Carlo Ancelotti is familiar with the dugouts at the San Siro, where he spent eight years as AC Milan’s manager. He’s familiar with the tactics of Jose Mourinho after going head-to-head with him in heated Milan derbies last season, and after his first eight months in charge of Chelsea, he’ll be familiar with the long shadow that Mourinho still casts over the Blues. The Portuguese may have got over his departure from Chelsea, but they’ve never got over him.
Tonight Ancelotti gets his chance to outwit the Special One, to establish himself as a talented, credible, dare we even say ‘special’ manager amongst a still quite sceptical Chelsea support.
It sounds ridiculous that Blues followers are questioning a boss who has led them to the top of the Premier League, into the quarter finals of the FA Cup and into tonight’s San Siro showdown in the last-16 of Champions League, but Ancelotti still has a problem. He’s not Mourinho.
Virtually every big club would welcome the man who won back-to-back Premier League titles with Chelsea in 2005 and 2006 should a managerial vacancy arise. He’s loud, he’s brash, he’s arrogant, but he knows how to control a team, as anyone who witnessed Internazionale’s recent victory over city rivals Milan would testify. Inter finished the match with nine men, but were never seriously troubled. “We’ll beat them with seven men!” roared Mourinho from the touchline. Ancelotti must feel that he can’t win in the eyes of many.
Any success that the Italian achieves will be downgraded by many as its still ‘Mourinho’s team.’ It’s the same problem faced by Avram Grant and Luiz Felipe Scolari, but curiously not Guus Hiddink, whose personality and success in his brief tenure last season ensured that he developed a rapport with the Chelsea fans. They didn’t want him to leave, another problem that Ancelotti walked into.
The Italian lacks the ability to verbally express himself like Mourinho, few do, but his Chelsea teams express themselves more than the Portuguese’s did.
As the two lock horns tonight, Ancelotti can justifiably claim that he’s got ‘Mourinho’s team’ playing more entertaining football. Didier Drogba is in form of his life, and has a legitimate claim to be the best footballer in the world right now. His partner Nicolas Anelka now has a maturity that few thought he was capable of, while Frank Lampard knows how to run a game like few others worldwide. Mourinho must know that his former side are overwhelming favourites.
Perhaps a slaying of the Portuguese would establish Ancelotti’s place in the hearts of Chelsea fans. Perhaps it would get them singing his name to the same tunes that they used to sing Mourinho’s. But perhaps not.
He’s not the Special One, he is simply a very good football manager. For now he can just remain as dignified as he has been throughout his time at Chelsea, and he’ll let his players do his talking for him on the pitch tonight.
That, you suspect, is just the way he wants it.
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