I disagree, Ancelotti plays with a-lot of philosophy, it just isn’t an all-encompassing philosophy it’s specific to the positions he takes and the teams he plays with.
@@jakemorris6888 The difference between Alex fergueson and and ancelloti of first principles and apply them differently klop will conflate first principles with applications
It is their biggest strength. Reminds me of the early Brazilian football which was the Ginga form. Players being able to express themselves freely. One example of a disadvantage when it comes to sticking to a style of play is Barcelona where they keep enforcing the same tiki-taka style and they had to bring in Xavi and now Flick to change that. Madrid doesn't care if they win ugly, if they win parking the bus and their fans don't care either. They'd play any type of style to reach the finals. Barca fans would be angry if their team won or lose without doing it the Barca way.
Absolutely. Any team that is built around a system comes with a chink in their armor. As long as the other teams does not have the revenue or the individual quality to counter it, a good system remains unchallenged. But if an opposition team has figured them out and taken a comfortable lead, what would you do? The players are left clueless because they're not used to it. They do the same things over and over again until time runs out. But what can a team do against a side that says, OK, have the ball and do your thing while we figure you out, and our players will score when you're exhausted? This is one of my favorite philosophies of football.
It's interesting having both Ancelotti and Pep active at the same time. You'd be hard pressed to find more different managers. I think both schools of thought are valid, but it's definitely better for watching when Real Madrid play loosely. Vini Jr getting to make the most of his pace is amazing, highest class football - Kroos and Modric conducting the attack is fun and exciting. Pep's structure is also interesting itself, though. An inevitable machine that grinds out wins. But it's a shame to see such great players neutered. Doku tends to have a looser role, and he is fun to watch (Pep should build from this and create more chances like Real with Vini)
"Why is there still a debate about Ancelotti?" It's partly TAFC's fault. The modern trend of deconstructing tactics - making it seem like every movement is intentional and by the manager (and not by the player, how it actually is) - brings ignorant fans to dismiss managers like Ancelotti who famously reject the over-complication of football.
I think also that there is a very strange narrative around Ancelotti being "simple", when the playing style is actually very complex due to the loose nature of the tactics.
Like, they disregard him in this video claiming that there's "nothing to analyse" when in reality, his playstyle generates too much to analyse since there are fewer reoccuring patterns at face value making the analysis of the game much more complex.
@@1998Cebola When Ancelotti and Allegri talk about football being simple they refer to how instinctive and heuristical decision making is. Players (and managers) aren't statistical calculators. Football being simple doesn't mean it's easy, or that it doesn't take training and tactics to win.
Have to agree, the idea that statistical analysis and deconstruction can tell the full story is laughable. Watch a game of football, there are so many variables that cannot be quantified by statistical analysis.
Who's editing this? For goodness sake when they are talking about a graphic - leave it fully on screen so the viewers can take it in properly, There is absolutely no need to have it up for 3 seconds and then go to head shots of the panellists (we see them for about 45 minutes!!).
I'm not sure it's fair to compare Ancelotti's titles in his tenures at clubs like Parma and Everton with Guardiola doing a tour of Europe's biggest clubs throughout his career.
Definitely not as impressive to do what he did with the teams he had available to him. Best Barca team of all time, then hopping over to a treble winning Bayern squad then to the infinite pockets of Man City. I definitely think it's a more interesting tactical thing to see a manager tinker with less than he wants/has. Man City can buy a £60m player and they never see the light of day because they have infinite money, whereas an everton isn't doing that.
He spent 14 years in Serie A with super teams but walked away with 1 Serie A league title. Now, let's see where he won his league titles: AC Milan, Chelsea, PSG, Bayern & Madrid. He's not an underdog, his resume is underwhelming with the teams he has managed [LMAO]. He didn't win any major titles with Everton & Parma. Please stop being DAFT.
@@KlypticBayern didn't win a league title for 2 seasons before Pep came in. The reason why Bayern was dominant post Pep is because of the structures Pep left in Bayern. These guys said it [LMAO]. This is disingenuous& boring.
Just looked it up on Wikipedia (maybe not the best source), but Ancelotti over his two stints at Real Madrid had a 72.2% win rate. Pep Guardiola has a 72.7% with City, so I don't actually think you can make the argument that Ancelotti is less consistent. Their win rates differs by less than 1%. Ancelotti has 5 champions league wins over 20 seasons (exclude the seasons managing with sides like Everton who could never be expected to win) = 25% win rate. Guardiola has 3 champions leagues over 16 seasons = 18.8% win rate. So overall win rate is basically the same and champions league win rate is comfortably higher. I'd say Ancelotti is the better manager. But I think it's close.
Also this "Manager Career Trophies" graphic is - with respect - utter non-sense. "Major cups" as a category, including all the major European competitions, but also the FA Cup and the so called mickey mouse cups, as if they would have the same importance or difficulty level, just doesn't make sense. The international competitions include all the best European teams competing with each other. Having to eliminate teams like Milan/Inter, PSG, Bayern and City/Liverpool to win a cup is not the same as eliminating hull, exeter and brighton. I enjoy watching them as well - no dig intended - but it is just not of the same importance or difficulty. And for me it really is incomprehensible how this category is justifiable, except if the goal of the graph is to bolster up Guardiola`s record. In this case it makes perfect sense.
@@elitesam7789 its easier to win leages coz havbing the best teams you get another chance when playing another best team from the same league!! Guardiola wud have been easily exposed if he had to compete for league titles against fegusion!!
He already said what his philosophy is-- to adapt his tactics to the strengths and weaknesses of the players. He's not locked into systems like others. In addition, wait until Guardiola finishes 29 seasons and see how Guardiola performs vs Don Carlo.
Exactly. While I am not denying that Ancelotti is up there with some of the greats, I think recent performances with the added media hype around Madrid, Bellingham and Mbappe is leading to him being slightly overrated. 6 league titles in 29 years is a decent but not overly impressive return (4 if one discounts the Ligue 1 and Bundesliga since they can be 9 times out of 10 without any issues at PSG and Bayern). His tactical style does benefit cup games and that has paid off dividends for him. But a truly great manager has an impact on the club and the game beyond the trophies won (Ferguson, Cruyff, Guardiola, Klopp) That's why he shouldn't be considered better than these guys.
No one has debated Ancelotti's management apart from self proclaimed tacticos on the internet. Listen to the players he has managed or the people he has worked under. Praise and love from everyone. Among the top list of managers, no doubt. As for Pep, until he wins consecutive European trophies with a team like Porto or does something similar, he won't ever be certified the first place for me. But yes he's 'among' the top ones too. Just not sure shot number one as the recency bias is making it to be. Specially not man-management wise.
I love how the narrative has shifted from "Pep needs to win the Champions League without Messi to prove he's the best" to "Pep needs to win back to back European trophies to prove he's the best". 😆
@@lukew6725 it’s always been and always will be true, he needs to manage not the best team in the league, man city face 115 charges and of found guilty will be stripped of all titles, meaning half of pep’s career is redundant
@@lukew6725 Pep is an amazing coach, but I do resent him from consistently turning incredible talented players into robots who keep passing to their right or their left. Then he brings new blood to his team who are passionate and make dents into the defenses of their opponents like Doku, but then two years later, there they are, robotically playing backwards or to their sides. He destroys players. Can't stand what he has done to Bernardo Silva, for instance.
Don Carlo lifted the cup 7 times. More than anybody else in the European football. He won the same number of UCL of a club like AC Milan. He's the manager with most wins in the competition, most Uefa trophies, the first to have won in all the top 5 national championships. He's one of the few to have won the UCL both as a player and as a coach, one of the few with 2 different clubs, the only one to have reached the final 6 times as a coach, 9 including the finals played as a footballer. What are we talking about? In terms of results, in the UEFA competitions he is the best ever!
My only blemish on his record is his time with Juve, he should have won the league or CL with that squad. Otherwise probably the best ever manager, pretty good playing career too.
@@souleymanediawara7714 he meant it as in He has hte same number of trophies as the great club milan. He was saying in spite of Milain being such a great club Ancelotti has the same number of UCL trophies. He wasn't dissing milan, he was complimenting milan but pointing out the fact that ancelotti has the same number of trophies *smh*
Saying Guardiola has a good CL record than Ancelotti is one of the dumbest things I have heard in my life. Getting knocked by Tottenham / Lyon / Monaco / Atletico Madrid. Getting outperformed by Inter Milan in the Final. Getting knocked by 10-man Chelsea in 2012. I can go on about how many times Pep had the better team and one of the best squads ever and yet got knocked out by how he overthinks everything. Pep is a great manager and even might be better than Carlo, but no way I can accept he is better at UCL than Ancelotti. I can only blame Carlo for 2 eliminations in his career which were against Liverpool and Depotrivo.
Don Carlo is an absolute legend. His ability to manage players and get the best out of them over such a long period is incredible. He'll go down as a top 10 manager, absolutely incredible.
@@Arg.Comps10 Only pep has managed the best club from each country, Milan wasn't even the best in Italy back then, maybe only forr 2 seasons!! Newbies wudn't knw that coz you weren't born or following italian or european football back then!!
With the way the game is getting over tactical I like how ancelotti always baffles analysts cause they can't analyze and most times their data isnt of much help
This whole video is basically The Athletic having a nervous breakdown like their whole existence is about to shatter. Their over analysis & worship of Pep is being shat season but they can't accept reality of football that it's a team sport.
And also the fact that players have always been and always will be more important than the manager. End of story. If you don't have a good squad, I don't give a damn if Pep is your manager, you're not winning anything.
You have to notice this: Everytime Real Madrid players get recognitions/best awards, people like to say that they're "overrated"/"PR machine behind them"/"not better than player A or B"/etc. But when the talk is about Ancelotti and his place as one of the greatest managers, suddenly they all said "he got those only because he managed the best players in the world". 🤷♂️
@@sanele4780 Exactly. I mean, he's not even a toxic or controversial player who likes to stir up things and making sensations outside of football. The hate on him is awfully baseless.
Plenty of incoherent arguments here regard's Madrid's recruitment policy. Are they buying young and "cheap" or replacing stars from the Decima side one at a time with new expensive players? Also, comparing any manager to Guardiola's success isn't fair. Fella has never had tough gig, and there's 115 reasons why his recent wins might not be in the records books for ever.
He doesn't have a catchy branding like "tiki-taka" or "gegenpress" and he isn't really associated with the famous buzzwords like positional play etc. His problem is simply lack of branding. That's why some smooth-brained hype-based football "pundits" still not quite sure about his undeniable greatness. Easily the 2nd best managers in my lifetime (after Sir Alex).
Years ago, I remember a Guardian writer saying something like "in the eyes of Arsen Wenger, the main problem with football is that it's not played using hands." he was making the point that a manager like Wenger, would every much prefer to plan for every second of the game in the most precise way possible and essentialy remove the human factor. I would say you can say the same thing about Guardiola. And considering his impact on the modern game, it's no wonder how most managers nowadays are obsessed with turning players into perfect robots. Real Madrid however, even before Ancelotti, has been an exact opposite. The human element, and the chaos that comes with is, is embraced in Madrid. There is not effort to enact exact patterns of play. The trust is put on players to know what to do.
Strange take as Wenger was all about letting players make their own decisions on the pitch (to Arsenal's detriment at certain times). He was far from a tactical micromanager.
