Sacking Carlo Ancelotti would be a major mistake for Real Madrid
The now commonly accepted fact is that Carlo Ancelotti will coach his last game for Real Madrid on Saturday against Getafe at the Santiago Bernabeu, after which he will be fired after his second season in the Spanish capital. Ancelotti’s … Continue reading →

The now commonly accepted fact is that Carlo Ancelotti will coach his last game for Real Madrid on Saturday against Getafe at the Santiago Bernabeu, after which he will be fired after his second season in the Spanish capital.

Ancelotti’s crime? A year after delivering Real their elusive 10th European Cup, the Italian tactician led a trophy-less season, coming up short in both the Champions League and La Liga by the thinnest of margins.

So Ancelotti is gone. He’ll leave with his considerable grace and reputation firmly intact, off to his fifth job in just eight years. In short, Real Madrid is making a major mistake.

Reasonably, he only mark against Ancelotti has been his lack of domestic success – three league titles in eighteen years at major European clubs – but of all those major clubs, Real Madrid is the one that cares the least about the league. They want to win in Europe above all else, and Ancelotti is the modern game’s best knockout coach.

Florentino Perez is the man pulling the trigger again, making Ancelotti his third coaching casualty after returning to his post atop the Real Madrid boardroom in 2009. Ancelotti follows such chumps as Manuel Pelligrini and Jose Mourinho out of the Bernabeu.

Galaticos? This is galactically stupid.

Ancelotti is one of the three managers in the modern game who are in a class of their own. Of the other two, Mourinho has already managed Real, and Pep Guardiola bleeds Barcelona.

But to replace Ancelotti, surely Perez has some football luminary lined up, some transcendent soccer mind with domestic and continental titles?

Actually no, the current front-runner for the job appears to be Napoli manager Rafa Benitez, a decent coach, but a man liked by few, loved by fewer, and truly adored by none. Benitez didn’t win the league title in previous stops at Liverpool, Chelsea, or Napoli, but has won the Champions League once with Liverpool, and he has certainly never been mentioned in the same breath as the man he will be replacing.

Perez is full of himself. And he has reason to be – Real’s money and stature in the world game are unparalleled, and Perez has tapped into that money and stature better than anyone in the club’s great history.

His staggering arrogance is understandable, but it has been and will prove to be costly – and eventually get him run out of his job just as it did the first time he was club President.

Ancelotti is a gem. He is unique in his calm style at the top of his profession. Of the two other managers in his class, the crème de la crème of management, Guardiola and Mourinho coach with intensity, demanding and forcing out excellence. They both have well-documented foibles.

Ancelotti on the other hand, coaxes and relaxes. Funny, personable, and charming, Ancelotti’s style is adored by players who have won for him wherever he goes. He doesn’t wear out his charges in the same way as peers, and draws true loyalty.

Ancelotti restored much of Real Madrid’s image after Mourinho’s final, ugly year, and there’s virtually no one who supports or follows Madrid that believes Ancelotti deserves what is coming to him. Anyone who can see can peg Perez’s ego, which is the size of a small country, as Real’s biggest problem.

The parallels between Ancelotti’s time at Chelsea and in Madrid are clear. He was at both clubs two years, the first year a smashing success, with the second year failing to hit the same heights in the face of a resurgent foe – Manchester United, Barcelona – and a firing accepted as unjust and unavoidable.

When Chelsea sacked Ancelotti, they were downright dreadful for the next two seasons, rifling through Andre Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo, and, ironically, Benitez in the manager’s office, and if Mourinho hadn’t agreed to return last year, they’d still be in the wilderness.

The managerial marry-go-round at the top clubs is exhausting, expensive, and unnecessary. But right now, Real Madrid is out of quality options. Benitez, or whoever gets the job, won’t be up to it. It is, almost surely, the most difficult in world soccer.

Working under Perez is impossible. Before falling out with Pellegrini and Mourinho, it was the great Vincente Del Bosque. It’s widely believed in Spain that Perez goes so far as to influence team selections.

But Ancelotti is a master at working for the most demanding bosses. He lasted longer than any other manager at Milan under Silvio Berlusconi, and had great success.

Now, Ancelotti may be poised for a return to Milan. God help him if that’s where he does end up, since his departure from the San Siro for London in 2009, Milan have won just a single solitary trophy.

Perez might not like his new charge so much. Ancelotti made mistakes tactically in his time with Real, absolutely. He didn’t make his name for his soccer mind.

But what Ancelotti did well – craft a true team out of a cadre of high-maintenance individuals, massage egos, work the press, manage the incredible pressure that being Real Madrid brings with wisdom and charisma, and appease the boss – cannot be replicated.

This Real Madrid team hardly needs an entirely new direction, or an entirely new squad of players. This year, it just needed to stay healthy and get a couple of bounces and it would have won plenty of silverware.

At the end of the day, both Ancelotti and his soon to be former club will be fine – Ancelotti because he is talented and extremely well-connected and well-liked, Real because they have the world’s greatest players and always will.

But the two were better together. There simply isn’t another Ancelotti available for Real Madrid to sign, and next year at this time, that will be all too apparent.

They might have all the money and prestige and stars that money can buy, but the one thing money can’t buy is a brain. That’s how Real Madrid and Perez are prepared to shoot themselves in the foot yet again.