Sometimes things don’t go the way they were planned, they go better. The call that ended with Carlo Ancelotti back at Real Madrid started as something completely different. It was August 2021, he was manager at Everton and he had phoned to ask Madrid’s chief executive, José Ángel Sánchez, about borrowing players, but talk turned to their search for a coach. Zinedine Zidane had walked out again, dropping a letter bomb on the way, and Ancelotti wondered whether they had found anyone yet. Madrid were struggling and Sánchez said no, they were still looking. Which is when the Italian replied that they needed the best and luckily they were already talking to him. “Or have you forgotten about 2014?” he said.
It was classic Carlo. Gently done, an idea cleverly slipped in as if it were not an idea at all, just a throwaway line, another true word said in jest. And like so much of what he does, it worked wonderfully. In 2014, Madrid’s 12-year wait for the European Cup, an obsession that had come to feel eternal, finally ended. The coach who delivered the decima – their 10th and their everything – was him and frankly, yes, he had been a bit forgotten. Now, though, he is for ever.
