Roma was a big club for Eriksson, so maybe he used the rules to bolster his confidence; Liedholm had so much self-confidence that he was able to be more relaxed.

  Liedholm’s self-belief stemmed not only from having such a great knowledge of the game and his success as a manager, but also from enjoying the status of being one of the best players in the world during his playing career. He used to speak about his playing days in a really funny, self-deprecating way. He played for Milan with two other great Swedish footballers – Gunnar Gren and Gunnar Nordahl – and together they formed the famous Gre-No-Li. He would tell us, ‘I didn’t misplace a pass in the San Siro for three years and when I finally misplaced one, the whole crowd was so shocked they let out an, “Oooooh!”.’

  Impossible, we would say, laughing. But he was such a legend among the Milan faithful that they still all tell the same story: At the end of his career, the entire San Siro stadium applauded for five minutes after he misplaced a pass – an acknowledgement of years of infallibility, but mostly an acknowledgement of love.

  As relaxed as Liedholm was, there were still issues about which he would be very strict: you have to respect your teammates; you have to respect the manager; you don’t fight in the training ground; and you don’t speak badly about your teammates. These were his non-negotiable rules.

  As must be obvious, I learned a lot from Liedholm. He was, and still is, my most important reference in football.

  National Service

  I was called up to play for the national team for the first time in a four-team tournament between Uruguay, Italy, Holland and Brazil. In the first game against Holland I scored after seven minutes, which was the second-quickest debut goal in the history of the Italian national team. I played twenty-six matches for the national team and never scored again.

  After the game we went back to our hotel to get some rest before the next game against Uruguay in Montevideo, but two of my teammates, Claudio Gentile and Marco Tardelli, said to me, ‘Let’s go out – we have to celebrate.’ I was really nervous about doing this because I was only twenty-one and didn’t know if the manager would allow it. Was I allowed to go out after only my first game?

  ‘You have to come,’ the players insisted. ‘You have to buy a beer for us because you scored the first goal.’

  ‘But what about the manager?’

  ‘Don’t worry about the manager – you are with us.’

  So, we went out for a beer, nothing crazy. We just talked and drank a few beers, but by the time we returned in a taxi to the hotel it was one in the morning, and who should be stood there, his arms crossed and face like thunder, right in front of the hotel? The manager, of course – the imposing figure of Enzo Bearzot.

  ‘What do we do now?�
� I said, panicking a little.

  ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry – we’ll go round the back of the hotel.’

  We went the back way, through the garage and up to our floor in the lift. The door opened on our floor and there was the manager, waiting for us. ‘You and you,’ he said to Gentile and Tardelli, ‘go to bed.’

  ‘You,’ he said to me, ‘come with me.’ I knew at that moment who would lead and who would follow. Bearzot told me that I had been easily led and he explained to me in no uncertain terms how I should respond in the future. I should always listen, he told me, but I should always make my own decision.

  The difference between Bearzot and Liedholm can be seen in another, similar incident. Three of us at Roma pulled up outside our team hotel one night with a couple of girls in the back with us. We saw Liedholm coming out of the hotel and, when he saw us in the car, he came striding over. We had nowhere to go so we just waited for what the English like to call a ‘bollocking’ from the manager. When he got to the car he motioned to us to roll down the window, which we did, and then he peered inside and very quietly said, ‘Is there any room for me?’

  That was the difference between Bearzot and Liedholm, but both were, nonetheless, very successful managers. I could only be like one of them because that is who I am, but I did learn that different styles can be just as effective.

  I could not be as rigid as Bearzot was. When I played for him, he always insisted that we play man to man – right up until we played the World Cup in 1986. Man to man, every time. Of course, this approach was perfect for my friend Gentile. The trainers would tell Gentile, ‘You have to kick everything that moves on the pitch. Also, the ball. If it’s the ball, that’s a bonus.’ Gentile marked the best players – Zico, Diego Maradona – and he was like a limpet.

  I was not used to playing man to man because with Liedholm we were allowed more freedom to defend in zones. In 1984 the national side had a friendly game in Bologna and I was a substitute. When Bearzot eventually called on me to go on, he said, ‘Mark number 10.’ On the pitch, I tried to see this number 10. I could see number 3, number 14, number 15 – but I didn’t find number 10. From the bench, Bearzot was shouting, ‘Mark number 10!’ Where was he?

  The reason I couldn’t find number 10 was because he had been substituted without Bearzot noticing. At the end of the game he was angry with me and said, ‘I told you to mark number 10!’ I tried to explain that he wasn’t on the pitch, but you couldn’t argue with Bearzot.

  Italy won the World Cup in 1982 and we went into the 1986 tournament as strong contenders. It was to be in Mexico, at altitude, 3,000 metres. We went to a mountain in Italy in the middle of winter and, in the morning, we didn’t train – we didn’t run, we didn’t walk – we had a talk instead. There were players asking, ‘How can we prepare for a World Cup like this?’ But nobody would question the coach. This is not a good environment. We came home from Mexico quickly.

  The System

  When I left Roma and moved to Milan I was a well-established player, but I was still the new boy. Franco Baresi was the captain but not a natural leader in his personality. He didn’t speak much off of the pitch, but on the pitch he was very voluble – talking about the behaviour of the team, about the movement. Sometimes you have it so that the leader has both the technical aspects and personality, but often it comes from different players. One might be a technical leader, another a personality leader.

