Carlo Ancelotti is often asked about his team’s performance. Normal. They ask it at the beginning of the season, in the middle of the season and at the end of the season; They also ask him (“the game”) when he loses, when he draws and when he wins. Many memes circulate on the internet about the elaborate tactics of Ancelotti’s opponents, responded to by “the power of friendship” that Carletto invokes by dancing with his players or moving a player’s piece across the board from his goal to the other; Ancelotti as synonymous with what is easy, what is simple, “don’t get involved”.
As in any caricature, there is some truth: sometimes you have such good players that the best thing you can do for them is give them confidence, be sincere and foster camaraderie between them. As in any caricature, what is not highlighted is undervalued so as not to spoil it: Ancelotti’s tactical intelligence and his deep study of rivals, his decisions in the middle of matches, his knowledge of his own players and the resources they can give to throughout the season and 90 minutes. The constant appeal to the irrational, the mystical, the intangible, the shield, the legend or the miraculous plays against him; In this column, even, seconds after winning the penalties against City, and under the usual counterproductive excitement, it was said at first (I love the “se”, as if someone else had written it in my article) that Madrid he had not given any playing lesson and not even a defensive lesson. As it goes back, as seemingly inexplicable things are done on the field, the figure of the coach and his tactics evaporate and everything is trusted to the gods or chance.
At the start of the season in October, Ancelotti said: “Madrid is playing good football. Madrid always plays football well, it depends on what is meant by playing football well. Today we played well with the ball and without the ball.” Without the ball, for example, it was played very well in Manchester. Sometimes you don’t have the ball (because the opponent monopolizes it, because they are physically fitter or more gifted) and you have to play well without it. And play better with him than the rival, in such a way that the rival reaches the area 34 times and scores a goal, and you arrive three times and score another: that is attacking better than the rival, that is defending better than the rival. “We have scored only one hundred goals, we have won but we have not played very well,” Ancelotti said this Saturday about the League.
It’s not that he’s worried about the debate: it’s just that he seems to enjoy it. There is always a moment in the season, when the cycle is good, when the players hear these words from him: “We are going to have a bad time. Painful defeats will come and we must be together when they happen.” Old and wise, he has coached enough greats in European football to know that there is a day when he loses, and if that day the group suffers and the locker room divides, he begins to lose out of habit. The boxer Jero García recently said it in Morning Express regarding the education of children, words that can be perfectly extrapolated to football (anything can be extrapolated to football): “When you prepare children to fit in and not to avoid, the child “You will be stronger and more protected.” Ancelotti’s children know how to do something much more important than winning: they know how to lose, they lose many minutes in many games, and sometimes they feel stronger and more protected with a goal against than with a goal in favor. That’s where the League started to be won.
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