Ancelotti and Terzic, a generational gap in the Champions League final

Age, career as players or history as coaches: an abyss seems to separate Carlo Ancelotti (Real Madrid) and Edin Terzic (Borussia Dortmund) before the grand final of the Champions Leaguenot Saturday.

Will the duel at Wembley further brighten the career of a living legend of current football or will it consecrate a representative of the new generation of coaches?

Ancelotti fighting for his 7th Champions League

At 64 years old, Italian Ancelotti has nothing to prove and on Saturday he intends to add a seventh continental title to his long and successful career in football. He lifted the trophy twice as a player, in 1989 and 1990, as a member of the team led by Arrigo Sacchi at the legendary Milan team of Dutchmen Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard.

His playing career spanned from 1976 to 1992, entirely in Italy, with prestigious teams (Parma and, above all, Roma and Milan).

As a coach, he won four Champions Leagues, two with Milan (2003 and 2007) and another two with Real Madrid (2014 and 2022).

☀️ ➕ 🌱 ➕ ⚽ ➕ 🛠️#UCL | #APorLa15 pic.twitter.com/h0hAYLxqRl

— Real Madrid CF (@realmadrid) May 29, 2024

To these is added another long list of trophies and the honor of having won national championships in the five main European leagues, thanks to his spells at Milan, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

But despite the experience, Ancelotti guarantees that the anxiety in decisive moments is still present. “The preparations for the big games are always similar. There is happiness in being there and then comes the nervousness or the fears,” he said in the countdown to the final at Wembley.

Edin Terzic, Klopp’s apprentice

Terzic’s career, which is 41 years old, is light years away from that of the Italian ‘master’. He was born in Menden, 45 kilometers from Dortmund, into a family of migrant workers from the Balkans, with a father originally from Bosnia and a Croatian mother.

He has always been a fan of Borussia Dortmund and at the age of 14 he celebrated the club’s only European champion title, in 1997, as a member of the ‘Yellow Wall’. He even went with his brother to the airport to welcome the players.

As a player, he played for ‘amateur’ and lower division teams, very different from Ancelotti, and began to grow as a coach at Dortmund.

First with the help of Hannes Wolf, who hired him as an assistant in Dortmund’s youth teams, where he played with the then promising Antonio Rüdiger, who will be his opponent in Saturday’s final.

And keep going on the pitch! 💨#UCL #UCLFinal pic.twitter.com/6WACr1kQS0

— Borussia Dortmund (@BVB) May 29, 2024

Terzic also passed information directly to Jürgen Klopp, then coach of the first team, about the evolution of promising young players. Under Croatian Slaven Bilic, he was an assistant at Turkish Besiktas and English club West Ham, his only experiences outside Germany, and then returned home to Dortmund.

He coached the first team on an interim basis in 2021, leading to that year’s German Cup title, his only trophy to date.

In mid-2022, he was appointed head coach and in that first full season he almost won the Bundesliga, but in the last round Dortmund failed when they had everything in their favor and ended with a bitter runner-up.

This season, Terzic was at risk of being fired before Christmas, when the team went through a bad run (7 points out of a possible 24), but he held on in the position.

In the Bundesliga, Dortmund finished fifth and is qualified for the next Champions League, but reaching the final in London gives a new dimension to their season and could make them history.

“I have the greatest respect for Ancelotti, but we are prepared for the final. It’s normal to be nervous before a game like this, but I have full confidence in my team”, warned Terzic on Tuesday, on ‘Media Day’ before the final.