Carlo Ancelotti is considered one of the most successful football managers of all time. He won the UEFA Champion’s League a record five times, twice as a player and three times as a manager. He has coached some of Europe’s top clubs, including Juventus, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Chelsea and is now in charge of one of the strongest German teams, Bayern Munich. In “Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches,” Ancelotti reveals how to handle superstar players, difficult club presidents and demanding media outlets.
Chris Brady, a professor of management studies, and Mike Forde, a former director of football operations and executive board member at Chelsea FC, interviewed Ancelotti around the world for more than fifty hours. The co-authors have also included interviews with those who have played for him such as Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham and Zlatan Ibrahimović.
“The ‘quiet way’ has been with me from my childhood with my father and in football ever since I became captain of Roma as a player, continuing when I joined Milan, where the players looked to me as one of the leaders in the dressing room, and then throughout my time managing not only that club but also teams including Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid,” Ancelotti says in the book.
He has been nicknamed the “diva whisperer” because of his unique ability to nurture deep relationships with his players and has been described as the ultimate diplomat because of the way he handles authoritarian club presidents such as Silvio Berlusconi at AC Milan and Roman Abramovich at Chelsea FC.
“The average tenure of a FTSE 100 CEO is 5.18 years; for English Premier League managers it’s just 2.36 years (if Arsene Wenger is excluded from that equation, the average drops to 1.7 years) ,” writes Chris Brady. During the 2014-2015 season of the English professional leagues, 47 managers lost their jobs. The lifespan of a football coach is compressed into a single season and it is related to the results of that season. Ancelotti describes this process as the leadership arc.
“First comes the courtship, when the club identifies you and tries to acquire your services. Then comes the honeymoon period, when everyone — the players, the staff, the fans — give you the time to establish yourself, but which unfortunately, as always in life, never lasts long. Next comes success and stability, should you be able to achieve it… Eventually, this stability plateaus and then the… cracks in the relationship… Finally comes the breakup, the inevitable parting of ways.”
Pep Guardiola and Hungarian coach Bela Guttmann have said that three years is the natural cycle for managers and Ancelotti agrees. However, some managers, like Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, have stayed much longer.
Carlo Ancelotti spent the longest period of his career as a coach with AC Milan. When he arrived at the club in November 2001, he faced problems with the composition of the team. The transfer of Alessandro Nesta, the 27-year-old who was in his prime, was going to cost 30 million euros ($35 million) but Ancelotti was convinced that his presence on the team was a necessity. He decided to speak directly to Berlusconi and told him: “President, everyone wants to win the Champions League, but if you don’t buy Nesta, we won’t win it. Give me Nesta, and I will give you the Champion’s League.” Berlusconi bought Nesta and AC Milan won the UEFA Champion’s League in 2002-2003 and did so again in 2006-2007.
The AC Milan team had fantastic players like Kaká, Rui Costa, Andrea Pirlo, Gennaro Gattuso, Filippo Inzaghi and Rivaldo but players did not always get to play.
When Rivaldo was asked to go on the bench, he reportedly said “no, no, Rivaldo doesn’t go on the bench,” got up and went home. After the club and his agent spoke with him, he came back and stayed on the bench during a small game. This is when Ancelotti decided to speak to Rivaldo, saying: “Listen, it’s for you, not for us. You don’t have to be worried because it can happen today, it can happen in the next game and it can happen to any player. We have a lot of games and it means you can be more fresh when you play in the next match.”
AC Milan went on to win the Champion’s League. The players were united in the belief that they were a great team and understood that there would be times when they would play and times when they would not.
Nurturing relationships
Ancelotti is reputed for his unique ability to build strong relationships with his players. One player, Zlatan Ibrahimović, is particularly grateful. He acknowledged that if he had met Ancelotti before he wrote his memoir, he would have written a whole chapter on him. He played under Ancelotti when he and Thiago Silva joined the Paris Saint-Germain in 2012. Zlatan, with his talent, experience and unique personality, became the star of the team.
“He is one of the most unselfish players I have ever met which is of massive value to the team,” Ancelotti said of Ibrahimović.
Ibrahimović is grateful that Ancelotti helped him mature as a player and as a man.
“At the beginning, I was a lion, on and off the pitch. I would throw things when we were losing. Paris Saint-Germain was too relaxed for me but Carlo used this. If the game had gone maybe ten minutes with nothing happening, he would call to me on the pitch… ‘Ibra time to wake up the team’.”
Cristiano Ronaldo trained with Ancelotti when he coached Real Madrid. He played in the Champions League final in 2014 despite being injured a month before the game. Ancelotti told Cristiano: “If you don’t feel good, just let me know. It will be tough on me because even if you are only fifty percent you’re still our most important player.”
Ronaldo decided to take part in the game. He did not play shockingly well but was able to score a penalty.
It was “my seventeenth goal in the Champion’s League that season, a record, and we won the competition. I wasn’t fully fit, but I made the sacrifice for Carlo,” he said in the book.
“Even when you maybe feel that you haven’t got the strength to last the whole 90 minutes, or you feel that you can’t run any more, then you need to do it for the coach. I will do for him, because he deserves it as he has always taken care of me. Most of my teammates feel the same — players admire him and will hurt for him,” Ronaldo added.
Ancelotti wants his star footballers to give their utmost and play with the same passion that fired up his ambitions as a player and as a coach.
“Football is my life, my passion, my hobby and I never really ‘leave’ football. As the Eagles say about ‘Hotel California,’ you might be able to check out, but leaving isn’t an option. Switching off is my checkout time from football, but I’ll never leave,” Ancelotti said in the book.
