Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [44]
CHAPTER 17
If You’re Looking for Feelings, Please Apply Elsewhere
As a pig that couldn’t coach, I never really liked Turin. It was too gloomy, a couple of galaxies away from my way of life. Back off, posh guys—here comes the fat boy with a bowlful of Emilian tortellini. Juventus was a team I’d never really loved. In fact, it’s a team I’ll probably never love, in part because of the welcome that some higher intelligence reserves for me every time I come back there. It’s always been a rival team; even when I was a little boy, I was an Inter fan right down to the marrow of my bones (hmmm, makes me think of beef broth), and completely obsessed with Sandro Mazzola.
Suddenly, I found myself on the other side of the barricade—in a sense, on the other side of myself. As a result of a purely professional decision. Unfortunately, I have always had a serious defect: when I coach a team, I become its number one fan. It doesn’t happen to everyone; I’m willing to bet money on that. But I always get drawn in emotionally. I am overcome with an all-consuming passion, a momentary crush. It’s not that I’m a company man; I’m just an old-fashioned romantic. I respect the culture and the history of the clubs I work for. I think that’s the right way to approach my work. A person ought to do it; a person has an obligation to do it. You can’t just show up at a club one day and start issuing orders.
At Juventus, orders were issued by the Triad, and they always took good care of me. They took very good care of me. True, they fired me after just two and a half years, but that’s another matter. As long as I was their coach, Moggi, Giraudo, and Bettega made me feel like I was the best coach in the world. With their words and with their actions. Their behavior was impeccable, as far as I was concerned.
I find it inconceivable for a club to question a coach’s actions during the season. It’s a baffling, counterproductive way to work. When I was with Juve, I knew that I enjoyed the respect of the top management, even when things weren’t going well. There were harsh meetings, I saw more than one player on the verge of tears, but even at times like that they treated me like a king. They were always there, at training and during matches; they lived with the team, they knew everything about everyone. Absentee executives aren’t helpful, and they understood that.
Juventus was a completely new environment for me. Very different. I never really felt comfortable. I was a cog in the machine—just another employee in a huge corporation. If you’re looking for feelings, please apply elsewhere. On the job, everything went smoothly, but outside the workplace, nothing. I saw Moggi every day, we were neighbors. I lived downstairs from him, on the Via Carlo Alberto. Of the three members of the Triad, I was closest to him. He liked me, he cared about me, and the feeling was mutual. I still talk to him occasionally; the same goes for Giraudo. But Bettega basically vanished into thin air.
That Moggi—Lucianone, as he was known—was an important and influential person was common knowledge. Even a few referees seemed to be aware of it. One in particular. Everyone respected Moggi, and so, in effect, there could be a sense of intimidation at times. His strength, and later his downfall, was his public relations: he never said no; he would meet with as many as thirty people a day. He was outgoing and open-minded, which made him more powerful and more widely hated. The fact that he was with Juventus made him powerful, and that is why there were people who found him intimidating. They were all so many little lambs bleating in the presence of a ravening ogre, who wasn’t really an ogre after all. Neither an ogre nor a saint, no question about it.
Gathered around him, Luciano had lots of little helpless lambs but not many Johnny Lambs, to use the nickname of Gianni Agnelli and his family. No, it was members