Carlo Ancelotti won the historic Champions League title with Real Madrid in 2014. Historic because the club finally managed to get rid of the “curse of the Tenth”, a reference to the 12 years that separated the ninth conquest of the tenth European trophy.
However, while the Champions League meant a place in Merengue history for the Italian coach, he ended his previous spell at Real with a pimple through his throat.
“Even winning nine of the last ten games, it was too late. We had already lost LaLiga”, said the coach, about the campaign in the 2014/2015 season of the Spanish Championship. The team finished the campaign in second place, two points behind rivals Barcelona.
This Saturday (30), with a 4-0 victory over Espanyol at the Santiago Bernabéu, with two goals from Brazilian Rodrygo, Real Madrid won the LaLiga title. And Carlo Ancelotti no longer has outstanding accounts. The national league cup was the only one he lacked in charge of the meringues.
Hence the disappointment of the loss seven years ago, when his team left the leadership of the competition in March, after a defeat to Athletic Bilbao, and could no longer catch up with their Catalan rivals.
In his first spell at the club, between 2013 and 2015, Ancelotti led the team from the Spanish capital to the Champions League, the Copa del Rey, the European Supercup and the Club World Cup.
At the beginning of this new stage in front of Real, he became champion of the Supercopa de España and now adds the victory in LaLiga to the list.
“Here is a coach who doesn’t need a concept on which to justify his decisions. He prefers that they justify themselves and then he just raises his eyebrows and comments on the obvious. Good for Real Madrid, who have achieved their greatest successes with coaches of this type,” wrote Alfredo Relaño, columnist for the Spanish sports daily AS.
Despite the victorious record built up over the past three decades, Carlo Ancelotti is a coach whose style of play is much less discussed than his European elite peers. Also because of his profile, he bets on discretion and good group management. A former athlete, he understands that the players are the protagonists and, therefore, that success mainly belongs to them.
Ability that, for example, means that Vinicius Junior, 21, and Karim Benzema, 34, at different times in their respective careers, are having their best individual seasons with the Real Madrid shirt.
The Brazilian forward, who had scored a total of seven goals in the three previous LaLiga seasons, has scored 14 in the current campaign, in addition to 12 assists. Numbers that attest to his improvement in front of the goal and in the finalization of the plays.
His attacking partner, Benzema, has never performed as well as he has this season. And Ancelotti has a special affection for the Frenchman, commanded by him in the other passage. According to the coach, the player’s absence was one of the reasons why the team let the Spanish title slip to Barcelona in 2015.
“We mainly suffered from the injuries of Modrić and Benzema because we didn’t have immediate replacements for the specific roles they played and for their qualities,” said the Italian.
“People see Benzema only as a striker, but he also has the skill of a talented midfielder. He has everything, he is a complete and fantastic player.”
If in the previous experience with Ancelotti he needed to open spaces for Cristiano Ronaldo to be closer to the goal, this season Karim Benzema proved to be lethal in front of opposing goalkeepers, reaching the best numbers since he arrived at the club in 2009.
There have been 26 goals and 11 assists so far in winning LaLiga, in addition to 14 balls in the net in the ten matches he has played for the Champions League – an average of more than one goal per game in the prestigious tournament.
Next Wednesday (4), Real Madrid will host Manchester City at the Santiago Bernabéu, in the second leg of the Champions League semi-finals. In the first leg, at the Etihad Stadium, Pep Guardiola’s team won 4-3. A two-goal victory leads the Spaniards to the decision.
The merengue club seeks its 14th European title in history. In the tenth conquest, Ancelotti was there. And there is no longer any pending to be resolved by the Italian before, who knows, lifting the 15th cup.
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