Brazil national team manager Carlo Ancelotti won three Champions League titles for Real Madrid against the odds. He first broke the club's dry spell with La Decima in 2014 over Atletico Madrid, he won the first Champions League after Cristiano Ronaldo in 2022 with Remontada after Remontada, and then he did it again in 2024 after Karim Benzema left for Saudi Arabia.
So when Ancelotti's name is spoken about at the Santiago Bernabeu, it is done so with the utmost reverence, because Don Carlo's resume with AC Milan and Real Madrid, as well as other clubs like even Everton, puts him in GOAT status.
With a lot of great figures whose best work was outside the Premier League, it is often that they get overlooked by pundits in the English media, but former Manchester United midfielder Roy Keane is not one to overlook the serial Champions League winner.
Don Carlo is getting his flowers
After watching how Carlo Ancelotti guided Brazil to a gutsy World Cup Round of 32 comeback victory over Japan, like he has done so many times before at the club level, Keane basically flat out said that out of all the amazing coaches out there, Ancelotti is in his own stratosphere.
Roy Keane said, via Madrid Xtra, “Carlo Ancelotti is the man. There's some brilliant coaches, but he’s up there, top of the tree. It’s fantastic the way players speak about him, his calmness, thats what he brings. It was chaotic when he got the job. He brought together many talented players.”
Now, Keane-o himself played under one of the greatest ever managers of all time, too, in Sir Alex Ferguson, whose track record at Manchester United looks even more impressive in light of their futility after he left in the early 2010s.
But even Keane thinks Ancelotti is at the "top of the three", and there is an interesting layer in there about how calm he is and how the players revere him. Ferguson had a lot of squabbles with his star players like Ruud van Nistelrooy, Paul Ince, and most famously David Beckham, falling out with anyone he felt was becoming bigger than the team, supposedly, or, more to the point, bigger than him.
Carlo Ancelotti has never played favorites like that or felt threatened, and any character has been able to get along with him, no matter how problematic they may seem. When there is adversity and when the biggest games are on the line in the Champions League, swig of Mentos and an eyebrow raise is enough. Carlo is getting his flowers more than ever now, and it is wonderful - and a bit bittersweet - for the Madrid faithful to see.
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