Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [63]
“No, coach, what on earth would I have to tell you?”
“You’re sure you’re not forgetting anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
I looked at Rino out of the corner of my eye; he was ticking like a time bomb, ready to go off at any second. He kept control of himself and believed he had emerged the winner. On January 10, at lunch at training camp, Kaladze came over to me with a very sad expression on his face. It seemed like something terrible had happened, so I walked over to him with a show of concern, and asked him, “Is there something wrong?”
“Yes, coach, it’s three hundred and sixty-four days till Rino Gattuso’s birthday.”
Explosion in the cafeteria; we were clearly in the presence of a genius. He was immediately chased down by Rino and pummeled furiously. I think that this is when Kakha began to feel the first creakings in his knee. Maybe someone talked to the journalists about Kaladze, especially the older ones, who always claim to know everything but who had just got it wrong once again. It was Malta Cracked, not the Malta Pact.
Which, let me say it again, never existed—even though, in that period, I was beginning to pick up positive signals from the team. Or rather, from the teams: A. C. Milan and Liverpool. In everything I said, I emphasized the concept of how we had been penalized, the injustices to which we had been subjected, and how much I would like to give the lie to the birds of ill omen that hovered around us. My mind was free, so ideas entered my head more easily: “Boys, don’t worry, I’m taking you to the final.”
It was January, and I was still thinking about Athens. In the meantime, Massimo Ambrosini was thinking of quitting soccer entirely, because of his succession of injuries. His morale was so low that it had emerged on the far side of the globe. We were forced to undertake a major psychological project focusing on him—an attempt to change his mind-set, remind him of how much we needed him. It was important for us, for Liverpool—for everyone.
I had a clear idea of the ideal formation for us to win the Champions League, and he was part of that formation. “With you, we can win,” I told him. The only reason he didn’t tell me to go fuck myself was that he was a polite young man, but he was certainly on the verge of summoning an exorcist. But I insisted: “Massimo, I’m not kidding. Certain games, I can’t send in Inzaghi and Gilardino together; we’d be too unbalanced. I want to dust off the good old Christmas Tree, and we need you there for it. End of story.”
This was my idea: Gattuso, Pirlo, and Ambrosini in the middle; Kaká and Seedorf as a pair of attacking midfielders; and a single striker up front. Without Yoann Gourcuff, who was talented but also crazy. A strange, very strange young man, a little egocentric: he mostly thought about himself. He had incredible potential, but he kept it all to himself. Off the field, he was a troublemaker, but that never influenced my decisions. Very simply, he just didn’t know how to fit in as a team player. In contrast, Ambrosini, who was playing in the Italian Cup again after a long period on the bench, felt a sharp pain in his thigh and slipped back into a kind of athletic depression: “That’s it, I want to quit, I really can’t take it anymore. I just don’t think I can go on like this.”
The doctor was baffled. He took me aside and practically whispered to me: “Look, he’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with his leg that I can see.”
So I had another conversation with Massimo: “On Sunday, we’re playing a championship match against Lazio. The doctors tell me that you’re a hypochondriac, but you claim you are in pain. So let’s do this. I’m going to field you, you keep playing as long as you can—a minute, two minutes, ten minutes, or even thirty. And if you break something, all the better; we’ll solve the problem, and we’ll understand