Carlo Ancelotti, the affable coach who is a friend of the players

Coach, father and friend: Carlo Ancelotti is a respected coach with an exceptional track record that gained weight this Saturday (1st) with another Champions Leaguebut also an affable figure who makes him very popular with players and fans.

At the celebration of the 36th Spanish League title in the club’s history, in mid-May, in Plaza de Cibeles, ‘Carletto’ posed with a cigar between his lips surrounded by several players who were laughing around him.

He was recreating a similar photograph that went viral in 2022, during that year’s LaLiga title celebrations, and which he explained publicly months later.

“I don’t smoke cigars, it was just a photo with my friends. Because the players are my friends,” he told reporters when asked about it.

It is during the celebrations that Ancelotti is seen at his loosest, happy to participate as another one of those moments of communion with the fans. At these moments, his 64 years do not matter much, the age at which he could be the grandfather of one of the members of his team.

“I have a dream: I want to dance with Eduardo Camavinga”, he said, microphone in hand, in Praça de Cibeles, while the young Frenchman burst into laughter. “Music, maestro!” continued the coach, before starting to dance with the player, with more desire than a sense of rhythm but providing a fun moment widely shared on social media with the 21-year-old player.

Without losing authority, he knows how to weave these almost family relationships.

“At Real Madrid you can see that the players follow him blindly. Carlo is a great guy. He always talks a lot to the players, he treated me very well and helped me a lot,” Barcelona’s Polish striker Robert recently told the German press. Lewandowski, who had Ancelotti as coach at Bayern Munich.

The list of stars he has had under his command is as long as his career, but Ancelotti knows how to manage egos and individualisms, to magically transform them into contributions to the group.

Seventh Champions

He perfectly embodies quiet success, with a character forged in his city in Romagna, where he grew up in a humble family who worked in agriculture.

Since childhood, he remembers that the day the pig was slaughtered was “the best day of the year” and in adulthood, especially after retiring as a player, he made good cuisine one of his favorite pleasures.

“In the kitchen I relax. But not cooking, but eating”, he says with humor. He likes Lambrusco wine and a typically Italian delicacy, ‘coppa’. In his 2009 autobiography, the title chosen (“I Prefer Coppa “) took advantage of the fact that ‘Coppa’ is a valid word in Italian for both sausage and trophy.

But it was in football that he revealed himself to be a true ‘gourmet’: he won his seventh Champions League at Wembley this Saturday, after winning two as a player and now five as a coach, reinforcing his impressive record.

The first four were achieved with Milan, his favorite club, where he stood out as a player for Arrigo Sacchi and the Dutch team (Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard), who made a mark in European football.

With them, after being revealed at Parma and beginning to stand out at the beginning of the 80s at Roma, he won the titles in 1989 and 1990, in addition to the Intercontinentals of those two years and two Italian leagues.

Ancelotti hung up his boots in 1992 and that same year began a successful career as a coach, in which he became European champion with Milan twice (2003 and 2007) and with Real Madrid three times (2014, 2022 and 2024).

After managing other big names like Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich, he can boast of having won the leagues as a coach in the top five European championships.

After rejecting the invitation to lead the Brazilian team, Ancelotti will continue in club football. On a daily basis with his players, forming that special relationship that never fails to bear fruit.