Carlo Ancelotti (3 page)

We each pulled out our times tables. We realized that there was still a problem left to solve, the result of the FA Cup final. From which I cherish one memory in particular: Prince William saying hello before the game, with the teams already lined up on the field at Wembley. I introduced the players to him, one by one, and after that he simply said, “Good luck.” For a minute I wanted to reply with a question: “Will you introduce me to your grandmother?” But I didn’t have the courage. I have an abiding veneration for Queen Elizabeth, I don’t know her personally but whenever I see her on television I find her fascinating as a person. I’d like to meet
her, though I don’t know how I could arrange it. It’s not like I can call Buckingham Palace and ask to be put through. “Hello, excuse me, this is Carlo Ancelotti—you know, the one who eats too much. Could I speak to Elizabeth, please?” It’s just not done. So all I can do is keep winning, and hope that she notices. With her grandson watching, we won the Cup, beating Portsmouth 1-0 after hitting the goalposts five times in the first half.

There are days when it feels like I’m living a dream. I would make the same decision—to coach Chelsea—a hundred times, the same decision every time. Even if getting knocked out of the running for the Champions League against Inter is a regret that will always be with me. Against Inter, not against Mourinho. In Italy, we said plenty of harsh things to one another, we didn’t particularly like each other (read this book, you’ll understand …), but ever since I’ve been in England my point of view has changed. He made history at the club where I work, his archive of training sessions and exercises has been useful to me more than once, and so he deserves total and rapt attention. We decided to call a truce—a truce signed and agreed before the first leg of our match in the Champions League, in Milan. We met in a corridor at the San Siro, and we made a pact: “No more bickering, no more controversy.” Six words, a handshake, and in ten seconds we had an understanding. People often ask me: why did you get knocked out of the Champions League against Inter? Answer: it was a matter of details. There aren’t any other truths, there’s nothing else to be said. I don’t think José and I will ever be friends, but now we have a real and reciprocal respect. When I won the Premiership, he wrote me a text message: “Champagne.” When
he won the Scudetto in Italy, I sent him a text message back: “Champagne, but not too much.”

No matter how you look at it, it always comes back to food and drink. Chelsea Football Club, with lots of bubbles. My new life. And the taxi cab where it all started.

I
have to say, this taxi driver is starting to make me uneasy. He’s staring into the rearview mirror, but what he’s really doing is monitoring my expression. He’s looking for answers, answers I can’t give him, at least not yet. I’m traveling incognito, rushing headlong into some kind of illicit affair, or at least that’s the impression I’m giving. It feels odd—unlike me. The coach of the A. C. Milan team on an undercover mission. My heartbeat is normal; that’s probably because my mind is busy. Working, thinking. And even, every so often, playing.

Here I am, 007 on a top-secret mission for myself. Sitting behind a driver with the face of an assassin. Perhaps it all makes sense, all things considered, because in a way it’s my life that’s at stake. My future. It’s as if I’m riding in a time machine, not a taxi
cab: from Milanello to Stamford Bridge, from yesterday to today, from one (red and black) devil to another, one I don’t yet know. Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m in Paris, and this taxi is taking me to my appointment with Roman Abramovich, the self-made Russian billionaire and, more importantly—as far as I’m concerned—the deep-pocketed owner of Chelsea Football Club, who’s looking for a new coach.

No one else knows, but we’ve already had one meeting, a couple of weeks ago. It was in Switzerland, in a grand hotel in Geneva, not far from the city center; I’d tell you its name, I really would, but I swear I can’t remember it. I must be getting old. Charlie Stillitano organized the meeting; he’s a friend of mine who works in the world of soccer in the United States. He knows Peter Kenyon, Abramovich’s chief executive at Chelsea. As soon as the soccer season ended, apparently, Kenyon said he wanted a meeting with me. No sooner said than done. I was vacationing on the lake, sunning myself in the fresh water, soaking away the bitter taste of Milan’s failure to qualify for the Champions League. Abramovich came to see me, which is a good sign, but … the guy certainly has a lot of bodyguards! They met me and ushered me in to see the Big Boss and Kenyon; the welcoming committee was rounded out by another executive, a lawyer, and an interpreter. We all sat down, got comfortable, and said our friendly hellos. Then we began to talk. About soccer: nothing but soccer, all soccer, all the time.

