At any other club, Carlo Ancelotti would be guaranteed to stay on as head coach next season.
The Real Madrid boss has just seen his side progress to the Champions League semi-finals. They face Osasuna in the Copa del Rey final on May 6. Last year, he won a Champions League and La Liga double.
But Ancelotti knows better than most that things work differently at Real Madrid. His first spell managing the club came to an end in May 2015, only 12 months after he delivered La Decima — a previously elusive 10th European Cup they had been waiting over a decade to win. Memories are short in their corner of the Spanish capital.
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The Italian has said he and his coaching staff “will be here next season without a doubt because we are going to respect the contract”, with his deal due to run until the summer of 2024. He is well-liked and respected by the team’s players. Recent performances have been good, especially in big matches. They beat Barcelona 4-0 at Camp Nou to make the Copa del Rey final, having lost the first leg. Yet none of this has cleared up question marks over his future.
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According to Madrid sources, who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships, Ancelotti and his staff do not know if they will stay at the club — despite what the 63-year-old has said. Privately, Ancelotti is disgruntled with criticism of his near-two-year tenure which appears to have been leaked to the media.
Club president Florentino Perez has little patience for coaches who cannot deliver the titles he wants — namely the Champions League and La Liga, where Barcelona are 11 points clear of title holders Madrid with nine games to go. He is also suspicious of managers who become too friendly with the players, preferring those with a stronger grip on the dressing room.
But the particular demands of managing Real Madrid go back further than Perez and if Ancelotti were to be fired at the end of the season, he would be far from the first to fall victim to the club’s lofty standards.
Here, The Athletic speaks to former Madrid bosses and players who share unique insight into the topic, as well as their sympathy for Ancelotti.
Predrag Mijatovic was the striker who delivered Madrid’s seventh European Cup — their first in 32 years — with his winning goal in the Champions League final against Juventus in 1998. That led to one of the most brutal sackings in Madrid’s history — Jupp Heynckes was dismissed a little over a week later after his side finished only fourth in La Liga.
Mijatovic later returned to Madrid as sporting director from 2006-09, a period in which they won La Liga twice and went through three managers in Fabio Capello, Bernd Schuster and Juande Ramos. The 54-year-old says reports of Madrid looking for a replacement for Ancelotti are normal.
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Mijatovic: “At Real Madrid, more than any other club — with all due respect to the rest — coaches depend on results. You are always at that limit. That forces you to be on maximum alert. In a season when the results don’t go well, there is always a lot of talk about alternatives. When these comments come from the press or from outside the club, you have to wait for the club’s decision.
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“If you have a year without winning a title, you can’t go on, because that is already considered a failure. Regardless of the football you play — more beautiful or less beautiful — what counts is the result. You have to understand that and if you don’t understand it, someone has to explain it to you. Otherwise, you will have a lot of problems. And sometimes, even if you get the result, you have to leave the club because you have to offer something else.
“We have to appreciate Ancelotti’s two periods at the club. The first was very successful, he won La Decima and he left after a complicated year in La Liga (Madrid finished second, two points behind Barcelona). And now in the second stage, he won a double last year in that spectacular way.
“But, once again, apart from what you have achieved, it requires you to do something else.
“I spent three years as sporting director and you have to make decisions. I don’t know if Carlo is going to continue or not. I’m convinced it depends a lot on the Champions League.
“If the Champions League is won (they are through to a semi-final against Manchester City next month), I think Ancelotti should stay on. If he doesn’t win the Champions League, maybe people at the club think they should bring in someone else. From the outside, it may seem unfair, but that only works for other teams — not for Real Madrid.”
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Jorge Valdano also understands Madrid’s need for results. The World Cup-winning Argentina forward saw out his playing career at the Bernabeu from 1984-87, and returned as coach in 1994. Valdano led Madrid to a La Liga title in that debut year, but midway through the following season he was sacked after a damaging loss to Rayo Vallecano at the Bernabeu. He has since taken up director roles at the club.
Valdano: “Let’s start with a preamble. If Barcelona is about coaches, Madrid is about players. Barcelona are more imprisoned by a stylistic model while for Madrid anything goes in search of victory.
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“Barcelona don’t have to win to feel different, there is a further layer, beyond football, to the club’s identity, even a political one. In the case of Madrid, we should define what the club has as a corporate culture rather than a style. With Florentino, it is understood that this is a business of heroes. Madrid play to be dominant and the hammer blow on the table is winning the European Cup.
