The Real Madrid coach acknowledges the distance with his Valencia counterpart
Carlo Ancelotti and Gennaro Gattuso lived days of wine and roses in Milan, where they maintained a kind of father-son relationship for eight seasons, but that friendship has long since cracked. This was recognized by the Real Madrid coach on the eve of his team against Valencia in the first semi-final of the Spanish Super Cup. “We had very nice moments, we won two champions. They are memories forever. In retrospect, the relationship has not always been good. We’ve had personal issues, but I don’t want to talk about this,” he said at the press conference he gave in Riyadh, the venue for the tournament.
The distance between the two arose after Ancelotti’s departure from Naples at the end of 2019 and his replacement by Gattuso. Carletto still has good words for the Calabrian, albeit limited to the professional level. This was the case when they asked him for his opinion of the technical Gattuso forged from his lessons in Milan. “Many coaches have come from that team: Seedorf, Pirlo, Gattuso, Nesta, Shevchenko, Inzaghi… It was an experience, but after that everyone brings their knowledge to their team. Gattuso’s teams play very intensely and have a very clear identity on the pitch,” he said.
Tensions with Gattuso aside, Ancelotti stressed that the Spanish Super Cup offers Real Madrid a chance to make up for last Saturday’s defeat in the league. “It was foreseeable not to be at the top at this time of the season. The signals from training were good, so I was surprised by the game against Villarreal. We need to get things back in order. The defensive aspect was not good and we have to work on that, because this team knows how to defend better than against Villarreal. I insisted on this issue these days because we have the necessary quality in front of us, but we need to support it with a more solid base than in the game against Villarreal,” he said.
The transalpine recalled that his team has been able to defend “compact and solid” in the past, which brought them “great success” and he was convinced that he can do it again because it is not so much a question of aptitude, but rather of ” a mental click”. “The defensive aspect is a matter of concentration and sacrifice,” he explains.
Ancelotti hopes to start the year by winning the Spanish Super Cup, just like in 2022. “Titles are always important. Last year gave us a lot of confidence for the rest of the season and hopefully this Super Cup can be the same,” explained the Italian, who sees the tournament as a test of maturity after the setback at the Estadio de la Cerámica. “We are hurt by what happened in Villarreal, but we have to wait and see how the team reacts. The Spanish Super Cup is a very important test. When I went to school, my grandmother told me to put the book under my pillow. I put it on and I’ve always liked it,’ he joked with the good-naturedness that characterizes him.
He dismissed the fact that Real Madrid came out against Villarreal for the first time in its 121-year history without Spaniards in its squad against Villarreal as an anecdote. “It’s a coincidence that Spaniards didn’t play. The parent company of this club is Spanish, but Real Madrid is a universal club, loved all over the world. We have Spaniards in the academy and Madrid is the club that produces the most players in the academy for the competition. It was a coincidence,” he said.
He acknowledged that they have not prepared the penalty shootout in any special way, despite the possibility of encountering one in the Super Cup. “We don’t train them much on penalties. The players take penalties at the end and I can evaluate whether they are doing well or not, taking into account whether the players want to shoot or not. Sometimes it’s hard to find the five that have the motivation to shoot. It’s impossible to replicate the motivation of a penalty shootout in a training session,” he explained.
Finally, he appealed match by match when questioned by the Sextet. “We have to fight for every title, for every competition. We have a title very close and we will do everything we can to win it. The Sextet is not a goal, the goal for now is to win the Super Cup,” he added.
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
