Carlo Ancelotti’s quiet path to redemption at Real Madrid

By this time last year, it seemed that Carlo Ancelotti’s time as elite football manager was over.

Ancelotti was nearing the end of his 18-month spell at Everton, which eventually saw them finish 10th in the 2020-21 Premier League. He spent 67 games in charge at Goodison Park, finishing with a plus-five goal difference. His win rate with Everton was 46 per cent, the lowest since his first campaign as manager with Serie B club Reggiana in the mid-1990s.

That doesn’t mean much in terms of analyzing his performance at Everton – generally speaking, he did well – but it goes to show the fact that Ancelotti was now a mid-table manager.

Arguably more important was the nature of his two managerial spells before coming to Merseyside. He succeeded Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich in 2016 and Maurizio Sarri at Napoli in 2018, eventually being sacked from both posts. (Inevitably, he led the former to a Bundesliga title, for what it’s worth.) But in Munich and Napoli, there was a sense that the players were let down by Ancelotti’s tactical work and missed their previous coach’s attention to detail.

At Bayern in particular, there were reports that Xabi Alonso, Philipp Lahm and Arjen Robben had complained to the club hierarchy about the Italian’s training, and even the players had started private training without Ancelotti. Apparently the top players no longer believed in him: he also struggled to control the locker room at Napoli. But at Everton, where Ancelotti focused heavily on defensive organization and used simple tactical schemes, things worked out. That was now the level of him.

And yet now, a year on, Ancelotti is in charge of Real Madrid for the second time in his career, destined to win another league title and into the Champions League semi-finals. It represents a remarkable comeback.

Although all this was completely unexpected, if Ancelotti was going to return to a big club, it would surely be Real Madrid. Ancelotti had a mixed first spell in charge of that club, delivering a 10th European Cup but failing to win the League, before being fired from it after two years. But he always felt more in tune with what is required at the Bernabéu: not groundbreaking tactics, not necessarily highly structured attacking football and definitely not negative defensive play. Pure tacticians like José Mourinho and Rafael Benítez proved unpopular at the same concert as his predecessor and successor.

The work at Real is mostly about letting key people shine. Ancelotti not only understood Real, he also nurtured Zinedine Zidane as his assistant. After Benítez’s brief unsuccessful spell, Zidane surprisingly took charge and went on to win three successive European Cup finals with a managerial vision very similar to Ancelotti’s.

But the second stages of Zidane and Ancelotti at the helm of Real Madrid have been very different. If Zidane depended on the stars the first time, on his return he was more daring and innovative. He changed the formation more, devising more unusual approaches involving full-backs moving into midfield that Ancelotti would not approach, and also placing players in surprise roles for one-off jobs in big matches.

Zidane, for example, completely revolutionized the role of Casemiro, whom he had originally brought on as a pure defensive midfielder in his first spell, arguably the key decision that transformed Real Madrid. In his second spell, Casemiro started as the deepest midfielder, but then moved into attack, a role that it is hard to remember any other top coach taking on.

But Ancelotti has stood firm Ancelotti. It’s still 4-3-3. The midfield remains, by and large, the old-school trio of Casemiro, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric. Going forward, it’s all about Karim Benzema hitting on goals and going deep, and Vinicius Junior attacking down the left. Those two have been excellent individually and as a team, but you wouldn’t say Real Madrid have been playing elegant attacking football as a unit.

The defensive organization has been largely impressive considering the overhaul in the center of defence, saying goodbye to Sergio Ramos and Raphael Varane and relying on Eder Militao and summer signing David Alaba, who have developed a good understanding.

There is nothing that exciting happening tactically. Ancelotti switched to a diamond for an early season encounter with Espanyol, Real lost and have not started a game using that system since. Against Barcelona recently, he was without Benzema, so he tried a “box” in midfield with two wing attackers. Real was defeated 4-0 and we will surely not see that formation again. He, too, switched to a three-man defense midway through that game, an experiment that lasted just 10 minutes. You won’t see that again either.

When Ancelotti has experimented, things have gone wrong. When Ancelotti has kept it simple, Real have shone.

Ancelotti is not particularly trying to keep up with younger managers who have fresher ideas. He maintains faith in his approach, which is perhaps best summed up in the title of one of his autobiographies: Silent Leadership.

The truth is that this is not a great Real Madrid. They looked largely pitiful in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 against Paris Saint-Germain and the second leg of the quarter-final against Chelsea, but went through to the next round thanks to an outburst. of brilliance from Benzema in the other games. In all likelihood, this will not be enough against semi-final opponents Manchester City, starting at the Etihad tonight.

But it has been enough to win the League. Real Madrid are 15 points clear with five games to go, and while this won’t be a particularly memorable triumph in the club’s great history, the importance of that impending league title for Ancelotti should not be underestimated.

Ancelotti did not win La Liga in his first spell at the Bernabéu, and a peculiarity of Ancelotti’s management period is that he has not been as effective in winning titles. He managed just four in an 18-year period when he was almost continuously in charge of teams with serious chances of winning their league: Juventus, AC Milan, PSG, Real, Bayern. Considering the talent at his disposal, it’s not unreasonable to suggest he could have won more.

But this Spanish title will mean one in each of the five leagues in which Ancelotti has worked. He would make him the second coach to win a title in five European nations, after Tomislav Ivic, who triumphed in Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and France. Yet Ancelotti would have triumphed in each of the five major European leagues: Italy, England, France, Germany and now Spain.

And therefore, this season means that Ancelotti should always be talked about as one of the great managers for two reasons.

First, for his unprecedented quintuple of league trophies.

Second, for picking himself up at the highest level when it seemed his approach was outdated.

A fourth European Cup would almost simply be a bonus.

(Top photo: Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)