“I remember a moment when I was in danger in Madrid and I met (legendary Italian manager Arrigo) Sacchi by chance. I told him about my position of total weakness, the pressures. He told me, ‘You have to play with those who you think will defend you’. I think Carlo has that very much ingrained in his personality.
“I value Carlo a lot, because he is an example of simplification. But when I talk about simplification, I’m not reducing him, I’m exalting him. Those who know how to simplify have an overall knowledge of the game when it comes to telling it. Ancelotti has that wisdom.
“He has earned his continuity with his statements. The conflicts that reach the press conference, he solves them and dissolves them. He is a guy who has worked with the most difficult presidents in Europe.
“But at Madrid, the coach’s continuity depends on success, on results — it’s the team where this aspect is most noticeable.”
Valdano was temporarily replaced at Madrid by Vicente del Bosque, who later took permanent charge in 1999. He guided the team to two Champions League final wins and two La Liga titles among other trophies as they embarked on Perez’s ‘Galacticos’ project — but also fell foul of the president’s ruthlessness after the second of those two league triumphs in 2003.
Madrid sealed La Liga on the final day of that season with a 3-1 win against Athletic Bilbao, but Del Bosque’s contract had not been renewed at that point. A frosty celebratory dinner at the high-end Meson Txistu restaurant followed, with players having voiced their disapproval at Del Bosque’s potential dismissal.
A day later, Del Bosque was told of his sacking by a journalist who was about to interview him on TV station Antena 3. Valdano, then the club’s director general, summoned him to an 11pm meeting at the Bernabeu, at which he confirmed the news. It remains a sore subject Del Bosque does not like to discuss.
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Del Bosque: “I’ve never considered myself to be in any president’s camp. I think each president has always wanted what’s best for the club. They all helped to ensure that 100 years of the club have been good ones.
“In the case of Ancelotti, in his first spell as Madrid coach with (former Real defender Fernando) Hierro as his assistant (2014-15), we had lunch one day. He knows perfectly well what the ins and outs of a club are and he shows very good details, like when they played in Extremadura (in western Spain, a three-hour drive from Madrid) and went by bus. He said he liked to see the scenery, and that’s what you have to say.
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“Sporting management cannot be the work of a single person but that of a president, a sporting director… However, all the sporting power and responsibilities end up falling to the coaches.”
One Real Madrid manager who defied the fate that befell many of his predecessors is Zinedine Zidane. The legendary former Madrid midfielder took charge for the first time in 2016 and helped them win three Champions Leagues in a row before leaving on his own terms in 2018.
His second spell as manager, from 2019-21, was more difficult. He overcame the transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus and a period of instability at the club to lead them to the La Liga title in 2020, but there was also constant speculation that he would be replaced.
Madrid spoke to other coaches while Zidane was in charge and two names appeared above others in the press: ex-Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri, and former Bernabeu boss Jose Mourinho. That upset Zidane, who made his feelings clear in a now-infamous press conference in 2019.
“You know the situation,” he said. “It’s 18 years here (since he first joined Madrid as a player). We only think about winning. We can’t change the talk about changing the coach. Am I bothered by the threat of dismissal and the news about Mourinho? I can’t say it doesn’t bother me because it bothers me.”
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The team finished the 2020-21 season without a trophy and Zidane then left in dramatic fashion. He explained his departure to the fans in an open letter published in Spanish sports newspaper AS — which at the time had an extremely poor relationship with club president Perez. But Zidane could have stayed at Madrid if he had wanted to, and some voices at the club think Ancelotti should have that same power this summer.
In that open letter, Zidane complained of criticism of his tenure that he said had been leaked to the press. He spoke of how the club had “forgotten everything I have built on a day-to-day basis” and how “human beings, emotions, life” had not been valued.
“I’m leaving, but I’m not jumping ship and I’m not tired of coaching,” he wrote. “In May 2018, I left because, after two and a half years with so many victories and so many trophies, I felt the team needed a new discourse to keep itself at the highest level.
“Today things are different. I’m leaving because I feel the club no longer gives me the confidence I need, it doesn’t offer me the support to build something in the medium or long term. I know football and I know the demands of a club like Madrid, I know that when you don’t win you have to leave.”
Even Zidane, one of the club’s best ever as both a player and a manager, could not cope with speculation about his job by the end of his second spell as coach.
Perhaps more than anything else, that shows how thankless managing Madrid can be.
(Top photos: Francis Tsang/Cover/Getty Images, Matthew Ashton/EMPICS via Getty Images; Design: Eamonn Dalton)