Ancelotti’s greatest strength is his understanding of his players. He knows exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are, and has the creativity to utilise them in ways that bring the best out of them, even if they haven’t played that way before. He had the vision to move Bellingham from deep midfield to an attacking midfielder, he moved Pirlo deeper from an 8 into a 6, utilised Seedorf anywhere from central midfield to attacking midfield to left wing, made Camavinga a LB, played James Rodriguez as a RW, etc. It’s because he knows exactly what his players can or can’t do, that allows him the ability to seamlessly slot them into formations that a team has never used before, with great success. Ancelotti might not be a tactical innovator like a Pep or Klopp, but he takes the players he has and brings the best out of them, instead of having to turn them into something he wants.
Good discussion lads. One thing that Jon kinda missed out on in his comparison was the very different career path that Ancelotti has had compared to Pep - he had 3 seasons at Reggiana and Parma at the start of his career, then a season each at Napoli and (inexplicably in hindsight) at Everton more recently and at those club she he wasn't realistically in a position to contend for major trophies. He's also had a couple of years out of work. When you factor that in, most of those 12 trophyless seasons are accounted for and suddenly his consistency looks much more comparable with Guardiola's.
exactly, that John guy is clearly a Guardiola's fan, like all the analysts that only focus on tactics and stats and are convinced that football is a science. Guardiola is great but he never challenged himself by coaching a minor team, that is why it may seem that he has better career stats. But looking at his Man City Champion's league performance it is quite disappointing, considering the team he has and the money they spent.
@@Alex-ku2npwhy should pep challenge himself with a minor team? He has always succeeded with major teams, so all the major teams want him. Why would he coach derby county when teams like city, Bayern and Barcelona wanted him.
Don Carlo is the ultimate man manager & smart tactician getting the best out of the stars that he has. PSG appointed him too early, they should have had someone like Poch earlier & then Carlo when they had the likes of Messi, Mbappe & Neymar.
Pep, Mourinho, Kloop all have philosophy and system so they need certain type of players. Pep needs player who can keep the ball, Mourinho needs player who can run fast when counter attack from low blocks, Kloop needs player who can pass quickly after pressing high field. Ancelotti see what players want and can do best so he doesnt change them. Kroos and Pirlo always want to come deep, Kaka and Vini always want to run with the ball, etc. The hard part is if you know what a player would do, how do you choose your first 11. Balance is needed.
The piano guy (John?) who still thinks Ancelotti is debatable clearly believes that football is just about tactics, statistics, and numbers. This perspective is wrong. When will they understand that football isn't a science? Ancelotti has always maintained that while he considers statistics, they are not the primary factor in his decision-making process. The technical analyst who idolizes Guardiola makes me laugh; he likely has never played football in his life.
I don't see that there is a debate that Ancelotti is an all-time-great manager. He just is, this is incontrovertible. As to THE best ever, that's always going to be subjective and is so hard to judge across different careers and time frames. Like, the comparison with Guardiola is so skewed - firstly, in that Ancelotti's career is so much longer, but also in that in includes periods with teams like Reggiana, Parma, Napoli, Everton who were not expected to be winning titles, while Pep has always managed a team that's either favourite or at worst top three to win the title in a major league. Then even when he was with a top team for a long time in Milan, he took over the team at a low ebb and was contesting Serie A with an amazing Juventus and Inter sides and in the CL it was one of the most competitive eras in the competition, and still won it twice. Average records don't take that context into account. What I love about the contrast between Guardiola and Ancelotti is that it shows there isn't one true way to be an elite manager, even in the same era, and it shows that old mindsets can still work, but also that old managers can still evolve. That contrast is part of what makes football great. Styles clashes make for an interesting sport.
Not even just Inter and Juve as rivals, either. That was mainly whilst he was Milan manager. Ancelotti was also managing Reggiana, Parma and Juve during that period in the late 90s/early 2000s when Serie A was arguably the strongest league to ever exist. You had several clubs competing for the league title every season. Trying to have some semblance of consistency in terms of winning trophies in a league and era like that was a mug's game, when you also have the likes of Capello, Sacchi, Lippi, Trapattoni, etc to compete with and 80-90% of the best players in world football playing in the same league.
I'm shocked that there is even a debate! He is already a living legend in football management. His way works. It has worked wherever he went, when he had the the right players. Stop comparing him with other managers when his methods deliver the results his clubs look for
The idea he's just "vibes" irritates me; players wouldn't improve under him if that was the case, and more would struggle to play in more rigid teams afterwards
"flow state" is entirely a vibe phrase. What's weird to me is that even though discussion turns into one of tactics vs...ugh...vibes, it still all fits in a tactics uber alles frame which is that if everyone is patterning their plays, creating pockets of unpatterned play (when players lead decisionmaking) is harder to counter, and also might pull an opposing team into an unexpected shape that's easier to exploit. One other note for me is that Ancelotti's career encompasses not just more leagues, but a changing landscape in those leagues and the global game. There's so much changing then. I don't think that changes the league consistency conclusion Jon has, but it's a much less obvious than he was with AC Milan.
It's also notable that channels like this would prefer the system-driven approaches over decision-making approaches is that they can mimick the patterns of play on their tactical board and draw out a clear blueprint of how they play and what they do. This brings them credibility among viewers and bigger outreach. But what can they do with a manager like Ancelotti? They can't make accurate predictions about how his team is gonna adapt.
Also that argument about consistency is a bit strange. Yes, Guardiola's teams are very consistent. Barcelona was maybe one of the greatest collection of playets of all time, Bayern, as a team with a budget that dwarves everybody else's in the Bundesliga and 115 Charges FC is a team that is bankrolled by a petrostate and most likely cheated itself to the top. And even with managing all those amazing teams, the most consistent part about him was that he didn't manage to win a Champion's League between 2011 and 2023. Winning the league and cups in In Germany was a joke and a stat booster. Winning the league and one of the cups on the UK with a cheating Petrostate team, also not that impressive.
100% correct. Guardiola is a brilliant manager, no doubt, but massively overrated. He cannot do what Klopp, Mourinho, Ancelotti, SAF did/do at their peaks. Imagine Pep trying to win the league with that United team that Fergie won his last title with.
@@archaicrapture TBF, he doesn't really have a "peak", just an insanely long and consistently successful career at a huge variety of clubs with very different setups
@BigDome1 My brother in Christ, he never defended a league title. He won his top 5 league titles with big teams. He doesn't have consistency in top-flight football. 6 league titles in a career that spans almost 3 decades. That is underwhelming with the clubs he has managed.
I really do find Jon Mackenzie's attitude and analysis here a bit lacking. His bias in favor of Guardiola and all that that entails is too palpable. Now, a few things: 1. I thought the bar graph analysis segment was quite crude and unconvincing relative to its purpose. Guardiola has had the most privileged managerial career in Football history, landing on the FC Barcelona bench during the greatest player/squad golden generation any club has ever seen and with a wounded and in transition Madrid as rivals, then he goes to Bayern Munich and fails to win the CL while winning the procession that is the Bundesliga, and then in Man City he arrived at yet another incredibly privileged club context again and failed many times in the CL and won leagues that have asterisks to them due to the privileged and maybe even illegal workings of his club, particular in relation to Liverpool and Arsenal, which have had to pull of herculean tasks with inferior players to come close to Man City. That is context that has to be taken into consideration. Ancelotti has had stints in clubs that have had no chance in the league or CL from the very get go. The most damning thing against him if anything are the lack of more league wins in AC Milan and perhaps in Madrid as well, but I'd have to look more at the context surrounding the AC Milan years. 2. Even as a Madrid fan and despite our enormous recent and historical success with a certain brand of manager and squad philosophy, I'm not completely convinced by all that, and I do think a bit more of tactical sophistication that is also reflected in the sporting direction would be a good thing, akin to what Man City and Guardiola are doing, but I don't think this video makes a good enough argument or study on all of that. One thing I don't like about Ancelotti is that he doesn't require the team to have high pressing and to be more imposing on a usual basis, and I don't necessarily like what that can go on to say about the club's sporting direction and climate, it shouldn't be a problem to do that at a big club with big players, as Mackenzie sort of said near the end of the video.
He probably doesn't care for the high press because it doesn't actually matter. He knows the only stat that matters is who wins the game. He probably tries to make it so that his players are fresh and fit for games.
As the resident AC Milan fan, I think I could provide a bit of context for his stint as Milan manager since you mentioned wanting to look more into it. We had Ancelotti as manger for 7 and a half seasons, from halfway through the 01-02 season, to the end of the 08-09 season. In that period, we realistically only had 5 seasons where we were competing for major silverware (Serie A, Coppa Italia, Champions League). In fact, our 2 UCL winning squads in that period were arguably the two worst from that 5 season stretch. Our strongest squads were 03-04, 04-05 and 05-06, and all we managed to win in those 3 years was a single Scudetto. Now, I think the level of competition at the time was particularly strong, both in Italy and in Europe, and that needs to be taken into account. We had Juve, who were basically domestic gods under Capello. Inter were very game in the league and fought us tooth and nail TWICE in the UCL knockout rounds. On the European stage, you had the Galacticos, Barcelona, who were arguably our biggest rivals, Mourinho's Chelsea, as well as the usual suspects in United, Liverpool, Bayern, Ajax, etc, all of whom we had to face at one point (except Chelsea). Now, all in all, we probably should've won at least 1 or 2 more Serie A titles under Ancelotti, and most fans consider that a bit of a missed opportunity to improve our standing domestically, especially considering how many great players we had. And Carlo does get some criticism for them (he did at the time, too). The 2004-05 season, in particular, was a disappointing one because odf the Champions League final heartbreak, but also because we bottled the league after leading Juve, and probably being better than them overall that year. However, 1 league title in 4 seasons where we really had a chance to win it is not bad (06-07 we had no chance because of the Calciopoli point deduction), and we still were the best team in the Champions League in that period: 2 wins, 1 runners-up spot, a semi-final and a quarter-final. And the only thing preventing those 2 UCL wins from being 3 or 4 was two nightmarish nights in Istanbul and A Coruna. Even in the 2006 semi-final against Barca, we got robbed by the refs who ruled out Shevchenko's header for a nonexistent ''foul'' on Puyol. So, all in all, 2 UCL wins, 1 Scudetto and 1 Coppa Italia in just under 8 years is not terrible, but it also needs to be put in context. It was a very competitive era for both Italian and European football, and we never had a great squad for the entirety of his time there as manager, only maybe half of it. A few missed opportunities for trophies, particularly in the league, and a couple of horrible nights in Europe, but all in all a very solid period for our club. Perhaps not 10/10, but definitely 8 or 9. Should that squad have won more? Yes, but things don't always go your way. Ancelotti is also largely responsible for a lot of our best players coming to Milan in the first place. Kaka, Cafu, Nesta, Pirlo, Seedorf, Inzaghi, Rivaldo, Stam, Crespo were all Ancelotti signings, and even guys who were past their primes but arrived to help the team like R9 or Ronaldinho were there largely due to his influence.
@@Al-ji4gd Thanks for the added context, nice post! Mackenzie didn't do well enough with considering said context. I do think though that Guardiola being so process based and so focused on control through attacking, possession, and team pressing does ultimately result in "better coaching" that probably optimizes teams more than what Ancelotti does, with the added benefit of bringing values into the team and club that have to do with the club and the team's process being ahead in the pecking order in importance over the players being coddled and indulged. Ancelotti being known as a "galactico whisperer" and as someone who can manage otherwise unworldly dressing rooms by delicately indulging them does not convince me as much as an approach where the club and team are what's most important and where player purchases are more scrutinized in the technical and psychological mindset aspects. As a Madrid fan, I think we are doing arguably the best job in the world as of late with buying and selling the right players, the last piece in the puzzle is to have a mindset shift in the club and with a new coach that revolves around adding a more process based approach to winning. Even in the modern era where Madrid has seen success with Del Bosque, Mourinho, Ancelotti, and Zidane, you never get the sense that the process is ahead of the players, or the sense that the team is as consistently optimized or dominant as it could be in the way it plays. You don't get the sense that Madrid is as proactive, or sophisticated as it can be. You get the sense that the team wins more due to strong mentality, talent advantage, and having a functional enough tactical set up to let the players do the talking. It reflects on the sub-optimal league count for Madrid in the last 30 years. Less work rate, control, and domination by design over a consistent league schedule. Ultimately Ancelotti has been most successful when his squad has had more sensible stars than divas, when he's been able to isolate the diva forwards and surround them with functional enough schemes made up of functionally hard working enough talented players, but there's a sense in that that sometimes his success has been more borne out of luck and happenstance than careful imposed-on design.