  Milan had been going through some hard times when I joined. The club had a fantastic history in the 1960s and 70s, when they won two European Cups and they had last won the Scudetto in 1979, but the 1980s had not been kind to them. They had been relegated and then promoted again, before Silvio Berlusconi bought the club and invested in the squad.

  When I first arrived I was one of the few players to have won something. I had won the Scudetto in 1983, played in the final of the European Cup in 1984 and, at the time, I was considered to be one of the best midfielders in Italy. This gave me a different status in the group. As a new player I was recognized as a leader because of my history, my achievements and my technical ability. Not for my behaviour, of course, because they did not know my behaviour yet. I became a reference for some of the other players.

  Your past achievements always help you when you arrive at a new place. It makes it easier for you to be respected. When I arrived at Madrid as a manager I had won two Champions Leagues and the players immediately had a lot of respect for me. After that, they are going to judge you, but at the beginning you have an advantage. You have to use this period to build a relationship with the players. Don’t show an ego, don’t brag. Sure, I could show an ego, brag about what I’d won, but I’d lose the respect of the players immediately. When I arrived in Milan as a player I was respected for my past and, just like I would come to know as a manager, you have a honeymoon period until the first training session and then the players begin to judge you.

  Milan had three excellent Dutch players: Frank Rijkaard, a physical, talented player; Marco van Basten, a fantastic technical player; and Ruud Gullit, a complete footballer and strong character. Ruud was one of the leaders, always trying to motivate and light a fire under someone if necessary. It was the foreign players who seemed to have the strongest personalities in that team.

  However, despite all the strong characters and my own position in the group, it was the system that led the team – always the system that had to be observed. This was manager Arrigo Sacchi’s way. The three players who became the references were me, Baresi and Gullit, but only because we served the system. Sacchi’s tactics were different from everybody else’s at the time. He wanted quick penetration, so Baresi had to press a high line from the back, Gullit, one of the best forwards in the world, was required to work really hard and my job was to link the defence and attack, moving the ball quickly. Some modern coaches are similar to Sacchi like this – press high, win the ball back in forward positions and then strike quickly. Speed is first, possession second.

  Sacchi’s path to becoming the coach of Milan was unusual. He was not a famous player. His father had a shoe company and he went to work for it, selling footwear in Holland during the 1970s. At that time, Ajax had developed the concept of Total Football, in which players can change positions and play attack and defence, all together. Sacchi was fascinated by this and studied it at every opportunity. He then returned to Italy and worked his way up through the divisions, until he arrived at Milan. He came to us with what were fresh ideas about football.

  Because Gullit, Baresi and I were the keys to implementing his ideas, we were his representatives on the pitch, so to speak. Sacchi had signed me – despite the doubts about my fitness expressed by Galliani and Berlusconi – to be the centre of the team. He believed that I had the footballing intelligence to understand what was needed to make his ideas work.

  When Sacchi bought a player, he did a lot of research not just on their technical skills, but on their personality – their private life and behaviour. He told me that he sent his friend to watch our training sessions for fifteen days so he could get an idea of my attitude on the training pitch. He wanted to be sure that I was professional. He knew what he wanted and how hard we would have to work in order to achieve it, but he also knew that with everything in place we could beat all the teams in Serie A.

  Despite having had some problems with my knees, I still had to work harder at Milan than when I was a player for Roma – harder than I had ever worked before. The job Sacchi wanted from me was to move backwards and forwards a lot, to support both Baresi and Gullit, respectively. To ensure that we knew the exact distance we needed to be from each other, Sacchi would sometimes tie us together with a rope. At the beginning we thought he was crazy. I lost six kilograms in weight in those first three seasons with Sacchi. When I arrived home to see my family one day, my mother answered the door and said, ‘Who are you? They are trying to kill my son!’

  GROWING: THE QUIET WAY

  Rules can be elastic but, like a ba
lloon, there are limits. Let everyone know what your limits are.

  Self-confidence breeds confidence. In the words of Mike, the conman in David Mamet’s House of Games, ‘Why do they call it a confidence trick? Because you give me your confidence? No, because I give you mine.’ Great leaders give confidence.

  It can be difficult to see yourself as the leader. Remember, if someone has given you the job they believe in you, so trust their judgement.

  In general, people love the job they’re in. Don’t kill that love.

  Intensity is good. But remember, you don’t have to be miserable to be serious.

  In Their Own Words … The Players

  Paolo Maldini on Carlo

  Carletto remains what he has always been with me. He manages to crack jokes even before the final of the Champions League. We were a family at Milan and that’s what families do. For Carlo the idea of family is everything; it all comes back to that. He never gets angry – well, almost never. I’m sure every player has maybe one story to tell about him going crazy in the dressing room.

  Out of all the leadership techniques I’ve witnessed, his is definitely the least problematic. He holds in all his own worries and pressures and so the team preserves its tranquillity. From time to time, though, even the most patient man in the world loses his cool.

  My favourite story was when he exploded in Lugano, after a preseason exhibition game against the Swiss team. He looked like he’d lost his mind. He said the worst things to us, peppering us with insults – horrible, unforgivable things that I couldn’t possibly repeat to you. He just kept it up and I suddenly felt like laughing. He’d gone completely off the rails and I’d never seen him like that before. He turned beet red, and sitting next to him was Adriano Galliani, wearing a bright yellow tie. Together, they looked like a rainbow.