Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [40]
“I’m ejecting you.”
That much I had already figured out; I was hoping for a more complete answer. Thrown out for my first offence; I doubt that many other coaches in history have enjoyed that particular honor.
After the game, I went to see him. I asked him why he’d ejected me. Chairmen of several teams hadn’t been able to do it. What made him so smart?
“Well, I tossed you out because I read your lips. You called me an asshole.”
“You’re wrong; I thought it, but I never said it.”
I guess he really was good; he’d read my mind. When things weren’t going well, on the other hand, I tried to read my players’ minds, asking for their help. When things were really on the line, just before we drew with Atalanta, I summoned the whole team to meet in the locker room. It was an emergency meeting; there were some things to straighten out. I was very direct: “Look, if things aren’t working out between us, I think we might as well say it openly. If we can’t get along, there’s no point waiting for the chairman to fire me; if this meeting tells me that we don’t see eye to eye, I’ll go to Tanzi myself and tell him to find himself another coach. So please, let’s talk in a spirit of sincerity.” I have to admit, they were sincere. The first to speak sincerely was Alessandro Melli, who was open and honest: “I hope they fire you, so I can finally play some football.” I appreciated it; we were there to tell one another what we thought. He did the right thing; he certainly helped me to understand the atmosphere in that group. In general, though, the team wanted to hold it together, to work together. They agreed with what I wanted to do. I had a strong feeling that things would improve quickly—and they did. We made it to second place, which meant we had qualified for the first round of the Champions League. Not bad for our first year.
The second year didn’t go so well. We tried to reinforce the team, but we achieved just the opposite effect. We got to the first round of the Champions Cup, in the Stadio Ennio Tardini, against Borussia Dortmund, coached by Nevio Scala. That’s where Crespo changed a city’s opinion: he scored and then he clapped his hands over his ears; I think he was the first player to do it. “Oh, heavens. Has he gone deaf?”
I reassured everyone: “No, he’s just pissed.”
“Now jeer at me if you have the balls,” he was suggesting—an unmistakable gesture.
Crespo wasn’t well loved; he’d been jeered and whistled at frequently in his early times with the team. The fans didn’t like him. He was talented, a serious young man, but they just didn’t like him. Before that goal, it had been whistles, jeers, and cheers.
In the match against Borussia, everyone was asking me to replace him. Just after the match began, some guy right behind the bench started screaming: “Substitute. Substitute. Substitute.” “Substitute, substitute, substitute.” Ma va’ a cagher—Oh, go take a crap. I kept him in, he scored a goal, we won, and I went to the press room: “I would like to inform the Parma audience that I will never pull a player off the field who is being jeered.” Whistles and jeers, but I wouldn’t substitute myself either.
During my time in Parma I came in for a lot of criticism, especially in my second and last year. Everyone had an opinion, and they sort of tended to look down on me. Parma (like Reggio Emilia) was historically a farming town, then over time it became an industrial capital, losing the peasant culture that I love best. We lost a match against Fiorentina under