The “recommended”, the “son of the boiled meat”. Abroad they celebrate it. He said: «Naples is the place where nepotism made me feel the worst»
Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti (L) speaks with Real Madrid’s Italian assistant coach Davide Ancelotti during the Spanish league football match between Real Madrid CF and UD Las Palmas at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid on September 27, 2023. (Photo by Thomas COEX / AFP)
Sometimes fate is cruel. There was a time when in Naples, due to a reflex conditioned by the inability to take responsibility for their own mediocrities, they started chasing Davide Ancelotti. The son of. The “recommended” of the “boiled”. What in the popular tradition of the permanent job summarized the subgenre of the little boy who joins the bank to replace his father who accepts early retirement to ensure a future of hot meals for his offspring. In Naples, we know, we are Scandinavians. We don’t do some things.
In the years that followed, Davide Ancelotti became the most celebrated assistant coach in the history of assistant coaches. He is again, alongside his father, in the Champions League final. As a protagonist. It is a story that in these parts is processed as a mourning, an unresolved trauma. They don’t understand it. He doesn’t even have a UEFA Pro license yet. A scandal. Then you say amoral familism.
Before him, and the Neapolitan fury towards him, the assistant coaches were actually assistant coaches: they stayed on the sidelines, they only spoke for the disqualification of the starter, they acted in the shadows. We gave media dignity to some of them only retroactively, once the leap had been made. Like Arteta, who was Guardiola’s second at Manchester City, or Mourinho who trained with Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal. Instead the articles dedicated to him in these post-Neapolitan years by the most authoritative sports newspapers in Europe are countless. It is an unprecedented media trail that follows him from England, to Everton, to Madrid. If you read them in a row, one after the other, and connect the dots, the profile of a future – potential – great coach emerges. He is an anticipator, Davide Ancelotti. A “second” earlier than many firsts. An unprecedented phenomenon.
El País already explained two years ago that “Davide integrates his father’s experience with a more modern vision of some footballing aspects”. Javi Martínez, coached by Ancelotti at Bayern Munich, said: “Davide is what Carlo lacks, he adds what is new in football: videos, data analysis”. In 2021 The Athletic wrote that it was Davide who had “revolutionised Everton’s set-piece defence”. In England he was already considered “a rising star much loved by the players”. In Naples, however, il Mattino reported that “the players tolerate Davide badly, they don’t consider him worthy of coaching them”.
Marca, for example, recalls that the scion speaks five languages and has never been a simple deputy. And AS that it was he who chose the five penalty takers in the Champions League quarter-finals that eliminated Manchester City. In 2021 – already three years ago – sources within Real Madrid spoke to El Mundo of a “brilliant, empathetic and professional” professional. He himself explained to As that prejudices ultimately helped him: “I find the hunger for triumph in the need to demonstrate, in satisfying expectations, in the suspicions generated by being the coach’s son.” And two years ago, before the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool, in an interview with Corriere della Sera he dictated a sentence: “I have been working with my father for 10 years and the theme of nepotism comes up when you lose. The place where they made it weigh on me the most was in Naples.” Think about it.
