Carlo Ancelotti believes Jose Mourinho “can do a fantastic job” at Real Madrid, with the former Los Blancos boss emphatically dismissing claims around player power at the club as “b******t”.
Mourinho is seemingly poised to return to Madrid for a second spell in charge, having left the Santiago Bernabeu in 2013.
Should he indeed take over, Mourinho will inherit a side smarting from chaotic and trophy-less season, with the final weeks of this campaign defined by unrest.
A petition calling for Kylian Mbappe to be sold has reached over 70million signatures, while last week saw Alvaro Carreras admit to a confrontation with Antonio Rudiger, before tensions between captain Federico Valverde and Aurelien Tchouameni boiled over as they came to blows in training ahead of the Clasico defeat to Barcelona, which secured the LaLiga title for the Blaugrana.
Valverde required stitches a facial injury following the incident, leading him to miss the Clasico, and both players were fined €500,000 by the club.
Club president Florentino Perez did little to calm the situation on Tuesday, calling a fiery press conference in which he hit out at his critics, insisting he will not resign and announcing his intention to call elections.
Mourinho is said to be the preferred candidate of Perez to replace Alvaro Arbeloa, and Brazil boss Ancelotti would be a fan of the appointment.
“To be back at Real Madrid, I will be really happy for him,” Ancelotti told The Athletic. “He can do a fantastic job, as he always did in all the clubs that he was at.”
Ancelotti has himself enjoyed two spells at Madrid, where he excelled at creating the kind of stability that is now glaringly lacking. The Italian won 15 trophies across his two stints, including two LaLiga titles and three Champions League crowns.
Asked how he managed to create harmony in a dressing room filled with star players and big egos, Ancelotti replied: “As usual, I tried to have a relationship with the person — not with the player — because what you are is a person. You are just a person that plays football. That is clear in my mind.
“After that, the difficulties of Real Madrid… the old generation of players has to be rebuilt. In the last years, Real Madrid lost really important players: Casemiro, [Toni] Kroos, [Luka] Modric, [Karim] Benzema, Nacho. The atmosphere in the squad is important, it comes from these players, who have more character, more personality and more leadership.
“So Real Madrid needs time to rebuild this environment in the squad, which gave them a lot of success (before). It’s not only a problem of technical quality. To have success, it is also to find a good balance.”
Pressed on whether the club hierarchy understands that requirement, Ancelotti said: “Yes. It is the club that understands more than any other this kind of problem.”
Ancelotti rejects Madrid player power claims
Madrid promoted Arbeloa from his role of B team boss in January after Xabi Alonso was sacked under eight months after his appointment.
Ancelotti, though, was quick to reject the idea that players at the club are not open to coaches like Alonso who come in with new ideas.
“No,” Ancelotti said to that claim. “Because it [makes it sound like] that players at Real Madrid do what they want. It’s not true. Absolutely b******t. It is absolutely b******t.
“Not true! The players… when I was there, I had an idea and tried to discuss this idea with the players, and I would see if they agreed or not. We even did this in the final of the Champions League. When I have an idea, the player has to be part of this idea. I don’t want to impose strategy. But that does not mean that we do not have a strategy.
“We had a strategy, and we had a strong strategy, because we won two Champions League trophies in four years, and the players were really focused to follow the strategy and follow the plan. The idea that Real Madrid doesn’t want to follow a strategy, it is not true.
“Talking to the players about strategy, in my career it was really important because I had a lot of ideas coming from players. Andrea Pirlo, for example, when I put him as a holding midfielder [at Milan], it was an idea from Pirlo. He said, ‘Coach, try me as a holding midfielder. I am able to do this’.
“To talk with players is not a weakness. It’s just to do a really important action because I have to transmit my idea of football to the players. I don’t want soldiers on the pitch. I want players that are convinced of what to do on the pitch.”