That manager Career Trophies graph is really wrong if you think about it for a second. Guardiola managed only 3 teams his whole career, Barcelona, Byern, City, all the best team in the league at time. I wonder how that graph would look like if Guardiola were managin Napoli or Everton. I don't doubt he'd get a title here or there like Mourinho does, but he would loose more often than not.
@@civildiscourse7626 A barça with the best player ever, xavi, busquets, iniesta. Im not saying Guardiola isn't good or that he only won because of those teams, but they were the best in the league. Just look at the City squad when he got there and tell me otherwise.
@@jonnyso1 those players became the best under pep, xavi and iniesta didn’t even start the champions league final barca won under rijkard. So really pep created that team
@@civildiscourse7626 Sure man, I wonder if he got at everton if sudenly players there would become Xavi and Iniesta all of a suden. There is a Messi in every team waiting for Guardiola to wake them up. He's good but he's doesn't do miracles. He had good material and he knew how to use it. That's his merit, my whole point is that he only ever worked on the biggest teams around. Simple as that, saying that he's some genius that would win everything no matter the club he's working at is just silly.
@@civildiscourse7626 I can be wrong. But I think that Guardiola got the successful barsa of Ronaldinho, Deco... under Rijkaard as a coach. So it was already a winner. The Bayern Guardiola got was after the treble got by Heynckes. And in City, I agree he did good, but the amount of millions spennt and a team built picking-up players like FIFA videogame... Don't get me wrong, I think Guardiola is very good, but considering him the best forgetting the context of his success... I don't see it
You should make a video of " how is possible Guardiola to win only 1 UCL in the last 12 years" He managed prime Bayern ( treble winner when he joined them ) Unlimited money City and ....beautiful football and robotic players didn't help him to win more than 1 UCL after Barca
Has to be a lot easier to be extremely tactic driven when you go to clubs with infinite pockets to suit exactly what you need. City can spend £60M on a squad player that gets basically no minutes and its just another day for them. Pep going into management with the best Barca team in history, then to arguably the same with that treble bayern side. He is able to do this because his teams have the ability to, lets see him manage Everton and try his style, or any team that doesn't have infinite pockets. All of the other managers up there in the top 5 talks have success at a 'lesser' team, Jose with Porto, SAF with Aberdeen, etc.
Ever considered they had to start from bad teams cause they were nobodies before getting in football. Pep was a Barca captain and a UCL winning midfielder and hence could get the Barca coach and did not have to go to mainz or Porto or aberdeen
Well his protege tried it and failed at Burnley FC but somehow managed to get the Bayern Munich gig. I agree, it's easy to hail a manager as a genius tactician when he succeeds with the kind of resources Pep has had at his disposal since he started coaching. Don Carlo is a manager who has consistently got the best out of the players available to him and won trophies when the team was capable of it. So he has earned my respect.
@@Al-Brewster my lord . Don carlo had the greatest players ever in his arsenal . Remember the AC Milan team ? The Chelsea team of 2009 . Real Madrid 2014 team . Ballon d or Benzema . What are you on ? Don carlo also managed Bayern and PSG .
He wants to make it look easy. It's a very italian thing and it's often defined as italian coolness. That gives the illusion of "vibes only". But to get the best out of every single player and serve the whole team with their quality is extremely difficult and the reason why most managers aren't as successful as he is. He's a genius in this, while Pep is a genius in tactics
Him not having a style, is a style. They're so adaptable. Like against Man City. He knew and his team knew "there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that we'll out-possession the possession kings". And they planned for this, over two legs. With different game plans. But building on the same theme. And the fact he can get the best players to ever kick a sphere. To play ugly. Chase back. Just really nasty, high intensity chasing and pressurising.
I’m glad Ancelotti won it again. Hopefully one day these guys will wake up and realise that football is bigger than Pep and overly analysed tactics and stats. Funny that they mentioned Alex Ferguson because if he was still managing, they would be saying exactly the same thing about him. Being a great manager isn’t just about having a set way of playing and never changing it. Just because you don’t understand what Ancelotti doing, it doesn’t mean he’s not great.
So confused why this content isn't loaded into a podcast in the Athletic app. I bought the athletic because of Tifo and all they've done since then is put Tifo to the side in an effort to rebrand and not spotlight their content (like this). Very frustrating.
I was thinking about the fact that when he started as a manager he was an acolyte of Arrigo Sacchi, a diehard structure manager, but he also played under Nils Leidholm at Roma who had a much mire free-flowing style as does Ancellotti today, I'm glad that you guys mentioned part of it
Data wise, it's highly misleading to group champions league along with league cups as it distorts the graph when it comes to the levels of achievement, pressure and overall impact.
The debate comes from the so called “tactitos”. I guess if you don’t dominate ball possession you’re not a good manager. I used to say Mourinho is the best but Ancelotti is the best now. He keeps winning
Obviously Guardiola is one of the greatest managers of all time. He may well prove to be the best ever. With that being said, it absolutely floors me that so many people conveniently leave out the fact that he has only coached teams with MASSIVE financial advantages at every stop. 1. Barcelona - Amazingly, this is actually the club with the smallest financial advantage relative to its competitors. Even so, La Liga has basically been Barcelona and Real Madrid with the occasional challenge from another club for the better part of, well, forever. He also coached Messi as he was entering his prime, and he was okay. 2. Bayern Munich - Their revenues are well over double of the next closest Bundesliga club. Interestingly enough, after Guardiola left they still won another 7 domestic titles in a row, and he never won the Champions League with them, something that Jupp Heynckes and Hansi Flick achieved with them both before and after his time with them. 3. Manchester City - Money is quite literally no object. Whatever player most perfectly suits his system he can have. Whatever he wants he can have. The fact that Ancelotti has gotten the better of him more often than not since his move to City in spite of this is incredible. Winning the Champions League will always be a massive achievement, but doing it once in 8 seasons with such a ridiculous advantage is, quite frankly, not impressive.
It's mad that he couldn't win the CL with Bayern even though they won it immediately before and after him you could argue he actually made them worse Schweinsteiger even said as much in a recent interview with Gary Neville.
What makes him so great is that he takes an interest in his players. Knows what they like off the pitch. He really is the father figure that some of these players never had. So you play for him and not want to disappoint him. You go out there and make him proud. Second of all, he gets all the players on the same page by making them speak the same language of the club they are at. So with Madrid you speak Spanish and he gets players together to speak to each other in Spanish. So when you are on the pitch, you can communicate with each other. He tries not to have executive cliques between players. He doesn't need to yell to get his point across. That's why his players are so fiercely loyal to him. Just remember he has won 7 Champions League titles. 2 with AC Milan as a player, 2 as a manager, and 3 with Real Madrid. He's just the best.
Not gonna lie, Carlo Ancelotti as a medium for Isiah Berlin’s conceptions of liberty was not the video I thought I clicked on, but I’m all here for it. Next, given that people football for aesthetics, maybe 3rd man runs as the embodiment of Kant’s Third Critique?
Would be interesting to see Pep's win ratio in seasons where Barca didn't pay off the refs or Man City didn't do 100+ FFP violations in order to rack up those trophies and build up consistency.
Great managers get talent and let the talent show- in all manner of business. A great man-manager and humble. Too many managers now want good PR and too much respect, rather than letting thier team of players play the game and show off thier skills. I find it refreshing and a good reflection on the human spirit. A festival of football is what more teams need
Some of the comments here are talking as if Ancelotti consistently managed the Evertons of the world, but that's just not the case. 6 titles considering the teams he's managed is undeniably underwhelming. He's still a great manager and will rightly go down in history, but it's definitely up for debate if he comes close to Pep and Sir Alex. Anyway, excellent video, particularly enjoyed Jon's piano lesson analogy.
Until Pep wins consecutive European trophies with Porto, or something like 3 straight UCL titles with any team, I also think think it's up for debate if he is only excels in a particular structure as a head coach, and not exactly fully managing. He has had full support and quality players everywhere he has gone. Every era has a manager who everyone thinks is the greatest. In all honesty, very much depends on the context and timing. Hand Pep the 2008 Stoke and he's not as great, possibly 2 of his 3 UCLs gone. He's a fantastic head coach, but also was lucky enough to be surrounded by the correct context and luck. Man management wise, lot of players still have higher praise for likes of Jose and Carlo. It's worth a thought.
Maybe it's because he has never been stationed in a league for a very long time. I would say he's the best coach to ever coach football. Anchelotti Fergie Pep What anchellotti and fergie had against them and why people have doubts about them is mainly that. They were not innovators like Pep and Klopp or rangnick to an extent. They were adaptors, and they found a way to adapt to a league and its change, and that's where mourinho had failed. Fergie is more remembered because he lasted in the league longer. Anchelotti, on the other hand, is a concurrer. I love Don carlo. As a united fan, I appreciate him
Ancelotti was hailed as one of the innovators in football tactics when he pioneered the Christmas tree formation, people just conveniently forget how football pundits were in awe of it at the time.
Don't especially like those bar charts where the champions league is qualified as the same as the league cup. Should be it's own separate bar, skews the relevance of the data.
I think at this point it's pretty clear that Carlo Ancelotti is the greatest manager of all time, unless your criteria is "he needs to have a clear tactical identity" instead of winning trophies. He has won the league in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, and despite that his league performance is considered his "weakness". 2 Champions Leagues with Milan, and 3 with Real Madrid. The great AC Milan, who should be up there with teams like Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, has been an average team since he left them. His La Decima team was blessed with incredible players, but he still won them it after years of trying, failure after failure, even something Mourinho couldn't do. His Real Madrid of 2022 and 2024 were obviously way weaker than Zidane's threepeat team, but he keeps winning nonetheless. I think a lot of people just refuse to give Carlo Ancelotti his credit because they want to insist that Pep Guardiola is a better manager, which to me is a ridiculous notion. His "tactical identity" has been used by Spain since 2006 under Vincent del Bosque, and system that has its beginnings under Cruyff. The 2008-2012 Spain team was probably the best national team I've ever seen, and it had the same core players as Guardiola's Barcelona, except they were dominant without Messi. Guardiola also inherited Jupp Heynckes Bayern, one of the best teams I've ever seen, and failed to win the Champions League, and made them a worse team at the end. Now he has been at the richest team in the world for 8 seasons with one Champions League, a team with allegations of cheating. Ancelotti has 3 in 5 for Madrid. Even Zidane is at, what, 3 in 4 years? Guardiola has a terrible Champions League record for the amount of resources he is given. He has never brought success to an underdog team like Mourinho with Porto, or SAF with Aberdeen.
Still, Real is at the very top in terms of goals conceded, with 26. Only Leverkusen did better (22), and both Arsenal (29) and ManCity (34) did worse. Inter beat them all, with 22. Still, Real lost only one game (Leverkusen 0). So obviously Real is a team that knows how to defend, and that has to mean there is some real structure being imposed, at least defensively. It's not all fuzzy "let them do what they do best."
