Reaching the Champions League final: Everyone celebrates the coaching icon Ancelotti – only Bayern had the “enemy in their own bed”
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The most important
- Coach Carlo Ancelotti is in his fifth Champions League final record with Real Madrid’s win over Manchester City.
- Only at Bayern did it not really work out for the Italian coach at the time. Why actually? Ancelotti has his theories about that.
- Incidentally, Uli Hoeneß also: “The enemy in your bed is the most dangerous. Carlo turned five players against him in one fell swoop.”
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Toni Kroos said, well, they’ve all seen a few football games in their lives. Then they could talk to each other. So the council of experts met for replaced (Kroos) or unused players (Marcelo) together with coach Carlo Ancelotti, before the extension of the semi-final second leg in the Champions League on Wednesday evening. An image charged with symbolism.
“That,” said Kroos at DAZN about Ancelotti, “describes him really well. And why it always works well with the team. It’s outstanding. In the end he decides, but of course he is interested in our opinion.”
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Real Madrid turned an insane game with two goals in added time and one in extra time, 3-1 after 3-4 in the first leg, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City gone, Real in the final. It was an epic. “The world thought the game was lost,” said Ancelotti. “I can’t thank the players enough. Something very extraordinary has happened.”
Carlo Ancelotti achieves what no coach has ever achieved
The farmer’s son Carlo Ancelotti, born 62 years ago in Reggiolo, Italy, is the first coach in world football to have now reached five Champions League finals. Last weekend he became the first coach to win the championship in all of Europe’s top divisions: with AC Milan in Italy (2004), FC Chelsea in England (2010), Paris-Saint-Germain in France (2013), FC Bayern in Germany (2017) and now, finally, with Real in Spain.
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Ancelotti isn’t an academic, not one of those hip in-game coaches, which means he’s somewhat suspicious of the data chaos of choreographed sport. “Football isn’t that difficult, it’s easy,” he says. When Ancelotti raises his left eyebrow, his trademark, it works in the football teacher’s brain, and that has to be enough.
Ex-Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge once marveled at Ancelotti’s “incredible calm”. In fact, only one verbal attack is known from the pleasure-seeker, who used to be a world-class player himself (AS Roma, Milan). When a fan confronted him in a sharp tone that Ancelotti should “get away” and “gorge himself” on his favorite dish of tortellini, the mister fumed: “I will not allow anyone to insult a decent plate of tortellini!”
Ancelotti had “upset” five Bayern players
Ancelotti, a guy with depth, values distinguishing “between the person and the player”: “I’d rather work in a family than in an industry.”
Real goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois dubbed him a father figure who “can be strict but is warm, joking, friendly”. Ex-Bayern captain Philipp Lahm listed in the “Zeit”: “He has charm, humor and a certain nonchalance. As a player you get your freedom. He is the best at managing extreme characters.” The extreme character Zlatan Ibrahimovic praised Ancelotti as “a fantastic coach and a wonderful person”.
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So why didn’t it work out at FC Bayern, a club that lives in Uli Hoeneß’ belly and is so spectacularly proud of having remained a miasanmia association in the capitalist age? Ancelotti was there from summer 2016 to autumn 2017, he became champion and was kicked out after a 0-3 loss in Paris. Hoeneß barked: “The enemy in your bed is the most dangerous. Carlo turned five players against himself in one fell swoop. That is why we had to act.”
Well yes, Ancelotti said a few days ago on the TV show “Universo Valdano”, looking back on his legendary career as a coach about the Munich interlude. “My idea was to revolutionize the team a bit and that didn’t match the club’s vision. A great player struggled to understand when the moment came to retire.”
Ancelotti did not name a name, the oldest were Franck Ribéry (34) and Arjen Robben (33). It’s not the most secretive of Bayern secrets that both grumbled about being on the bench in Paris; as did defensive leaders Mats Hummels and Jérôme Boateng. To the fifth player, who according to Hoeneß had opposed Ancelotti, the patriarch said with an openness that seemed out of place: “The Coman too.”
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