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Left, Carlo Ancelotti holds the trophy at the end of the UEFA
Champions League 2023/24 Final match between Borussia
Dortmund and Real Madrid CF at Wembley Stadium on
June 01, 2024 in London. ©Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images

If you are rigid, you won’t convince the players”. Especially mistakes (‘rejecting’ Baggio, for example) and at the same time
the top-class players, who are often resistant towards those who occasionally turning a blind eye to those of his sons, knowing
try to harness their talent and even more often convinced that that he could gain their respect and affection in return.
they have nothing to learn from anyone. In the press conference following yet another Champions
Of these top-class players, in the course of his career, League victory last June, Ancelotti explained that to win trophies
Ancelotti has coached quite a collection: from Zola to Pirlo, you have to make the right decisions and that decisions are made
from Shevchenko to Zidane, from Del Piero to Maldini, from together with the players.
Ibrahimovic to Modric, from Cristiano Ronaldo to Vinicius Jr. It is no coincidence that if you happened to read or hear any
During his years at Chelsea he was dubbed the ‘diva of his interviews, you would almost never find the pronoun “I”
whisperer’, the man who whispered to the ‘divas’, because he and countless times the pronoun “he”.
knew what to say and how to say it to all those ‘prima donnas’ Paolo Maldini once said about him: “People say that I was
he had to deal with on a daily basis. For some players he has the flag of that Milan team. If I was the flag, then he was the
been an older brother, for others a father. An affectionate, wind.” A wind that has been blowing in the same direction for
generous, anti-authoritarian father, capable of admitting his own more than two decades. The one of victory.

Protagonist Portrait 57