Pep is better in UCL based on statistics when you add DFB Pokal and FA Cup inside that major cups statistics LMFAO Or does he really think beating Norwich, Bournemouth, Luton type of clubs in FA has the same difficulty as beating PSG, Bayern Munich, Liverpool in UCL?? WHAT A JOKE
You just don't understand what he said, Ancelotti has managed for 29 years and won the Champions League 5 times (at the time of recording), giving him a rate of 17.24% of winning this trophy throughout his career. Pep has managed 16 seasons and won the Champs League 3 times, giving him a winning rate of 18.75%. So yes, at the time of recording, Pep had a better success rate in the Champions League
@@sp3ngg So why he didn't put Zidane hattrick in less than 6 years of senior managerial resume? And how the hell you can possibly won UCL with Parma, Reggiana and Everton when the team didn't qualified to play in UCL?? It's obviously cherry picking..
No, no! It is emotional attachment that make fans not recognizing him as the greatest coach ever. But when you put emotion aside, Anceloti is the greatest coach. Slot data by points ranking in opta computer and I bet you, he will come up on top.
Was just thinking re the interesting manager comparison chart that if you take out years where Carlo (and Jose) were managing teams with no hope of winning anything (not something Pep has ever had to experience) their numbers would improve at least somewhat
Never ever put Pep in the same bracket as Carlo. Carlo evolved thru out the years and has a long and brilliant career. Whereas Pep on managed three big clubs in their peak. I said it over and over again, Pep needs to go to a smaller club with a lack of funds and then we will how good he is. He should try out clubs like Spurs, BVB, Leipzig, Napoli, Roma, etc
Ancelotti has one philosophy: win As a Barca fan I have tremendous respect for him. He has the love and respect of the his players and staff. He knows how to manage big egos and get the very best out of everyone. From the starting 11 to reserves. Who cares about an identity of play. Just win.
*written before watching the video* There is debate because like Mourinho said yesterday he is not a "trending" manager. He is not controversial like Mourinho, charming like Klopp or a evil genius like Guardiola. He is an old school manager - he is not about elaborated tactical systems and mind games. He is about Men Management, a formation that fits the players in squad and give them freedom to be themselves (instead of players hammered into a position like Guardiola does), professionalism and making perfect subsitutions at the right time.
Bit harsh from JJ on Kombouaré's time at PSG, it was QSI. The french coach was top of the league when Ancelotti arrived in january 2012, Carlo lost out to Montpellier, but won in the second season. He was a great coach in france but doesn't make predecessors bad, just had a very different squad
man, that bar chart is so damn awful. guardiola: inherits an almost perfect barca squad and wins them three leagues in a row. then inherits an almost perfect bayern squad and farms the league but fails in CL. now he has a state sponsored team built to his specifications since 2016 and farms a much harder league. champions league wins? 3 in 15 seasons at absolute top clubs (+1 final). zidane won 3 in 5 seasons - coaching ONLY real madrid. ancelotti coached 21 seasons of CL and won 5 times (+1 final).
It's because, unlike systems managers, it's much harder to see or quantify what he does. Yet his subtle, adaptable tactics and most especially, his man management are clearly at elite levels.
I'd love to see Guardiola have won a UCL with Porto, rivalled Manchester United with Chelsea before they were at their best, won a treble with Inter and competed against Barcelona the way Mourinho did at Madrid, as well as winning a title and finishing second in the Prem with a joke of a team (which should have won the league but they were robbed by C115ty), before picking up a European title with Roma. Very misleading mentioning the 80% figure. Guardiola walked straight into insane teams only - even one considered the best ever. And even though he's been at consistently stronger sides, Ancelotti is the one who's dominated the UCL.
At the beginning of his career Ancelotti was very rigid on his ideas and schemes. He refused Baggio and let Zola go because he was thinking a 10 player would not beneficial for his 4-4-2. Year after year he evolved and now he is much more flexible.
I think one of the reasons is also that he moves from club to club. In particular he's been sacked by Parma, Juventus, Chelsea, Real Madrid (his first spell), Bayern, and Napoli. The only club he has spent a significant amount of time at is AC Milan. All other clubs he's done 2/3 seasons.
Whats great about the man is that he doesn't scream at his players telling them to win the players want to win for him he is like a grandfather they dont want to dissapoint so in a way his tactics are simple there called winning like Ferguson
So nuances are considered in the other coaches CV. But the fact that Guardiola spent half of his seasons as coach in Bayern where loosing its considered a miracle for the opposing teams and he took the City Job right when City reached the best form in organization terms. While Carlo and Mou spent time in underdogs
I'd ask how is that Guardiola has the consistency nobody HAS EVER had. No major injury crisis, not a big dip in form, let alone at least one season where they perform under their capacities. If that has never ever been the case for nobody, how is that he discovered the magic elixir? Is it maybe an actual elixir ? Maybe a forbidden one? Or various elixirs ?
I'm pretty sure as a Madridista that if Pep was Madrid manager he wud fail miserably with Madrid to win UCL just like he failed at bayern and just like mourinho failed at Madrid!! While Carlo was the 1st one to win after 12 years and again after 4 years!! There is a reason for that!! And btw Carlo's teams' were clearly the best teams in europe for very short while!! None of his team before Milan was the best team, and only for 2 seasons his Milan side were clearly the best team in europe!! After that Carlo ever managed clearly the best teams in europe may be one of the best!! In contrast 2 of Pep's teams are often considered GOAT teams and even the Bayern team won the TREBLE the previous season he joined and Pep has managed only these 3 teams and they were almost always clearly the best teams that competed!! So if you really want to compete wid stats then you can only compete Pep's 15 seasons with Carlo's 5 seasons coz Carlo has managed much worse teams who were clearly midtable teams and Carlo definitely won League titles in Europes top 5 Leagues and not just one league while his team was not really the best team!! Also abt Pep, the moment he realised he has serious domestic competition in La Liga after Madrid managed by Mourinho won their league title in 2012, he quickly ran away to farmers league Bundesliga!! His FRAUD wud be exposed easily if he really had to compete with a great league manager Like Fergusion and prime Man Utd!!
I don’t think you guys watched Real Madrid this season with a statement like, “I don’t find Carlo tactically interesting”. There was a wrinkle to his formation almost every 2 weeks, sometimes due to injuries but mostly due to the opponent… ask Girona and Man City. Last season, he made Fede one of the best attacking midfielders in the world only to remodel his game this season cover Kroos, Jude and Carvajal. In fact, if Pep did what Carlo has done with Carvajal, Fede, Tchouameni, Vini and Jude this season, we’d be watching videos of how Pep keeps reinventing the wheel
I find it ridiculous when they started comparing managers overall titles, major cups, etc. including Guardiola there but never mentioning the fact that the man only played at the very very top clubs with bottomless purses. Whereas the other two played at mediocre clubs like Porto, Lazio, Everton, Fenerbahce, etc.
There is debate because people at Athletic don't understand simple football. Guardiola and his minions(people at Athletic) made it complicated. Just like Nike Commercial Guardiola has turned the beautiful game into robotic form by risk averse football, absolutely disgusting to watch.
I'm not dismissing Pep's tactical nous and there's worth in comparing a systems manager like Pep with someone like Ancelotti but comparing their careers without the context of the infinite wealth Pep has had over the last 9 years at City is incredibly foolish. Whether you like bringing it up or not, it *is* pertinent to what he's been able to achieve.
I'm starting to think it's not only managers at real but the whole training team and set up at real madrid. It has a distinct style of play since 2016 defensive with strong counter attack.amd they try to fit the perfect players in the roles
It’s simple, not easy. Carlo’s style seems simple but it isn’t easy. Don’t ever confuse simple with easy. It means he actually has to coach his players and his coaches have to coach them as well. Don Carlo and his staff can’t get away with the “put it in this zone and make the movement”. Nope, it’s more complicated than building a strict framework. And there is a tactics, but they change as the match goes on, to be honest, it makes it seem like you guys can only analyze the most basic and obvious tactics. Pep is just the trend right now, the trend will change. 🤷🏽
Jose Mourinho said it best last night:
“Real Madrid and Carlo don’t deal with ‘Philosophy’, they put trophies in the cabinet.”
He also said
"Ancelotti is not a social media manager... he is a real coach "
@@Seby1x subtle dig at Pep 👀
I disagree, Ancelotti plays with a-lot of philosophy, it just isn’t an all-encompassing philosophy it’s specific to the positions he takes and the teams he plays with.
@@jakemorris6888 The difference between Alex fergueson and and ancelloti of first principles and apply them differently klop will conflate first principles with applications
The fact that ancelotti doesnt have a style of play and adapts to situations has got to be a strength and not a weakness.
It is their biggest strength. Reminds me of the early Brazilian football which was the Ginga form. Players being able to express themselves freely. One example of a disadvantage when it comes to sticking to a style of play is Barcelona where they keep enforcing the same tiki-taka style and they had to bring in Xavi and now Flick to change that. Madrid doesn't care if they win ugly, if they win parking the bus and their fans don't care either. They'd play any type of style to reach the finals. Barca fans would be angry if their team won or lose without doing it the Barca way.
Absolutely. Any team that is built around a system comes with a chink in their armor. As long as the other teams does not have the revenue or the individual quality to counter it, a good system remains unchallenged. But if an opposition team has figured them out and taken a comfortable lead, what would you do? The players are left clueless because they're not used to it. They do the same things over and over again until time runs out.
But what can a team do against a side that says, OK, have the ball and do your thing while we figure you out, and our players will score when you're exhausted? This is one of my favorite philosophies of football.
It's interesting having both Ancelotti and Pep active at the same time. You'd be hard pressed to find more different managers. I think both schools of thought are valid, but it's definitely better for watching when Real Madrid play loosely. Vini Jr getting to make the most of his pace is amazing, highest class football - Kroos and Modric conducting the attack is fun and exciting. Pep's structure is also interesting itself, though. An inevitable machine that grinds out wins. But it's a shame to see such great players neutered. Doku tends to have a looser role, and he is fun to watch (Pep should build from this and create more chances like Real with Vini)
It's both
@@lifestyle807 it's not both, it annoys me when these managers try to play a style that the players can't play just because it's trendy
"Why is there still a debate about Ancelotti?"
It's partly TAFC's fault. The modern trend of deconstructing tactics - making it seem like every movement is intentional and by the manager (and not by the player, how it actually is) - brings ignorant fans to dismiss managers like Ancelotti who famously reject the over-complication of football.
I think also that there is a very strange narrative around Ancelotti being "simple", when the playing style is actually very complex due to the loose nature of the tactics.
Like, they disregard him in this video claiming that there's "nothing to analyse" when in reality, his playstyle generates too much to analyse since there are fewer reoccuring patterns at face value making the analysis of the game much more complex.
@@1998Cebola When Ancelotti and Allegri talk about football being simple they refer to how instinctive and heuristical decision making is. Players (and managers) aren't statistical calculators.
Football being simple doesn't mean it's easy, or that it doesn't take training and tactics to win.
@@1998Cebola Yep!
Have to agree, the idea that statistical analysis and deconstruction can tell the full story is laughable. Watch a game of football, there are so many variables that cannot be quantified by statistical analysis.
Who's editing this? For goodness sake when they are talking about a graphic - leave it fully on screen so the viewers can take it in properly, There is absolutely no need to have it up for 3 seconds and then go to head shots of the panellists (we see them for about 45 minutes!!).