For sticklers about dates, it was May 2008. Abramovich wanted to know everything about me, about the way I work, about my philosophy. He was looking for a team with a clear identity. As he told me: “Like Manchester United, Liverpool, or Milan—
certainly not my Chelsea.” As he talked, my curiosity grew. He was nothing like the monster described in the press. Quite the opposite. The first thing that struck me was how shy he seemed to be. The second thing was what an expert he was on soccer: he knew the game inside out. The third thing was his ravenous appetite for success: “My dear Ancelotti, I want to win. I want to win everything.” In fact, he immediately reminded me of someone, another team owner, if you follow my drift … After all was said and done, I came away with an excellent impression of him. The hour flew by, an hour’s conversation in which he never once mentioned money. “Goodbye, look forward to meeting you again soon.”

And now here we are. The Hotel George V, a luxurious place just a short walk from the Champs-Elysées, with a magnificent terrace overlooking all of Paris and, for that matter, today at least, London. I thank the cabbie-torpedo-psychoanalyst as I get out of the car, I give him a generous tip—better safe than sorry—and I proceed toward my top-secret destination. Abramovich and me, Act II.

This has to remain a secret, no one can know about it. That’s one thing everyone agrees on. I’m wearing sunglasses, I scan the street with the expression of a well-trained secret agent: check, it’s all clear, no photographers loitering outside the hotel lobby. Just a few blocks from here, yesterday, they caught Massimo Moratti having lunch with José Mourinho—the chairman and the future coach of Inter. I can’t let that happen to me. Nope, the coast is clear, no one looks suspicious, I can go in. What a magnificent lobby, what a luxurious atmosphere. What … the fuck? No, it can’t be. I can’t believe my eyes. Clear across the lobby, in a secluded corner,
is Federico Pastorello, an Italian soccer agent, and a close personal acquaintance. Do you know the sound of the buzzer when a contestant gets something wrong on a quiz show? Well, as I’m standing there in the lobby of the Hotel George V, that’s the sound that’s echoing in my ears. And beneath it, a tiny little voice that sounds a lot like my own, whispering: “asshole.” No, listen closer. That’s “Asshole.” With a capital ‘A.’

Now what do I do? I hide. Over there, on the far side of the lobby, there’s a little sitting room, an alcove, that’ll be perfect. If I move fast, I can just duck in. Whew! I’m safe. No, I’m not. I hear the buzzer, I hear that tiny familiar voice. Maybe I’m being featured on an episode of
Candid Camera
—there sits a close friend and colleague. Another Italian coach, in fact, who works in a city that is dear to my heart. I laugh. “So what are you doing here?”

“No, what are
you
doing here?”

I laugh again. This port in a storm, this chance refuge is starting to seem crowded. For a brief instant, I feel as if I’m at the supermarket. All of us here for a meeting with this chairman, but the merchandise on display is us. A waiting room for the two of us, or maybe for three, or a hundred, who knows how many of us there are. Awareness dawns, I feel a chill, but still, I’m here to meet with him. I step downstairs. He’s waiting for me in a grand meeting room, designed for a much larger crowd. Sitting around the table are the same people who were there in Geneva.

I want to make one thing clear from the start. “I have a contract with A. C. Milan, I’m perfectly happy there. If I wind up working with Chelsea, it can only be if Milan is in agreement.”

Again, the topic is all soccer, all the time. The inevitable question:
how would I change the way Chelsea plays, if we were to come to an understanding?

“Chairman, your team is very physical, they need to field a more diverse array of skills.”

I come up with a couple of names, Franck Ribéry and Xabi Alonso, players that would give the team a distinct advantage. He comes up with a third name: Andriy Shevchenko, a player he clearly cares about deeply: “I can’t figure out why he’s not playing, ever since we brought him to England, he’s just not the real Sheva anymore, I don’t know why he’s having so much trouble.”