In this great read, Ancelotti gives rare insight into his unique quiet style of management. He is probably the only top manager who has forged lifelong friendships with the players he has coached. This touching memoir reveals the inside workings of the beautiful game and offers readers a chance to get to know world-famous players.
Book review: Get to know football’s ‘diva whisperer’ Carlo Ancelotti
Book review: Get to know football’s ‘diva whisperer’ Carlo Ancelotti
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The African Revolution’
- The African Revolution demonstrates that “the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism
Author: RICHARD REID
Africa’s long 19th century was a time of revolutionary ferment and cultural innovation for the continent’s states, societies, and economies.
Yet the period preceding what became known as “the Scramble for Africa” by European powers in the decades leading up to World War I has long been neglected in favor of a Western narrative of colonial rule.
The African Revolution demonstrates that “the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism.
What We Are Reading Today: "Beautiful Ugly"
- Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author. In addition to “Beautiful Ugly,” she has also published “Rock Paper Scissors,” “Sometimes I Lie,” and “His & Hers”
Author: Alice Feeney
“Beautiful Ugly,” released in January, is a novel by British author Alice Feeney.
The story concerns Grady Green, an author, who is on the phone to his wife while she is driving home. During their conversation, he hears the screech of brakes as she spots an object on the road ahead.
Green’s tries to prevent his wife from leaving the car to investigate the object, before she mysteriously disappears.
To cope with his depression and grief, Green travels to an island in search of solace and perhaps a way to restore his life, particularly after losing sleep and his appetite for writing.
On the island, he is shocked to encounter a woman who resembles his missing wife, and the story takes another dramatic turn.
Although the novel has been rated by more than 87,000 users on Goodreads with an average of 3.6 out of 5 stars, some readers found the pace a bit slow.
“It’s a bit of a slow-burn mystery, which I feel is difficult to pull off since it doesn’t keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time,” one of the reviewers commented.
Despite being a work of fiction, another reader found the narrative unreliable and unrealistic, making it difficult to connect the events. Nevertheless, most readers appreciated the author’s writing style and imagination.
“All in all, I don’t hate the book, but there is too much melodrama and theatrical antics for a thriller. Since this is my favorite genre, I tend to be quite particular about how I like these novels to be constructed,” another reader said.
Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author. In addition to “Beautiful Ugly,” she has also published “Rock Paper Scissors,” “Sometimes I Lie,” and “His & Hers.”
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Shooting an Elephant’
- While Orwell’s self-awareness is commendable, some readers may find his portrayal of the Burmese people overly passive, raising questions about perspectives that remain unheard in this narrative
Author: George Orwell
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” relates his experiences of a police officer in Burma who is called on to shoot an aggressive elephant that has broken free from its handler.
However, the essay — first published in 1936, and thought to be autobiographical — quickly turns into a searing indictment of power’s corrosive grip, with the unruly creature becoming a metaphor for the absurdity of empire.
Orwell sets the stage with quiet tension: the heat, the hostile stares of the Burmese, and the weight of his uniform. He is a man trapped — despised by those he governs, yet bound to the system he serves.
When the elephant rampages through a village, the crowd’s expectation becomes a noose around his neck. Orwell’s prose, stripped of sentiment, lays bare the hollowness of authority. He does not pull the trigger out of duty, but out of fear of appearing weak in the eyes of the villagers.
The essay’s brilliance lies in its ruthless self-exposure. Orwell refuses to cast himself as hero or even victim. Instead, he is complicit, a puppet of imperialism, forced to enact its violence in order to maintain the illusion of control.
Yet, one wonders: Does his introspection absolve him, or merely sharpen the hypocrisy? The dying elephant, gasping for air, is not just an animal, but a truth Orwell cannot escape.
Unlike traditional anti-colonial critiques that focus solely on oppression, “Shooting an Elephant” exposes the trap facing the oppressor.
Orwell’s shame is palpable, his confession unflinching. There is no redemption here, only the sickening realization that power does not liberate, but enslaves.
While Orwell’s self-awareness is commendable, some readers may find his portrayal of the Burmese people overly passive, raising questions about perspectives that remain unheard in this narrative.
The elephant falls, but the real tragedy is that no one — not the crowd, the empire, or even Orwell — walks away clean.
The bullet that kills the elephant also shatters the myth of imperial righteousness. And in that destruction, there is a terrible truth: Tyranny corrupts both the oppressed and the oppressor, leaving both bleeding in the dust.
What We Are Reading Today: Republics of Knowledge
Author: Nicola Miller
The rise of nation-states is a hallmark of the modern age, yet we are still untangling how the phenomenon unfolded across the globe. Here, Nicola Miller offers new insights into the process of nation-making through an account of 19th-century Latin America, where, she argues, the identity of nascent republics was molded through previously underappreciated means: the creation and sharing of knowledge.
Drawing evidence from Argentina, Chile, and Peru, Republics of Knowledge traces the histories of these countries from the early 1800s, as they gained independence, to their centennial celebrations in the 20th century.
Miller identifies how public exchange of ideas affected policymaking, the emergence of a collective identity, and more. She finds that instead of defining themselves through language or culture, these new nations united citizens under the promise of widespread access to modern information.
What We Are Reading Today: The Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting
- Focusing on brittle fracture and rock friction, this book will appeal to graduate and research scientists in seismology, physics, geology, geodesy and rock mechanics
Author: Christopher H. Scholz
A massive earthquake hit Myanmar and Thailand recently. Humanitarians are struggling to deliver assistance.
Why do earthquakes happen? “The Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting” offers a study on connections between fault and earthquake mechanics, including fault scaling laws, the nature of fault populations, and how these result from the processes of fault growth and interaction.
Focusing on brittle fracture and rock friction, this book will appeal to graduate and research scientists in seismology, physics, geology, geodesy and rock mechanics.