Or just pause the video…
I'm not sure it's fair to compare Ancelotti's titles in his tenures at clubs like Parma and Everton with Guardiola doing a tour of Europe's biggest clubs throughout his career.
this ☝🏼
Definitely not as impressive to do what he did with the teams he had available to him. Best Barca team of all time, then hopping over to a treble winning Bayern squad then to the infinite pockets of Man City. I definitely think it's a more interesting tactical thing to see a manager tinker with less than he wants/has. Man City can buy a £60m player and they never see the light of day because they have infinite money, whereas an everton isn't doing that.
He spent 14 years in Serie A with super teams but walked away with 1 Serie A league title. Now, let's see where he won his league titles: AC Milan, Chelsea, PSG, Bayern & Madrid. He's not an underdog, his resume is underwhelming with the teams he has managed [LMAO]. He didn't win any major titles with Everton & Parma. Please stop being DAFT.
@@KlypticBayern didn't win a league title for 2 seasons before Pep came in. The reason why Bayern was dominant post Pep is because of the structures Pep left in Bayern. These guys said it [LMAO]. This is disingenuous& boring.
@@archaicrapture Bayern won the treble the year before Pep turned up 😂
Just looked it up on Wikipedia (maybe not the best source), but Ancelotti over his two stints at Real Madrid had a 72.2% win rate. Pep Guardiola has a 72.7% with City, so I don't actually think you can make the argument that Ancelotti is less consistent. Their win rates differs by less than 1%. Ancelotti has 5 champions league wins over 20 seasons (exclude the seasons managing with sides like Everton who could never be expected to win) = 25% win rate. Guardiola has 3 champions leagues over 16 seasons = 18.8% win rate. So overall win rate is basically the same and champions league win rate is comfortably higher. I'd say Ancelotti is the better manager. But I think it's close.
Imagine putting in the same graph ONLY managing tier-A teams vs. someone who has manged tier-C
@@bajolunapodYou do realize Ancelotti has managed a lot more Tier A teams and did absolutely nothing special with the Tier C teams
Don Carlo has UCL on lock, no doubt. But he has only 6 league titles compared to Pep's 12. This does not include other cup trophies too.
Also this "Manager Career Trophies" graphic is - with respect - utter non-sense. "Major cups" as a category, including all the major European competitions, but also the FA Cup and the so called mickey mouse cups, as if they would have the same importance or difficulty level, just doesn't make sense. The international competitions include all the best European teams competing with each other. Having to eliminate teams like Milan/Inter, PSG, Bayern and City/Liverpool to win a cup is not the same as eliminating hull, exeter and brighton. I enjoy watching them as well - no dig intended - but it is just not of the same importance or difficulty. And for me it really is incomprehensible how this category is justifiable, except if the goal of the graph is to bolster up Guardiola`s record. In this case it makes perfect sense.
@@elitesam7789 its easier to win leages coz havbing the best teams you get another chance when playing another best team from the same league!!
Guardiola wud have been easily exposed if he had to compete for league titles against fegusion!!
He already said what his philosophy is-- to adapt his tactics to the strengths and weaknesses of the players. He's not locked into systems like others. In addition, wait until Guardiola finishes 29 seasons and see how Guardiola performs vs Don Carlo.
well said
Exactly
Exactly. While I am not denying that Ancelotti is up there with some of the greats, I think recent performances with the added media hype around Madrid, Bellingham and Mbappe is leading to him being slightly overrated.
6 league titles in 29 years is a decent but not overly impressive return (4 if one discounts the Ligue 1 and Bundesliga since they can be 9 times out of 10 without any issues at PSG and Bayern). His tactical style does benefit cup games and that has paid off dividends for him. But a truly great manager has an impact on the club and the game beyond the trophies won (Ferguson, Cruyff, Guardiola, Klopp) That's why he shouldn't be considered better than these guys.
@@shrineguard2778 What impact on the game did Ferguson have? His impact was very much not beyond trophies...
Lol how many league titles does don carlo have in 29 seasons compared to pep
No one has debated Ancelotti's management apart from self proclaimed tacticos on the internet. Listen to the players he has managed or the people he has worked under. Praise and love from everyone. Among the top list of managers, no doubt.
As for Pep, until he wins consecutive European trophies with a team like Porto or does something similar, he won't ever be certified the first place for me. But yes he's 'among' the top ones too. Just not sure shot number one as the recency bias is making it to be. Specially not man-management wise.
I love how the narrative has shifted from "Pep needs to win the Champions League without Messi to prove he's the best" to "Pep needs to win back to back European trophies to prove he's the best". 😆
and „pep needs to prove it with a small club“ - such flawd aguments :‘D
@@lukew6725let's see what Pep would do if (a big if) FA punished city for those 100+ allegations. Will he stay? Or run away to another rich club.
@@lukew6725 it’s always been and always will be true, he needs to manage not the best team in the league, man city face 115 charges and of found guilty will be stripped of all titles, meaning half of pep’s career is redundant
@@lukew6725 Pep is an amazing coach, but I do resent him from consistently turning incredible talented players into robots who keep passing to their right or their left. Then he brings new blood to his team who are passionate and make dents into the defenses of their opponents like Doku, but then two years later, there they are, robotically playing backwards or to their sides. He destroys players. Can't stand what he has done to Bernardo Silva, for instance.
Don Carlo lifted the cup 7 times. More than anybody else in the European football. He won the same number of UCL of a club like AC Milan. He's the manager with most wins in the competition, most Uefa trophies, the first to have won in all the top 5 national championships. He's one of the few to have won the UCL both as a player and as a coach, one of the few with 2 different clubs, the only one to have reached the final 6 times as a coach, 9 including the finals played as a footballer. What are we talking about? In terms of results, in the UEFA competitions he is the best ever!
of a club like ac milan?you said that like his milan side is not one of the best in the world at that time lmaooo
My only blemish on his record is his time with Juve, he should have won the league or CL with that squad. Otherwise probably the best ever manager, pretty good playing career too.
@@souleymanediawara7714 he meant it as in He has hte same number of trophies as the great club milan. He was saying in spite of Milain being such a great club Ancelotti has the same number of UCL trophies.
He wasn't dissing milan, he was complimenting milan but pointing out the fact that ancelotti has the same number of trophies *smh*
Saying Guardiola has a good CL record than Ancelotti is one of the dumbest things I have heard in my life. Getting knocked by Tottenham / Lyon / Monaco / Atletico Madrid. Getting outperformed by Inter Milan in the Final. Getting knocked by 10-man Chelsea in 2012. I can go on about how many times Pep had the better team and one of the best squads ever and yet got knocked out by how he overthinks everything. Pep is a great manager and even might be better than Carlo, but no way I can accept he is better at UCL than Ancelotti. I can only blame Carlo for 2 eliminations in his career which were against Liverpool and Depotrivo.
In 2005 Carlo didn'T MAKE ANY MISTAKE
@@binder0301988 he conceded 3 with a defense on Maldini, Nesta, Stam and Cafu
@@binder0301988 He even warned his players at half time, game's not over.
warra treble for alfredo agnolotti
just guardiola fanboys who dont know f all about football.
Don Carlo is an absolute legend. His ability to manage players and get the best out of them over such a long period is incredible. He'll go down as a top 10 manager, absolutely incredible.
Lol atleast top 3 if not 1st! You are deluded if he is only top 10 😂
@@davidvo2318 top 10 probably, there are a lot of great managers from the past
@@davidvo2318 1st r u crazy hes only got 6 titles in 31 yrs n hes managed the best clubs in each country thats poor
And he wins another, Don Carlo is truly a special one.
@@Arg.Comps10 Only pep has managed the best club from each country, Milan wasn't even the best in Italy back then, maybe only forr 2 seasons!! Newbies wudn't knw that coz you weren't born or following italian or european football back then!!
With the way the game is getting over tactical I like how ancelotti always baffles analysts cause they can't analyze and most times their data isnt of much help
This whole video is basically The Athletic having a nervous breakdown like their whole existence is about to shatter. Their over analysis & worship of Pep is being shat season but they can't accept reality of football that it's a team sport.
Wtf are you talking about?
And also the fact that players have always been and always will be more important than the manager. End of story. If you don't have a good squad, I don't give a damn if Pep is your manager, you're not winning anything.
jep thx
You have to notice this:
Everytime Real Madrid players get recognitions/best awards, people like to say that they're "overrated"/"PR machine behind them"/"not better than player A or B"/etc.
But when the talk is about Ancelotti and his place as one of the greatest managers, suddenly they all said "he got those only because he managed the best players in the world".
🤷♂️
It's happening with Bellingham now, people are weird hating on a 20 year old
@@sanele4780 Exactly. I mean, he's not even a toxic or controversial player who likes to stir up things and making sensations outside of football. The hate on him is awfully baseless.
I don’t see anyone hating on Bellingham
No one is hating on Bellingham. Him being considered for Ballon D'or is what is criticized. The PR & media makes him unlikeable.
@@thomasdavies2555 and you don't live under a rock either right?
He is one of the goats. Easily top 3.
I don't know who debates that.
Pep, Fergie & Carlo?
@@drex5160 Yeah
English media does. Typical.
@@drex5160Pep ahead of both? Insanity.
[LMAO] Carlo over Mourinho?
Plenty of incoherent arguments here regard's Madrid's recruitment policy.
Are they buying young and "cheap" or replacing stars from the Decima side one at a time with new expensive players?
Also, comparing any manager to Guardiola's success isn't fair. Fella has never had tough gig, and there's 115 reasons why his recent wins might not be in the records books for ever.
He doesn't have a catchy branding like "tiki-taka" or "gegenpress" and he isn't really associated with the famous buzzwords like positional play etc. His problem is simply lack of branding. That's why some smooth-brained hype-based football "pundits" still not quite sure about his undeniable greatness. Easily the 2nd best managers in my lifetime (after Sir Alex).
💯
SAF is the most overrated manager there is.
Ancelotti is nothing without Madrid
That's all I'll say😂😂
@@BiggestBirdonMars so 2 CL titles with AC Milan and winning league title in 5 different countries is nothing? Get your head checked.
@@joyantoshatadal5065 I'm sorry if he ruined your childhood, but not really.
Years ago, I remember a Guardian writer saying something like "in the eyes of Arsen Wenger, the main problem with football is that it's not played using hands." he was making the point that a manager like Wenger, would every much prefer to plan for every second of the game in the most precise way possible and essentialy remove the human factor. I would say you can say the same thing about Guardiola. And considering his impact on the modern game, it's no wonder how most managers nowadays are obsessed with turning players into perfect robots. Real Madrid however, even before Ancelotti, has been an exact opposite. The human element, and the chaos that comes with is, is embraced in Madrid. There is not effort to enact exact patterns of play. The trust is put on players to know what to do.
Strange take as Wenger was all about letting players make their own decisions on the pitch (to Arsenal's detriment at certain times).
He was far from a tactical micromanager.
Ancelotti’s greatest strength is his understanding of his players. He knows exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are, and has the creativity to utilise them in ways that bring the best out of them, even if they haven’t played that way before. He had the vision to move Bellingham from deep midfield to an attacking midfielder, he moved Pirlo deeper from an 8 into a 6, utilised Seedorf anywhere from central midfield to attacking midfield to left wing, made Camavinga a LB, played James Rodriguez as a RW, etc. It’s because he knows exactly what his players can or can’t do, that allows him the ability to seamlessly slot them into formations that a team has never used before, with great success. Ancelotti might not be a tactical innovator like a Pep or Klopp, but he takes the players he has and brings the best out of them, instead of having to turn them into something he wants.