“Chairman, I can’t possibly tell you the reason.” So we talk, and we talk, and we talk some more. I’m very comfortable chatting with Abramovich. He’s not intimidating, even when he says to me, with a slight catch in his voice: “Look, we just lost out on the Champions League finals, we just got bounced out of the championship, I have nothing to be happy about. Chelsea just seems to lack personality. My ambition is to win every game my team plays, but right now I just don’t recognize my team.” He cares very much about winning and about playing the game with style. Again, he reminds me of someone. There go another forty minutes, like a flash. “Thanks very much, Ancelotti, we’ll be in touch.” Not a word about money. OK, I can read between the lines. There’s no opening just now.

I walk upstairs, I see daylight. In the true sense of the word. But I no longer see Pastorello, nor do I see my friend and colleague and fellow coach. They’ve all vanished. So I vanish, too. I go out for a walk, and Paris beckons. A couple of hours go by, my phone rings.

“Hello, this is Adriano Galliani: how’s Paris?” Pause. The vice-president of A. C. Milan. “How’s your little fling going?”

He already knows everything. Caught red-handed, like Moratti and Mourinho. It wasn’t a fling, nothing happened, now it’s clear to me, and I tell him so immediately: “I came to have a meeting with Abramovich. When the owner of such an important team calls you, the very least you can do is go and listen to what he has to say.”

“But you’re not going anywhere.”

“I have no desire to go anywhere.”

I was curious to meet a major figure in my world, sure, but I didn’t feel any burning need to leave Milan. Right then and there, I was getting along fine with my team.

I walk on into the sweet Parisian night, a perfect opportunity to take a few steps back into the past, to remember. To remember one thing in particular: every time I’ve faced a serious decision as a coach, it’s been challenging. They are always delicate situations. They can even verge on the comical. Like the time I took to my heels like a thief in the night, just to avoid signing a contract.

E
verything began in Istanbul, and from the very beginning I should have known that the city has a curse on it; that is, until someone proves otherwise. When I was relieved of my duties at Parma (June 1998, just as the second year in the three-year contract was up), the Turks showed up. Unlike the cliché, they didn’t smoke. I did the smoking, actually. But they were generous with their money. Just three days after the final championship match, I heard from Fenerbahçe S. K., a team with twenty million fans, all of Asian Turkey at its feet. They really wanted me, that much was clear. The company that owned the team was well capitalized; the chairman, Aziz Yildirim, ran a high-end real estate company that ran Turkey’s NATO bases. He was a dynamic and competent person, and at that moment I was his personal objective.
With one major sticking point: I really wasn’t very excited about the idea.

They came to visit me at my home, and they wheedled a promise out of me: “All right, I’ll come visit your training grounds for three days, without obligations. But the trip must be kept secret.” Just like in Paris. The secret journey, which began with a flight in a private jet from Parma, continued this way: a triumphal welcome at Istanbul airport by thousands of Turkish fans, who actually carried me on their shoulders at one point. Accommodations in the imperial suite of the Hotel Kempinski, with a bathroom the size of an Olympic stadium. A constant procession of strangers bringing me carpets—so very many carpets. Dinner on the Bosphorus. An excursion on a sailboat, with photographers perched in the rigging. My name in banner headlines in every Turkish daily. Forty-eight hours of treatment befitting a Roman emperor—just the usual travel arrangements you make when you want to pass unobserved.

My last dinner in Istanbul was when they made their offer. “We’ll give you three million dollars a season for three years.” Translation: a lot of money. Just to put it in perspective: before then, Parma had been paying me 700 million lire ($550,000) a season, excluding bonuses (for the first year, 150 million lire ($120,000) if we won the Coppa Italia, 250 million lire ($200,000) for the UEFA Cup, and 500 ($400,000) for the Scudetto). All things considered, one fundamental truth is undeniable: Fenerbahçe S. K. was offering me a boatload of money.

But that wasn’t what I was interested in. I’d only been coaching in Serie A for two years, not long enough to be able to risk stepping
aside. I wanted to tell them no, but I had to figure out how. I had an idea: I’d keep raising my demands, until they got sick of it. “I want a villa on the beach.”

Answer: Yes.

“I want a car with a driver.”

Answer: Yes.

“You have to pay for all my air travel to and from Italy.”

Answer: But of course.

“I pick my own technical staff and no one else has any say in it.”