Good discussion lads. One thing that Jon kinda missed out on in his comparison was the very different career path that Ancelotti has had compared to Pep - he had 3 seasons at Reggiana and Parma at the start of his career, then a season each at Napoli and (inexplicably in hindsight) at Everton more recently and at those club she he wasn't realistically in a position to contend for major trophies. He's also had a couple of years out of work.
When you factor that in, most of those 12 trophyless seasons are accounted for and suddenly his consistency looks much more comparable with Guardiola's.
exactly, that John guy is clearly a Guardiola's fan, like all the analysts that only focus on tactics and stats and are convinced that football is a science. Guardiola is great but he never challenged himself by coaching a minor team, that is why it may seem that he has better career stats. But looking at his Man City Champion's league performance it is quite disappointing, considering the team he has and the money they spent.
@@Alex-ku2npwhy should pep challenge himself with a minor team? He has always succeeded with major teams, so all the major teams want him. Why would he coach derby county when teams like city, Bayern and Barcelona wanted him.
@@arvin9425 his type of football only works with really good players. He’ll never got to a minor club imo
Don Carlo is the ultimate man manager & smart tactician getting the best out of the stars that he has. PSG appointed him too early, they should have had someone like Poch earlier & then Carlo when they had the likes of Messi, Mbappe & Neymar.
True, he would have managed them to their first UCL
Yup that's also what Bale said, best man manager
Pep, Mourinho, Kloop all have philosophy and system so they need certain type of players. Pep needs player who can keep the ball, Mourinho needs player who can run fast when counter attack from low blocks, Kloop needs player who can pass quickly after pressing high field. Ancelotti see what players want and can do best so he doesnt change them. Kroos and Pirlo always want to come deep, Kaka and Vini always want to run with the ball, etc. The hard part is if you know what a player would do, how do you choose your first 11. Balance is needed.
The piano guy (John?) who still thinks Ancelotti is debatable clearly believes that football is just about tactics, statistics, and numbers. This perspective is wrong. When will they understand that football isn't a science? Ancelotti has always maintained that while he considers statistics, they are not the primary factor in his decision-making process. The technical analyst who idolizes Guardiola makes me laugh; he likely has never played football in his life.
“the piano guy” 😂😂😂
My brother and I only ever call him Don Carlo. There is no debate here imo. He is one of the best ever
I don't see that there is a debate that Ancelotti is an all-time-great manager. He just is, this is incontrovertible. As to THE best ever, that's always going to be subjective and is so hard to judge across different careers and time frames.
Like, the comparison with Guardiola is so skewed - firstly, in that Ancelotti's career is so much longer, but also in that in includes periods with teams like Reggiana, Parma, Napoli, Everton who were not expected to be winning titles, while Pep has always managed a team that's either favourite or at worst top three to win the title in a major league. Then even when he was with a top team for a long time in Milan, he took over the team at a low ebb and was contesting Serie A with an amazing Juventus and Inter sides and in the CL it was one of the most competitive eras in the competition, and still won it twice. Average records don't take that context into account.
What I love about the contrast between Guardiola and Ancelotti is that it shows there isn't one true way to be an elite manager, even in the same era, and it shows that old mindsets can still work, but also that old managers can still evolve. That contrast is part of what makes football great. Styles clashes make for an interesting sport.
Not even just Inter and Juve as rivals, either. That was mainly whilst he was Milan manager. Ancelotti was also managing Reggiana, Parma and Juve during that period in the late 90s/early 2000s when Serie A was arguably the strongest league to ever exist. You had several clubs competing for the league title every season. Trying to have some semblance of consistency in terms of winning trophies in a league and era like that was a mug's game, when you also have the likes of Capello, Sacchi, Lippi, Trapattoni, etc to compete with and 80-90% of the best players in world football playing in the same league.
I'm shocked that there is even a debate! He is already a living legend in football management. His way works. It has worked wherever he went, when he had the the right players. Stop comparing him with other managers when his methods deliver the results his clubs look for
Carlo has displeased the Goblin King
I think the first couple of minutes missed the point
His genius is that he figures out how to put the best, doing what they do best, all together
Because people are morons and can only fixate on José and Pep he's not a drama queen like they are, Carlo just chills and does his job
The idea he's just "vibes" irritates me; players wouldn't improve under him if that was the case, and more would struggle to play in more rigid teams afterwards
"flow state" is entirely a vibe phrase.
What's weird to me is that even though discussion turns into one of tactics vs...ugh...vibes, it still all fits in a tactics uber alles frame which is that if everyone is patterning their plays, creating pockets of unpatterned play (when players lead decisionmaking) is harder to counter, and also might pull an opposing team into an unexpected shape that's easier to exploit.
One other note for me is that Ancelotti's career encompasses not just more leagues, but a changing landscape in those leagues and the global game. There's so much changing then. I don't think that changes the league consistency conclusion Jon has, but it's a much less obvious than he was with AC Milan.
It's also notable that channels like this would prefer the system-driven approaches over decision-making approaches is that they can mimick the patterns of play on their tactical board and draw out a clear blueprint of how they play and what they do. This brings them credibility among viewers and bigger outreach.
But what can they do with a manager like Ancelotti? They can't make accurate predictions about how his team is gonna adapt.
Also that argument about consistency is a bit strange. Yes, Guardiola's teams are very consistent. Barcelona was maybe one of the greatest collection of playets of all time, Bayern, as a team with a budget that dwarves everybody else's in the Bundesliga and 115 Charges FC is a team that is bankrolled by a petrostate and most likely cheated itself to the top. And even with managing all those amazing teams, the most consistent part about him was that he didn't manage to win a Champion's League between 2011 and 2023. Winning the league and cups in In Germany was a joke and a stat booster. Winning the league and one of the cups on the UK with a cheating Petrostate team, also not that impressive.
England* not the UK
100% correct. Guardiola is a brilliant manager, no doubt, but massively overrated. He cannot do what Klopp, Mourinho, Ancelotti, SAF did/do at their peaks. Imagine Pep trying to win the league with that United team that Fergie won his last title with.
@@BigDome1 What did Carlo do at his peak?
@@archaicrapture TBF, he doesn't really have a "peak", just an insanely long and consistently successful career at a huge variety of clubs with very different setups
@BigDome1 My brother in Christ, he never defended a league title. He won his top 5 league titles with big teams. He doesn't have consistency in top-flight football. 6 league titles in a career that spans almost 3 decades. That is underwhelming with the clubs he has managed.
I really do find Jon Mackenzie's attitude and analysis here a bit lacking. His bias in favor of Guardiola and all that that entails is too palpable. Now, a few things:
1. I thought the bar graph analysis segment was quite crude and unconvincing relative to its purpose. Guardiola has had the most privileged managerial career in Football history, landing on the FC Barcelona bench during the greatest player/squad golden generation any club has ever seen and with a wounded and in transition Madrid as rivals, then he goes to Bayern Munich and fails to win the CL while winning the procession that is the Bundesliga, and then in Man City he arrived at yet another incredibly privileged club context again and failed many times in the CL and won leagues that have asterisks to them due to the privileged and maybe even illegal workings of his club, particular in relation to Liverpool and Arsenal, which have had to pull of herculean tasks with inferior players to come close to Man City. That is context that has to be taken into consideration. Ancelotti has had stints in clubs that have had no chance in the league or CL from the very get go. The most damning thing against him if anything are the lack of more league wins in AC Milan and perhaps in Madrid as well, but I'd have to look more at the context surrounding the AC Milan years.
2. Even as a Madrid fan and despite our enormous recent and historical success with a certain brand of manager and squad philosophy, I'm not completely convinced by all that, and I do think a bit more of tactical sophistication that is also reflected in the sporting direction would be a good thing, akin to what Man City and Guardiola are doing, but I don't think this video makes a good enough argument or study on all of that. One thing I don't like about Ancelotti is that he doesn't require the team to have high pressing and to be more imposing on a usual basis, and I don't necessarily like what that can go on to say about the club's sporting direction and climate, it shouldn't be a problem to do that at a big club with big players, as Mackenzie sort of said near the end of the video.
He probably doesn't care for the high press because it doesn't actually matter. He knows the only stat that matters is who wins the game. He probably tries to make it so that his players are fresh and fit for games.
As the resident AC Milan fan, I think I could provide a bit of context for his stint as Milan manager since you mentioned wanting to look more into it. We had Ancelotti as manger for 7 and a half seasons, from halfway through the 01-02 season, to the end of the 08-09 season. In that period, we realistically only had 5 seasons where we were competing for major silverware (Serie A, Coppa Italia, Champions League). In fact, our 2 UCL winning squads in that period were arguably the two worst from that 5 season stretch. Our strongest squads were 03-04, 04-05 and 05-06, and all we managed to win in those 3 years was a single Scudetto. Now, I think the level of competition at the time was particularly strong, both in Italy and in Europe, and that needs to be taken into account. We had Juve, who were basically domestic gods under Capello. Inter were very game in the league and fought us tooth and nail TWICE in the UCL knockout rounds. On the European stage, you had the Galacticos, Barcelona, who were arguably our biggest rivals, Mourinho's Chelsea, as well as the usual suspects in United, Liverpool, Bayern, Ajax, etc, all of whom we had to face at one point (except Chelsea).
Now, all in all, we probably should've won at least 1 or 2 more Serie A titles under Ancelotti, and most fans consider that a bit of a missed opportunity to improve our standing domestically, especially considering how many great players we had. And Carlo does get some criticism for them (he did at the time, too). The 2004-05 season, in particular, was a disappointing one because odf the Champions League final heartbreak, but also because we bottled the league after leading Juve, and probably being better than them overall that year.
However, 1 league title in 4 seasons where we really had a chance to win it is not bad (06-07 we had no chance because of the Calciopoli point deduction), and we still were the best team in the Champions League in that period: 2 wins, 1 runners-up spot, a semi-final and a quarter-final. And the only thing preventing those 2 UCL wins from being 3 or 4 was two nightmarish nights in Istanbul and A Coruna. Even in the 2006 semi-final against Barca, we got robbed by the refs who ruled out Shevchenko's header for a nonexistent ''foul'' on Puyol.
So, all in all, 2 UCL wins, 1 Scudetto and 1 Coppa Italia in just under 8 years is not terrible, but it also needs to be put in context. It was a very competitive era for both Italian and European football, and we never had a great squad for the entirety of his time there as manager, only maybe half of it. A few missed opportunities for trophies, particularly in the league, and a couple of horrible nights in Europe, but all in all a very solid period for our club. Perhaps not 10/10, but definitely 8 or 9. Should that squad have won more? Yes, but things don't always go your way. Ancelotti is also largely responsible for a lot of our best players coming to Milan in the first place. Kaka, Cafu, Nesta, Pirlo, Seedorf, Inzaghi, Rivaldo, Stam, Crespo were all Ancelotti signings, and even guys who were past their primes but arrived to help the team like R9 or Ronaldinho were there largely due to his influence.
@@Al-ji4gd Thanks for the added context, nice post! Mackenzie didn't do well enough with considering said context. I do think though that Guardiola being so process based and so focused on control through attacking, possession, and team pressing does ultimately result in "better coaching" that probably optimizes teams more than what Ancelotti does, with the added benefit of bringing values into the team and club that have to do with the club and the team's process being ahead in the pecking order in importance over the players being coddled and indulged. Ancelotti being known as a "galactico whisperer" and as someone who can manage otherwise unworldly dressing rooms by delicately indulging them does not convince me as much as an approach where the club and team are what's most important and where player purchases are more scrutinized in the technical and psychological mindset aspects.
As a Madrid fan, I think we are doing arguably the best job in the world as of late with buying and selling the right players, the last piece in the puzzle is to have a mindset shift in the club and with a new coach that revolves around adding a more process based approach to winning. Even in the modern era where Madrid has seen success with Del Bosque, Mourinho, Ancelotti, and Zidane, you never get the sense that the process is ahead of the players, or the sense that the team is as consistently optimized or dominant as it could be in the way it plays. You don't get the sense that Madrid is as proactive, or sophisticated as it can be. You get the sense that the team wins more due to strong mentality, talent advantage, and having a functional enough tactical set up to let the players do the talking. It reflects on the sub-optimal league count for Madrid in the last 30 years. Less work rate, control, and domination by design over a consistent league schedule.
Ultimately Ancelotti has been most successful when his squad has had more sensible stars than divas, when he's been able to isolate the diva forwards and surround them with functional enough schemes made up of functionally hard working enough talented players, but there's a sense in that that sometimes his success has been more borne out of luck and happenstance than careful imposed-on design.
That manager Career Trophies graph is really wrong if you think about it for a second. Guardiola managed only 3 teams his whole career, Barcelona, Byern, City, all the best team in the league at time. I wonder how that graph would look like if Guardiola were managin Napoli or Everton. I don't doubt he'd get a title here or there like Mourinho does, but he would loose more often than not.
False, he took over a Barca team that was trophyless for a few seasons and a city team that finished 3rd or 4th
@@civildiscourse7626 A barça with the best player ever, xavi, busquets, iniesta. Im not saying Guardiola isn't good or that he only won because of those teams, but they were the best in the league. Just look at the City squad when he got there and tell me otherwise.
@@jonnyso1 those players became the best under pep, xavi and iniesta didn’t even start the champions league final barca won under rijkard. So really pep created that team
@@civildiscourse7626 Sure man, I wonder if he got at everton if sudenly players there would become Xavi and Iniesta all of a suden. There is a Messi in every team waiting for Guardiola to wake them up. He's good but he's doesn't do miracles. He had good material and he knew how to use it. That's his merit, my whole point is that he only ever worked on the biggest teams around. Simple as that, saying that he's some genius that would win everything no matter the club he's working at is just silly.
@@civildiscourse7626 I can be wrong. But I think that Guardiola got the successful barsa of Ronaldinho, Deco... under Rijkaard as a coach. So it was already a winner. The Bayern Guardiola got was after the treble got by Heynckes. And in City, I agree he did good, but the amount of millions spennt and a team built picking-up players like FIFA videogame... Don't get me wrong, I think Guardiola is very good, but considering him the best forgetting the context of his success... I don't see it
"Now they're looking for children" 😂 16:27
The best football is winning football
Really tired of this rigid debates on the best football
You should make a video of " how is possible Guardiola to win only 1 UCL in the last 12 years"
He managed prime Bayern ( treble winner when he joined them )
Unlimited money City and ....beautiful football and robotic players didn't help him to win more than 1 UCL after Barca
That major career trophies graph is atrocious
Has to be a lot easier to be extremely tactic driven when you go to clubs with infinite pockets to suit exactly what you need. City can spend £60M on a squad player that gets basically no minutes and its just another day for them. Pep going into management with the best Barca team in history, then to arguably the same with that treble bayern side. He is able to do this because his teams have the ability to, lets see him manage Everton and try his style, or any team that doesn't have infinite pockets. All of the other managers up there in the top 5 talks have success at a 'lesser' team, Jose with Porto, SAF with Aberdeen, etc.
Ever considered they had to start from bad teams cause they were nobodies before getting in football. Pep was a Barca captain and a UCL winning midfielder and hence could get the Barca coach and did not have to go to mainz or Porto or aberdeen
People trend to forget that, when Pep took over Barcelona helm, the team wasn't in good shape, and he only got a point at first two game.
Well his protege tried it and failed at Burnley FC but somehow managed to get the Bayern Munich gig.
I agree, it's easy to hail a manager as a genius tactician when he succeeds with the kind of resources Pep has had at his disposal since he started coaching.
Don Carlo is a manager who has consistently got the best out of the players available to him and won trophies when the team was capable of it. So he has earned my respect.
@@Al-Brewster my lord . Don carlo had the greatest players ever in his arsenal . Remember the AC Milan team ? The Chelsea team of 2009 . Real Madrid 2014 team . Ballon d or Benzema . What are you on ? Don carlo also managed Bayern and PSG .
@@grealish2234 ok
He wants to make it look easy. It's a very italian thing and it's often defined as italian coolness. That gives the illusion of "vibes only". But to get the best out of every single player and serve the whole team with their quality is extremely difficult and the reason why most managers aren't as successful as he is. He's a genius in this, while Pep is a genius in tactics
Him not having a style, is a style.
They're so adaptable. Like against Man City. He knew and his team knew "there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that we'll out-possession the possession kings". And they planned for this, over two legs.
With different game plans. But building on the same theme.
And the fact he can get the best players to ever kick a sphere. To play ugly. Chase back. Just really nasty, high intensity chasing and pressurising.
Exactly! .. Thanks
I’m glad Ancelotti won it again. Hopefully one day these guys will wake up and realise that football is bigger than Pep and overly analysed tactics and stats. Funny that they mentioned Alex Ferguson because if he was still managing, they would be saying exactly the same thing about him. Being a great manager isn’t just about having a set way of playing and never changing it. Just because you don’t understand what Ancelotti doing, it doesn’t mean he’s not great.
So confused why this content isn't loaded into a podcast in the Athletic app. I bought the athletic because of Tifo and all they've done since then is put Tifo to the side in an effort to rebrand and not spotlight their content (like this). Very frustrating.
I second the complaint about tifo pushed aside. I do thoroughly enjoy the athletics podcasts too though
absolutely ridiculous to have barely referenced defensive systems in any way
I think you mentioned Guardiola's name more than Carlo's
wow
I was thinking about the fact that when he started as a manager he was an acolyte of Arrigo Sacchi, a diehard structure manager, but he also played under Nils Leidholm at Roma who had a much mire free-flowing style as does Ancellotti today, I'm glad that you guys mentioned part of it
Data wise, it's highly misleading to group champions league along with league cups as it distorts the graph when it comes to the levels of achievement, pressure and overall impact.
The debate comes from the so called “tactitos”. I guess if you don’t dominate ball possession you’re not a good manager.
I used to say Mourinho is the best but Ancelotti is the best now. He keeps winning
Obviously Guardiola is one of the greatest managers of all time. He may well prove to be the best ever. With that being said, it absolutely floors me that so many people conveniently leave out the fact that he has only coached teams with MASSIVE financial advantages at every stop.
1. Barcelona - Amazingly, this is actually the club with the smallest financial advantage relative to its competitors. Even so, La Liga has basically been Barcelona and Real Madrid with the occasional challenge from another club for the better part of, well, forever. He also coached Messi as he was entering his prime, and he was okay.
2. Bayern Munich - Their revenues are well over double of the next closest Bundesliga club. Interestingly enough, after Guardiola left they still won another 7 domestic titles in a row, and he never won the Champions League with them, something that Jupp Heynckes and Hansi Flick achieved with them both before and after his time with them.
3. Manchester City - Money is quite literally no object. Whatever player most perfectly suits his system he can have. Whatever he wants he can have. The fact that Ancelotti has gotten the better of him more often than not since his move to City in spite of this is incredible. Winning the Champions League will always be a massive achievement, but doing it once in 8 seasons with such a ridiculous advantage is, quite frankly, not impressive.
It's mad that he couldn't win the CL with Bayern even though they won it immediately before and after him you could argue he actually made them worse Schweinsteiger even said as much in a recent interview with Gary Neville.
What makes him so great is that he takes an interest in his players. Knows what they like off the pitch. He really is the father figure that some of these players never had. So you play for him and not want to disappoint him. You go out there and make him proud. Second of all, he gets all the players on the same page by making them speak the same language of the club they are at. So with Madrid you speak Spanish and he gets players together to speak to each other in Spanish. So when you are on the pitch, you can communicate with each other. He tries not to have executive cliques between players. He doesn't need to yell to get his point across. That's why his players are so fiercely loyal to him. Just remember he has won 7 Champions League titles. 2 with AC Milan as a player, 2 as a manager, and 3 with Real Madrid. He's just the best.
Not gonna lie, Carlo Ancelotti as a medium for Isiah Berlin’s conceptions of liberty was not the video I thought I clicked on, but I’m all here for it. Next, given that people football for aesthetics, maybe 3rd man runs as the embodiment of Kant’s Third Critique?
Would be interesting to see Pep's win ratio in seasons where Barca didn't pay off the refs or Man City didn't do 100+ FFP violations in order to rack up those trophies and build up consistency.
Great managers get talent and let the talent show- in all manner of business. A great man-manager and humble. Too many managers now want good PR and too much respect, rather than letting thier team of players play the game and show off thier skills. I find it refreshing and a good reflection on the human spirit. A festival of football is what more teams need
This is my favorite football YT content to watch😂😂😂❤
Ancelotti is the definition of pragmatism. He's also one of the best man managers ever.
Some of the comments here are talking as if Ancelotti consistently managed the Evertons of the world, but that's just not the case. 6 titles considering the teams he's managed is undeniably underwhelming. He's still a great manager and will rightly go down in history, but it's definitely up for debate if he comes close to Pep and Sir Alex.
Anyway, excellent video, particularly enjoyed Jon's piano lesson analogy.
He did well in Everton before injury storm coming to their player.
Someone with sense & is objective to the facts. Apparently, he won major titles with Everton & Parma.
Until Pep wins consecutive European trophies with Porto, or something like 3 straight UCL titles with any team, I also think think it's up for debate if he is only excels in a particular structure as a head coach, and not exactly fully managing. He has had full support and quality players everywhere he has gone.
Every era has a manager who everyone thinks is the greatest. In all honesty, very much depends on the context and timing. Hand Pep the 2008 Stoke and he's not as great, possibly 2 of his 3 UCLs gone. He's a fantastic head coach, but also was lucky enough to be surrounded by the correct context and luck. Man management wise, lot of players still have higher praise for likes of Jose and Carlo. It's worth a thought.
@hnaku8748 My brother in Christ, no manager, is doing that [LMAO]. What is this clownery?
@@archaicrapture Jose has done that, Zidane won 3 straight(right out of Carlo's coaching book). That's the point.
Maybe it's because he has never been stationed in a league for a very long time. I would say he's the best coach to ever coach football.
Anchelotti
Fergie
Pep
What anchellotti and fergie had against them and why people have doubts about them is mainly that. They were not innovators like Pep and Klopp or rangnick to an extent.
They were adaptors, and they found a way to adapt to a league and its change, and that's where mourinho had failed.
Fergie is more remembered because he lasted in the league longer. Anchelotti, on the other hand, is a concurrer.
I love Don carlo. As a united fan, I appreciate him
Ancelotti was hailed as one of the innovators in football tactics when he pioneered the Christmas tree formation, people just conveniently forget how football pundits were in awe of it at the time.
Don't especially like those bar charts where the champions league is qualified as the same as the league cup. Should be it's own separate bar, skews the relevance of the data.
yeah are we really gonna equate the EFL Cup with the winning the Champions League? 😂
I think at this point it's pretty clear that Carlo Ancelotti is the greatest manager of all time, unless your criteria is "he needs to have a clear tactical identity" instead of winning trophies. He has won the league in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, and despite that his league performance is considered his "weakness". 2 Champions Leagues with Milan, and 3 with Real Madrid. The great AC Milan, who should be up there with teams like Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, has been an average team since he left them. His La Decima team was blessed with incredible players, but he still won them it after years of trying, failure after failure, even something Mourinho couldn't do. His Real Madrid of 2022 and 2024 were obviously way weaker than Zidane's threepeat team, but he keeps winning nonetheless.
I think a lot of people just refuse to give Carlo Ancelotti his credit because they want to insist that Pep Guardiola is a better manager, which to me is a ridiculous notion. His "tactical identity" has been used by Spain since 2006 under Vincent del Bosque, and system that has its beginnings under Cruyff. The 2008-2012 Spain team was probably the best national team I've ever seen, and it had the same core players as Guardiola's Barcelona, except they were dominant without Messi. Guardiola also inherited Jupp Heynckes Bayern, one of the best teams I've ever seen, and failed to win the Champions League, and made them a worse team at the end. Now he has been at the richest team in the world for 8 seasons with one Champions League, a team with allegations of cheating. Ancelotti has 3 in 5 for Madrid. Even Zidane is at, what, 3 in 4 years? Guardiola has a terrible Champions League record for the amount of resources he is given. He has never brought success to an underdog team like Mourinho with Porto, or SAF with Aberdeen.
Depends who you want to play for:
Carlo: The Father
Mou: The Best Friend
Pep: Benevolant Dictator
I like this way of describing them
Mourinho, best friend?? He's more like a passive aggressive mother-in-law, one who calls you fat by telling other people while you are in earshot.
wenger:-Tyrant
Still, Real is at the very top in terms of goals conceded, with 26. Only Leverkusen did better (22), and both Arsenal (29) and ManCity (34) did worse. Inter beat them all, with 22.
Still, Real lost only one game (Leverkusen 0).
So obviously Real is a team that knows how to defend, and that has to mean there is some real structure being imposed, at least defensively. It's not all fuzzy "let them do what they do best."
Winning a trophy is the goal of playing. UCL is the highest competition in Europe. Don Carlo is reasonably the best manager of the past 25 years.
Pep is better in UCL based on statistics when you add DFB Pokal and FA Cup inside that major cups statistics LMFAO
Or does he really think beating Norwich, Bournemouth, Luton type of clubs in FA has the same difficulty as beating PSG, Bayern Munich, Liverpool in UCL?? WHAT A JOKE
You just don't understand what he said, Ancelotti has managed for 29 years and won the Champions League 5 times (at the time of recording), giving him a rate of 17.24% of winning this trophy throughout his career. Pep has managed 16 seasons and won the Champs League 3 times, giving him a winning rate of 18.75%. So yes, at the time of recording, Pep had a better success rate in the Champions League
@@sp3ngg So why he didn't put Zidane hattrick in less than 6 years of senior managerial resume? And how the hell you can possibly won UCL with Parma, Reggiana and Everton when the team didn't qualified to play in UCL??
It's obviously cherry picking..
@@sp3nggthat is still a stupid arguement. How would Ancelotti win the CL with the likes of Everton when they were not even in the CL?
No, no! It is emotional attachment that make fans not recognizing him as the greatest coach ever. But when you put emotion aside, Anceloti is the greatest coach. Slot data by points ranking in opta computer and I bet you, he will come up on top.
Really is a mystery isnt it to the dots on a board analysts.
Antoine Kombouaré was a PSG legend as a player, in the 90s. As a manager, he was 1st in Ligue 1 when he was sacked and replaced by Ancelotti.
Was just thinking re the interesting manager comparison chart that if you take out years where Carlo (and Jose) were managing teams with no hope of winning anything (not something Pep has ever had to experience) their numbers would improve at least somewhat
Just rewatched a couple of old
Euro/World Cup daily streams/pods. Please bring them back for the Euros guys!
Most coaches only win a few League titles. Clough, Klopp, Wenger only won 2 or 3 but they were still great coaches.
Never ever put Pep in the same bracket as Carlo. Carlo evolved thru out the years and has a long and brilliant career. Whereas Pep on managed three big clubs in their peak.
I said it over and over again, Pep needs to go to a smaller club with a lack of funds and then we will how good he is.
He should try out clubs like Spurs, BVB, Leipzig, Napoli, Roma, etc
Ancelotti has one philosophy: win
As a Barca fan I have tremendous respect for him. He has the love and respect of the his players and staff. He knows how to manage big egos and get the very best out of everyone. From the starting 11 to reserves. Who cares about an identity of play. Just win.
*written before watching the video*
There is debate because like Mourinho said yesterday he is not a "trending" manager. He is not controversial like Mourinho, charming like Klopp or a evil genius like Guardiola. He is an old school manager - he is not about elaborated tactical systems and mind games. He is about Men Management, a formation that fits the players in squad and give them freedom to be themselves (instead of players hammered into a position like Guardiola does), professionalism and making perfect subsitutions at the right time.
Joe's face at 4:25 is why we need more of this incredible content.
I'd like to see Ancelotti's net spend per major title won compared to Pep 😅
Bit harsh from JJ on Kombouaré's time at PSG, it was QSI. The french coach was top of the league when Ancelotti arrived in january 2012, Carlo lost out to Montpellier, but won in the second season. He was a great coach in france but doesn't make predecessors bad, just had a very different squad
man, that bar chart is so damn awful. guardiola: inherits an almost perfect barca squad and wins them three leagues in a row. then inherits an almost perfect bayern squad and farms the league but fails in CL. now he has a state sponsored team built to his specifications since 2016 and farms a much harder league. champions league wins? 3 in 15 seasons at absolute top clubs (+1 final). zidane won 3 in 5 seasons - coaching ONLY real madrid. ancelotti coached 21 seasons of CL and won 5 times (+1 final).
It's because, unlike systems managers, it's much harder to see or quantify what he does. Yet his subtle, adaptable tactics and most especially, his man management are clearly at elite levels.
Don Carlo is a master. And now he has won yet another CL .........
I'd love to see Guardiola have won a UCL with Porto, rivalled Manchester United with Chelsea before they were at their best, won a treble with Inter and competed against Barcelona the way Mourinho did at Madrid, as well as winning a title and finishing second in the Prem with a joke of a team (which should have won the league but they were robbed by C115ty), before picking up a European title with Roma. Very misleading mentioning the 80% figure. Guardiola walked straight into insane teams only - even one considered the best ever. And even though he's been at consistently stronger sides, Ancelotti is the one who's dominated the UCL.
At the beginning of his career Ancelotti was very rigid on his ideas and schemes. He refused Baggio and let Zola go because he was thinking a 10 player would not beneficial for his 4-4-2. Year after year he evolved and now he is much more flexible.
8:25 JJ with the Stoichkov shout out! Nice job!
I think one of the reasons is also that he moves from club to club. In particular he's been sacked by Parma, Juventus, Chelsea, Real Madrid (his first spell), Bayern, and Napoli. The only club he has spent a significant amount of time at is AC Milan. All other clubs he's done 2/3 seasons.
Whats great about the man is that he doesn't scream at his players telling them to win the players want to win for him he is like a grandfather they dont want to dissapoint so in a way his tactics are simple there called winning like Ferguson
How will Carlo Ancelotti be remembered in his retirement?
So nuances are considered in the other coaches CV. But the fact that Guardiola spent half of his seasons as coach in Bayern where loosing its considered a miracle for the opposing teams and he took the City Job right when City reached the best form in organization terms. While Carlo and Mou spent time in underdogs
Sounds like a perfect Man United manager. We are full of self percieved and real stars.
I'm still annoyed that we had him at Chelsea and let him go. More than any other, he is the one manager sacking that bothered me.
I'd ask how is that Guardiola has the consistency nobody HAS EVER had. No major injury crisis, not a big dip in form, let alone at least one season where they perform under their capacities. If that has never ever been the case for nobody, how is that he discovered the magic elixir? Is it maybe an actual elixir ? Maybe a forbidden one? Or various elixirs ?
115 of them.
I'm pretty sure as a Madridista that if Pep was Madrid manager he wud fail miserably with Madrid to win UCL just like he failed at bayern and just like mourinho failed at Madrid!! While Carlo was the 1st one to win after 12 years and again after 4 years!! There is a reason for that!! And btw Carlo's teams' were clearly the best teams in europe for very short while!! None of his team before Milan was the best team, and only for 2 seasons his Milan side were clearly the best team in europe!! After that Carlo ever managed clearly the best teams in europe may be one of the best!! In contrast 2 of Pep's teams are often considered GOAT teams and even the Bayern team won the TREBLE the previous season he joined and Pep has managed only these 3 teams and they were almost always clearly the best teams that competed!!
So if you really want to compete wid stats then you can only compete Pep's 15 seasons with Carlo's 5 seasons coz Carlo has managed much worse teams who were clearly midtable teams and Carlo definitely won League titles in Europes top 5 Leagues and not just one league while his team was not really the best team!!
Also abt Pep, the moment he realised he has serious domestic competition in La Liga after Madrid managed by Mourinho won their league title in 2012, he quickly ran away to farmers league Bundesliga!! His FRAUD wud be exposed easily if he really had to compete with a great league manager Like Fergusion and prime Man Utd!!
he needs unlimited budget to win. if klopp had one 100% many would join him
I don’t think you guys watched Real Madrid this season with a statement like, “I don’t find Carlo tactically interesting”. There was a wrinkle to his formation almost every 2 weeks, sometimes due to injuries but mostly due to the opponent… ask Girona and Man City.
Last season, he made Fede one of the best attacking midfielders in the world only to remodel his game this season cover Kroos, Jude and Carvajal. In fact, if Pep did what Carlo has done with Carvajal, Fede, Tchouameni, Vini and Jude this season, we’d be watching videos of how Pep keeps reinventing the wheel
This trio always ends things with a bang, amazing ending to the podcast 😂
"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity" -Terry A. Davis
Joe Devine has the best "Thanks for watching" in TH-cam
I find it ridiculous when they started comparing managers overall titles, major cups, etc. including Guardiola there but never mentioning the fact that the man only played at the very very top clubs with bottomless purses. Whereas the other two played at mediocre clubs like Porto, Lazio, Everton, Fenerbahce, etc.
Such a nuanced conversation after Winning consistently among different leagues😂
its power of friendship guys…don’t over complicate
There is debate because people at Athletic don't understand simple football. Guardiola and his minions(people at Athletic) made it complicated.
Just like Nike Commercial Guardiola has turned the beautiful game into robotic form by risk averse football, absolutely disgusting to watch.
I'm not dismissing Pep's tactical nous and there's worth in comparing a systems manager like Pep with someone like Ancelotti but comparing their careers without the context of the infinite wealth Pep has had over the last 9 years at City is incredibly foolish. Whether you like bringing it up or not, it *is* pertinent to what he's been able to achieve.
I'm starting to think it's not only managers at real but the whole training team and set up at real madrid. It has a distinct style of play since 2016 defensive with strong counter attack.amd they try to fit the perfect players in the roles
The only reason there's a debate about Ancelotti is because people are idiots.
6 league titles in 20+ years managing the best teams in the world...
@@2kwl4schulhe managed Parma, Everton and Napoli aswell
@@2kwl4schul Pep has just one cl victory with 2+billion oil money squad(maybe illegal too)in almost decade...
It’s simple, not easy. Carlo’s style seems simple but it isn’t easy. Don’t ever confuse simple with easy. It means he actually has to coach his players and his coaches have to coach them as well. Don Carlo and his staff can’t get away with the “put it in this zone and make the movement”. Nope, it’s more complicated than building a strict framework. And there is a tactics, but they change as the match goes on, to be honest, it makes it seem like you guys can only analyze the most basic and obvious tactics. Pep is just the trend right now, the trend will change. 🤷🏽